Do you need words to learn to read?
When I became a parent I instantly became excited about the prospect of reading to my child.
The harsh, yet joyous arrival of a newborn, quickly established to me that I would not be reading to my child in a rush, reading would just have served as an unwelcome interruption to their sleeping, eating and crying cycle.
However, their development, and yours as a parent, is swift, and it was not long before I was reading soft picture books. I also distinctly remember reading a Mr Men book to him when he was only a few months old, but this was more for me, and practise for the future.
A future that quickly evolved to fold-out books, touch-and-feel books and then to regularly reading all kinds of literature to my child, including tractor magazines.
I have always thought reading to a child, reading anything, was a positive thing, not really thinking a great deal about why, but while both parties enjoy it so much, why it was great was not really of huge concern.
It did not really cross my mind that I was teaching my child anything specifically, or actually impacting on him learning to read. Enjoyment and a love of books are what I was after.
Then school starts, and reading becomes more formalised, as it should. His reading books are intended exactly as titled, for him, rather than anyone else, to read.
I was a little surprised to find the first stage of learning to read, or the first series of books in this instance, were books without words.
My first feelings were of a little bafflement. How are you supposed to learn to read without having anything to read?
But the question I should have been asking, and was eventually led to, was; How can you be expected to learn to read stories when you do not know what a story is, or how they are constructed?
Not all the parents agreed with this method, and some were immediately pushing for books that more closely resembled the type of literature their children were used to at home.
I was happy for my son to re-establish the structure of books, and I am also a firm believer that if you are given less to work with, then your creativity is encouraged.
One of these wordless books was titled ‘Stripes’, a sequence of pictures with stripes in various forms. Such as in patterns, flags and on animals – like Zebras.
A ridiculously simple book, which was actually a ridiculous amount of fun to read. It led us all over the place; looking for stripes, making comparisons and encouraging my son to learn such things as horizontal and vertical.
Again, it was panned by other parents as boring and having very little to it. And you cannot really argue with that on a piece of literature level, but books like these certainly have their place, or they certainly do for me.
I would be delighted to hear of similar experiences, or the opinions of others.
Are books without words a waste of time or can they give children a sound base to learn from?
Commenting here is welcome, or alternatively you can get in touch with me via blog (at) tidy- books (dot) com
Popularity: 22% [?]
Similar childrens storage news:
Would get you developing your observational skills and getting into those pictures instead of just passing over, all that is good in itself! And can only help with reading as you are learning to work things out?
I think that books without words can be enormously helpful in teaching children to read. Reading is not purely about sequences of letters and strings of words: it is about engaging with books and understanding them as a medium of communication. Wordless books can teach a child the mechanics of reading: the basics such as the understanding that you read a book from front to back. In my view, wordless books can be agreat way to introduce young children to books and reading.