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Developing Vocabulary Through Active Storybook Reading

admin — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 15:57:10 +0000

“I think sometimes in education vocabulary is looked at in much too mundane a way. Indeed, vocabulary is a person’s tools of thought.” - Dr. Keith Stanovich, Canada’s Research Chair of Applied Cognitive Science at the Department of Human Development and Applied Psychology, University of Toronto

A rich vocabulary is an important part of developing language and literacy skills. From the Wechsler Intelligence Test to the SAT, vocabulary is an important part of verbal IQ tests and is considered a predictor of academic success. But how can we help our children gain a vast vocabulary with ease?

Reading, reading and reading….but reading with a difference…

Several researchers have shown that reading storybooks to children from early childhood is vital to helping children develop an extensive vocabulary. But what is even more important is the interaction we have with our children during a storybook reading session.

We can either read storybooks “passively” to our children or “actively” engage our children in the session. When we read passively, our children listen while we parents read the text to them. However, several research studies have shown that vocabulary growth is higher when children actively participate in the reading session by answering questions and discussing the storybook.

In one study, researchers Walsh and Blewitt (see reference below) introduced several new words through storybook reading sessions to three-year olds and studied the new word comprehension. Children who were actively engaged through questions and answers performed significantly better in the new word comprehension and production tests than children who were read to passively.

So when we read storybooks to our children, we can help them develop a more extensive vocabulary by actively engaging them in the session. There are several ways we can do this:

Focus the attention of the child on the new words by highlighting them during the reading session.
Ask questions about the story. For example, we can ask them to describe the scene using new adjectives and/or act out new verbs.
Make a conscious effort to use the new vocabulary in comments, and questions and answers about the story.

This post refers to this study: Walsh, B.A. and Blewitt, P. (2006). The Effect of Questioning Style During Storybook Reading on Novel Vocabulary Acquisition of Preschoolers. Early Childhood Education Journal, Vol. 33(4).

Letters and Sounds: Beginning to Read

admin — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:01:22 +0000

How do we learn to read? Do children read by recognizing whole words or do they use phonics while reading?

For several years, teaching specialists debated the importance of teaching phonics to children learning to read. Some suggested that teaching whole words and whole language should be emphasized over phonics. However, now researchers agree that teaching phonics is an important part of decoding the written language. The International Reading Association’s policy on teaching phonics also suggests that phonics is an important part of reading instruction. However, the Association does state that phonics knowledge is “critical but not sufficient to support growing independence in reading”. As such, phonics instruction is more effective if it is linked to children’s reading and writing, rather than being practiced in isolation.

The importance of phonics in developing reading skills was also highlighted a couple of years ago, when researchers at NYU showed that all three processes, phonics, whole word recognition and whole language processes, work together to determine reading speed.

Phonics is the process of decoding words letter by letter by using sounds of each letter. Phonics accounts for 62% of reading speed and is the most dominant process in reading.
Holistic word recognition is the process of recognizing words by their shape. This process accounts for 16% of the reading speed.
Whole language processes are processes where words are recognized by the context of the sentences. These processes account for 22% of the reading speed.

These researchers also showed that the three processes work independently of each other and all three are important in reading speed.

Project EASE (Early Access to Success in Education), which has had great success in increasing the reading level of children, suggests several activities to help children develop phonics awareness. The Project EASE Cracking the Code (letter recognition and sound awareness) activity unit introduces the shapes, names and sounds of letters to children, using most of their senses – sight, hearing, touch and movement. Below are some activities, based on Project EASE that we, as parents, can use to teach phonics to our children.

Making collages of specific letters using words and pictures of items that start with that particular letter. This helps children look at items and think about the starting sound.
Playing games that involve sound. For example, play a rhyming game, where a child is encouraged to come up with words that rhyme.
Playing games that require children to sort through various items, and then sort the items into boxes labeled with the 26 letters of the alphabet. This helps children identify the beginning sound and associate the sound with a printed alphabet.
Reading books which involve playing with letters and identifying the starting sounds of objects. Some recommended books are shown below.

How Intelligent is Your Child?

admin — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:21:31 +0000

Most people will inform you that your child’s intelligence is IQ and it can be measured by using IQ tests. But, what do most of the IQ tests measure? Also, should we measure a child’s intelligence? Several researchers believe that the traditional IQ tests measure a very narrow range of human abilities, i.e. language and mathematics. These researchers question the use of IQ tests as the sole measure of intelligence and the narrow view of intelligence. So, the question is NOT, “How intelligent is your child?”, but, “How is your child intelligent?”

One of the opponents of the traditional measures of intelligence and IQ tests is Dr. Howard Gardner. According to Dr. Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory (MI), a person has eight different kinds of intelligences. These are:

Linguistic Intelligence is the ability to use language(s) to express oneself and understand others through use of language. Writers, poets, speakers and lawyers have high linguistic intelligence.
Logical-Mathematical Intelligence is the ability to manipulate numbers, recognize patterns, and analyze problems logically and scientifically. Scientists, engineers and computer programmers have high logical-mathematical intelligence.
Musical Intelligence is the ability to hear musical patters, recognize them, remember them and perhaps manipulate them. Composers, musicians, and singers have high musical intelligence.
Spatial Intelligence is the ability to represent the spatial world in your mind. This includes ability to rotate 3- and 2-dimensional images in mind, represent 3-dimensional objects on paper and recreating images from memory. Both scientists and artists use spatial intelligence.
Bodily-kinesthetic Intelligence is the ability to use the whole or parts of the body (e.g. hands, fingers, arms etc.) to solve a problem, make something or achieve a specific goal. Athletes, dancers and actors have a high level of bodily-kinesthetic intelligence.
Interpersonal Intelligence is the ability to understand other people. This includes the ability to understand the feelings, beliefs, intentions and moods of other people and to use this understanding to work effectively with them. Political, business and religious leaders, diplomats and negotiators all require high interpersonal intelligence.
Intrapersonal Intelligence is having an understanding of yourself – what you want, what you can do, how you react to situations etc. Poets, artists, motivational speakers, and spiritual leaders use intrapersonal intelligence.
Naturalist Intelligence is the ability to understand the natural world well and to work in it effectively. It involves the ability to distinguish among and use the features of the environment to solve problems and create products. Cooks and farmers use naturalist intelligence.

According to Dr. Gardner, each person has their own unique set of multiple intelligences that they use to solve problems or create products or do work. This is where MI is significantly different from the traditional view of IQ: 1) every person uses several intelligences and not just one, 2) intelligence is expressed in our performance, the products we create and our ideas, and not a test score, and 3) how intelligence is expressed is culturally defined. This implies that intelligence represents the potential that may or may not be realized depending on the values, available opportunities and personal decisions made by a person.

A key aspect of MI is that all intelligences are teachable and children can get smarter. This does not mean that a child will excel in all areas. But, it does mean that we can help children develop an understanding and ability in different areas of intelligence by repeatedly engaging them in different learning environments.

In conclusion, it is important to understand not how intelligent a child is, but what multiple intelligences does he/she possess. Understanding our children allows us to help our children enhance their natural abilities and develop other areas of intelligence so that they can achieve their passion in life.

“Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.” – Winston Churchill

This post is based on the materials available at the website for the Multiple Intelligences Institute.

Storybooks for Sharing

admin — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:46:06 +0000

”Reading aloud with children is known to be the single most important activity for building the knowledge and skills they will eventually require for learning to read.” - Marilyn Jager Adams

Storybooks open up the whole world of reading to a child. Researchers have shown that reading stories with your children helps them at many levels. Stories introduce children to rare words and more complex sentences. Also, children learn how stories are constructed by listening to them. This lays the foundation for better reading comprehension in later years.

Stories also introduce concepts to children that go beyond the present and extend their knowledge of the world. Parents can use stories as a starting point for extended conversations with their children. Parents can also introduce abstract concepts easily by providing a context for the child. For example, concepts such as sharing and kindness can sometimes be better explained by relating them to a story.

The Storybook Unit of Project EASE (Early Access to Success in Education) by Dr. Gail Jordan suggests selecting books with “strong central characters, well-defined goals, interesting conflict between characters, and story problems that generate extended conversations between parent and child”. Here are some additional tips on selecting books for your children:

Select stories with plots and characters that your child can relate to (e.g., if your child likes trains, maybe he/she will like Thomas the Tank Engine stories).
Choose a subject and genre that is interesting for your child. This is even more important if you are starting at a later age, since you are trying to replace another activity with reading time.
Select books by the reading level and the interest of your child. While you can use age as a starting point, let your child decide what he/she would like to read. Let the older children choose their own books in a bookstore.

Once you find the books that your children enjoy, reading to them will become one of the best times you spend with them as a parent. Best of all, your children will come to you with books in their hands and smiles on their faces!

Also visit the PicabooLane store to purchase these books or find more storybooks.

This post is based on the Project EASE Storybook Unit. Other related posts:

Impact of Early Childhood Reading and Conversation

Words Everywhere – Vocabulary for Children

Building Blocks and Spatial Skills

admin — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:22:13 +0000

Spatial skills involve the ability to see patterns and rotate pictures and objects in two- or three- dimensions. Well-developed spatial skills are important for success in diverse fields such as, engineering, science, mathematics, design, art and architecture.

Playing with blocks helps develop spatial skills in two ways:

Spatial visualization is the ability to mentally combine different shapes to produce a new design (e.g. tangrams and pattern blocks). When children play with blocks, they learn how to make whole structures by using smaller parts.
Mental Rotation is the ability to look at an object or a picture of an object and imagine what it would look like if it is rotated in either two- or three-dimensions. When children play with building blocks, they rotate the blocks to fill spaces or to build structures a certain way.

Children develop block building skills over time. Small children use blocks to represent single objects e.g., a car. As they grow older, children start stacking blocks or making trains by laying blocks next to each other. Between 2-3 years, children start building 2-D structures like walls and floors, by laying blocks next to each other. Children begin to start building 3-D structures around 3 years of age. Initially, these structures are piles of blocks with no inside space. Between the ages of 4-7 years, children start understanding spatial relationships and start building more complex 3-D structures with inside spaces, like bridges and tunnels.

Researchers have found that activities where children are encouraged to build or copy more complex structures help them develop their skills faster. So while playing with blocks with your children, build with them and have fun as they develop their spatial skills!

This post is based on the following article:

Casey, B. M., Andrews, N., Schindler, H., Kersh, J. E., Samper, A., and Copley, J. (2008). The Development of Spatial Skills Through Interventions Involving Block Building Activities. Cognition and Instruction, 26(3), 269-309.

Words Everywhere – Vocabulary for Children

admin — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 10:09:12 +0000

Words are the basic building blocks for all languages. Before our children start talking in complete sentences, they start communicating by using words. An average first-grader knows 10,000 words. Between the ages of 12 months and 6 years children learn about 2,000 words a year or 38 words a week or 5-6 words a day! Researchers believe that a rich vocabulary in early childhood significantly impacts a child’s reading success later.

The previous post, “Impact of Early Childhood Reading and Conversation” introduced project EASE (Early Access to Success in Education) that helps children develop language and literacy skills. The Project EASE Vocabulary Unit suggests ways we as parents can help our children develop an extensive vocabulary while enjoying quality time with them. Some suggested activities are as follows:

Reading books, especially books with words on a specific topics. Some PicabooLane recommendations for vocabulary building are listed below.
Engaging children in extended conversations during mealtimes, bedtime talk and trips in the car. Unlike social conversations, extended conversations focus on a topic, explain things and extend ideas. This enables children to learn more words and develop a better understanding of the topic.
Building word webs using pictures (e.g., things to do outside, things in school, things we see in the garden.)
Playing games that encourage children to guess names of things based on clues provided by parents or having children provide the clues and parents guessing the names of things.

Below are some PicabooLane recommended books for vocabulary building:

This post is based on the Project EASE Vocabulary Unit. Other Related Posts:

Impact of Early Childhood Reading and Conversation

admin — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:47:26 +0000

We all know the importance of language in every aspect of life and how critical communication skills are to our success. What is less understood is the importance of reading and conversation in early childhood in developing language and literacy skills.

Several researchers have shown that early childhood exposure to reading and talking with parents has a direct positive impact on the academic success of children in later years. Activities that children share with parents, such as, conversation at mealtimes, reading books and play are very important in language development. Dr. Gail Jordan, Associate Professor at Bethel College in Minnesota, has noted that parents and children share a social and emotional bond that helps children learn faster. Parents can tailor their conversations to their children and can explain concepts better by relating them directly to the experiences of their children.

Dr. Jordan has developed project EASE (Early Access to Success in Education) to enable parents to help their children develop literacy skills for later academic success. Parents participating in the project use books as a starting point for conversations about various topics and help their children develop an extensive vocabulary and increase reading comprehension.

There are five activity units in project EASE that promote the development of language and literacy skills:

Vocabulary: Words, Words, Words (Link to Post)
Storybook reading: Once Upon a Time (Link to Post)
Letter recognition and sound awareness: Cracking the Code (Link to Post)
Narrative retelling: A Time to Remember
Non-fiction text: Talking About the World

Over the next few weeks, I will write a post on each of these activity units. For now, listed below are some PicabooLane recommendations based on the project EASE activity units that you might want to have as part of your library or look for in your public library:

These books are also available in the PicabooLane Store.

This post is based on the article “The Power of Family Conversation” by Laura Pappano, Harvard Education Newsletter, Volume 24(3). You can read the article at http://www.hepg.org/hel/article/194.

Children and Learning

admin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:15:16 +0000

It was once thought that newborn children came into this world as “blank slates”. People believed that children had to be taught and that they did not actively participate in their own learning. But over the years researchers discovered that young children are actually active learners. They gather and organize materials that lead to their own cognitive development and early-on develop an understanding of basic biology, physics and numbers. Over the past few years, these researchers have provided many insights into how children learn. Some of their findings are as follows:

Children are born with a natural inclination towards learning certain areas, such as, science, numbers and languages. These are their “privileged domains”.
Outside of these privileged domains, children like all other learners have to use will, ingenuity and effort to learn.
As they mature, children develop different methods for learning and understanding. As such, children learn in different ways and there are many ways of being “intelligent”. By understanding this we can help children learn by working with their strengths.
While a lot of learning by children is self-motivated and self-directed, we as parents and teachers, play a major role in helping the development of learning in our children. Other tools, such as, books, television and computers also play an important part in the learning process.

By understanding how children learn, we as parents and caregivers can have a huge impact on the lives of our children by providing an environment that supports their learning.

This post is based on the book “How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School”. Visit the PicabooLane store to purchase or read this book for free online at http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=6160.

A Brief Introduction

admin — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:15:40 +0000

“And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, “Speak to us of Children.”

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.”

“Children” from the book “Prophet” by Khalil Gibran

When I first read this poem about children, I understood that from the time our children are born they are on a journey into the future that we cannot imagine because that future resides in their own minds and souls. Our children are natural-born learners and come into this world with many dreams. And, best of all, they are born with the talents to turn those dreams into reality. While we cannot look into their minds and souls, we can help them realize their true potential by making the process of learning effortless for them.

PicabooLane is where we have fun exploring different aspects of life with our children as they build the skills needed to succeed in their future.

PicabooLane is where we build a loving relationship with our children as we blur the boundaries between playing and learning so that learning is effortless.

PicabooLane is where we meet as a community to share our experiences of learning with our children.

PicabooLane is where we join our children on a journey of discovery which ends when our children discover their true passion and realize their dreams.

We welcome you to join us on PicabooLane whenever you want to go on this journey with the children in your life!

About Me

My own journey down PicabooLane started when my daughter, Alexis, who is now 3.5 years old, was born. I wanted my time with her to be special in several ways: I wanted to have fun with her, laugh with her and explore the world with her in a way that helped her develop the skills and the knowledge she needed to succeed in life in a loving, caring environment. From the time she was born, I started reading books and articles on child development and how play could be used to teach children almost any skills and subjects effortlessly. The journey continued when my son, Ethan, who is now 19 months old, was born. As I continue to grow with my children, I want to share what I have learnt and invite other parents to share their experiences with everyone on PicabooLane.

Over these last few years I have been amazed at the power of children and how fast they can learn when they are taught in an environment full of laughter and love. It has been exhilarating watching them learn new skills and achieve a new level of understanding of the world around them everyday. At the same time, it has been humbling to realize that I cannot even keep up with their thirst for knowledge. If you are reading this blog, at some point you have experienced the same feelings. I hope you find this site useful as you look for ways to make the time you spend with your children special and make learning effortless for them.

Anu Lance, mother of two wonderful children, Alexis and Ethan