Our results
Published Jan 15, 2025
Run your own race - Bluey’s mom.
I love that episode of Bluey. I adopted that quote as my mantra, something I tell myself before every practice session.
Summary
Today, reading is fun. It did not start that way 6 months ago. Mantras help.
It took us 10 weeks. It started slow, 3 letters a day, for the first 10 practices. Your patience will be tested, get yourself in a good state of mind, don’t be hungry. We saw a jump in week 3 and never looked back. Our practices were daily, 15 minutes or so. We took a day off every few days.
For reference, my son was 4.5 years old when we started.
It helps to have a reasonable goal in mind.
Our goal
To build up his reading confidence and stamina to get through a tiny book by himself. To get there, we use game 1 and game 2 to teach him the 5 skills of reading . Along the way, we want to build his excitement for reading (read: we don’t want stress him out, make him anxious).
- Confidence is measured by his desire to attempt to sound out a word, any word of any length
- Stamina is measured by the number of attempts made before frustration escalates
- Excitement is the opposite of anxiousness; measured by his curiousity and drive to read - letters are everywhere
That’s it. Full stop. Our goal is not speed, volume, spelling, sight recognition, etc.
A word on frustration
Frustration is a sign of learning something new, a good sign. For those that lift weights, it is the burn you feel on you last reps. He should get a bit frustrated, so we will push him to try a few more when we see that he wants to give up.
A word on excitement
Excitement in reading is not built during practices. It is built when walking, driving, watching tv, reading email – and reading books. It is built in the 12+ hours outside the 20 minutes practicing.
Weekly progress
You can see his progress below. Each week shows you
- Count of letters attempted per session
- How we used frustration to our advantage
- Time spent practicing
It took us 10 weeks to learn to read uppercase and lowercase letters, with CVCs (game 2) thrown in.
Week 1 - Attempts 1-3 letters
Negotiates how many and the activity we’ll do after. We take a day off every few days. Frustration comes quickly. He enjoys saying the sound and seeing the picture. This recipe for better engagement is helping me run our practice sessions.
- Daily session: 10 minutes including negotiating
Week 2 - Attempts 1-5 letters
Progress comes slowly. We start with the ones he knows. Take a day off here and there. He is more excited to start, we stop when his frustration reaches 80% - that’s just before a meltdown.
- Daily session: 10 minutes including negotiating
Week 3 - Attempts 8-10 letters
Progress. His stamina is improving. I encourage him when he’s frustrated. We talk about frustration “I see you feel frustrated. That means you’re pushing yourself. It goes away with practice.” He’s making sure I don’t forget to reveal the image for every letter.
- Daily session: 15 minutes including negotiating
Week 4 - Attempts 10-20 letters
He is doing twice the last week’s max. We loop through the letters giving him problems as a way to get in extra reps. To make each session a bit more interesting we started playing the second game, CVC words . He can see how letters make words. There are new images to unlock. Frustration is our marker to push for 2-3 more then end the session.
- Daily session: 20 minutes
Week 5 - Attempts all 26
Horray! Game 1, Easy level (uppercase and lowercase), completed! We up the difficulty to try lowercase letters by themselves. We switch back to uppercase when his frustration creeps in. That gives us a few extra reps to end each session.
- Daily session: 20 minutes
Week 6 - Attempts 10+ lowercase
Improved conditioning helps him get through a good volume of new letters. CVCs are coming along too. We switch to uppercase for extra reps. Between the two games he is getting 25-35 reps.
- Daily session: 20 minutes including negotiating
Week 7 - Attempts 15+ lowercase
He shows more confidence each day. Same formula as other weeks, CVCs and uppercase. Always waiting for frustration.
- Daily session: 20 minutes including negotiating
Week 8 - Attempts all, lowercase
We spend time looping through the harder letters. Lots more CVCs. He is very satisfied at the end of the sessions. Shows less and less frustration. Frustration creeps in on specific letters that are giving him trouble, for example ‘b’ and ‘d’. Time is often the reason for stopping, moving onto reading a book or other bedtime activities.
- Daily session: 20 minutes
Week 9 - Attempts 35-40
His stamina has come a long way. Frustration is minimal. We tend to run out of time, get reminded “it’s bedtime 20 minutes ago”. We use the games less and less and reading books more. The simple 3- or 4-letter word Scholastic ones with Ted, Peg, dog, and dig.
- Daily session: 25 minutes
Week 10 - Reads tiny books
This is a good point to stop reporting our progress. He’s reading a few Scholastic books in a session. When frustrated he asks me to read a few. We take a day off here and there. He’s starting kindergarten this week, so we’ll focus on reading books for now.
- Daily session: 35 minutes including distractions
Run your own race
This is our experience. Yours will be different. Every kid learns at their own pace. Throw in a good mantra and it will be a great bonding experience.
Update: it’s been 5 months
He’s attending kindergarten and bringing home the Scholastic books as part of the school’s Home Reading program. He leans into his sounds on EVERY WORD which tells me that this method really works . He learned to read some words on sight. Hearing us read books to him helps him figure out the correct pronounciation.
Recently, we printed the 100 most common words on a 8.5 x 11 paper; imagine a table with 5 columns, 20 letters each. We’re a few weeks into it. We try to blast through it using “I say, you say” (echo) and “say it at the same time” (choral) co-reading. He is competitive, tries to beat his prior record for a column. Mommy still holds the record.
He looks forward to grabbing a book before bed.