A Holistic Approach to Reading

By Ms Es McNulty
Principal/Founder of Es McNulty School

Anyone who can read can teach children to read. However, teaching children to read well and develop their interest in reading involves more than teaching them A is for Apple, B is for Boy…

Today’s society also expects your children to know more than just the basics, even before they start their formal education. Taking a holistic approach, methodology and philosophy towards the education of your children will help them to develop academically, emotionally and socially; helping them to S.O.A.R.R to the stars:

The Holistic approach combines the whole sentence approach, the whole word approach, sentence structure and the word game ‘Singo”.

Self Esteem
Your task of child rearing is fun, warm and huggable when you are reading stories to your children in quality time that is set aside just for them. That is a time when you create and establish rapport. If the phone rings – let it ring or better still, take it off the hook. If the doorbell rings, let that ring also. Whoever it is will return if it is important. This is quality time, with your child. It is an interactive and loving time when you will grab the opportunity to develop skills of prediction and projection – What do you think happens next? How do you think the little boy feels? It is a physically and emotionally close time and will create happy memories that they will take through into adulthood. You will stimulate their imagination, expose them to everyday and enriched language, and at the same time you will have maintained rapport with them. Parents are able to do this in a myriad of other ways but their personality will determine how they do it. Generally speaking, adding humour to the sessions, and sharing tidbits about their own childhood brings about involvement.

Objectives
Just as you take a physical or mental road map with you when you are out driving so a parent, or a professional teacher, needs a road map and for each child and they will be marginally or vastly different every one of them. The reason? Each child is unique and has individual styles of learning. Your road map will be a weekly plan constructed for the individual. One child may struggle with matching words whilst his sibling or friend recognises twenty four selected flash cards and is all set for his first reading book. Others may fall somewhere between the two. Wherever they fall do not compare with others. It will enhance some children’s self esteem but can do untold damage to others. Value them for their individual effort whatever stage they are at, give praise for effort as well as achievement and record their achievements. There very same achievements will form a baseline on which your objectives will be based, rather than age-group expectations.

Achievements
Is the glass half full or half empty? That depends upon your perception of it. Looking at your children’s achievements is also perception dependent. An objective parent – and looking back, that is not always easy because emotions will get in the way at times – which is what you are now has a first class base line on which to build all future learning.

Whether the baseline is average for his age group, above or below average will not matter. He will make more progress building his achievements than if you had built on age group expectations. Why? Because your children are unique individuals and they need to be treated as such. They need to flourish on success, their success.

Rapport
One of the best ways to establish and maintain rapport with your children is by shared activities and what better way than to read to them. It is never too early to start this pattern of developing children’s love of language. Bathe them in it as often as you can. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and listen for an answer. Listening skills, as opposed to hearing skills, are sadly neglected by many in today’s world.

Reframe
To reframe an experience is to look at it from a different perspective. A word to erase from your vocabulary is ‘untidy’. Some children are naturally so. Henry was sent to me for that very reason. His body language said everything. “My teacher said my work is untidy” he volunteered. I reframed and looked for something positive. Hs letter ‘I’ was the best formed letter so I put a star above each one and told him how neat they were. Each day we selected another letter for ‘star’ awards and his written work improved tremendously. Maybe he wasn’t the neatest in the class but his writing reached an acceptable standard.

Entering Children’s world of fantasy

Finally there are two more strategies to those already mentioned and those are entering a child’s world of fantasy and anchoring, or triggering, a response. I became aware of these when, many decades ago, I came to the point where I had tried everything and still seemed to have made no progress with one particular child. I had reached desperation point with a little girl called Beverly. I had, as I thought, taught her ‘all the tricks’ and yet she was still no nearer decoding the little black squiggles that littered the page than she had been six months earlier. The rest of the class was all reading at different levels so, in a flash of intuition, I told Beverly that the reason she couldn’t read was because her brains had fallen to her bottom. “If I tap your bottom they will shoot up and you will be able to read,” I announced this with a lot more confidence than I felt. So, I tapped her bottom, opened ‘Peter and Jane’ at the first page and off she went. She read the whole book and never looked back after that. On reflection, I had changed her belief system from “I can’t” to “I can” and the tap on the bottom became a trigger that activated her ability to read.

I used this tack on many different occasions using other forms of make-believe such as “You can’t read!” – To one boy who had been sent to me by his teacher. “Don’t worry, I have all the tricks up my sleeve and I will pop them out, one at a time. You will very soon be reading.” In both these instances I had not only entered the children’s world of make-believe but I had also tapped into their belief system and changed it from an “I can’t” to an “I can”.

Summary
The ability to read is every child’s birthright. It is never too early to introduce your children to books. Bathe them in language from the word go. Read to them and let them see that you enjoy the quality time you are spending with them. Enjoy their world of make-believe and see them develop “I can attitudes” as they reach for the stars.

Good luck, to all parents and teachers, as you proceed along the literacy journey with your child / children.