How Alex Learned to Read Part Three

by Cheryl Carroll
2005

How Alex Learned to Read - Part Three: Age 7 and 8

I could tell Alex was beginning to know the alphabet letters by the change in the questions he would ask. He used to ask me to show him what the letters looked like. Now, when writing a word, he would ask the spelling and use his fingers to form the letter, then ask if that was what the letter looked like. Most of the time he had it right.

More and more, the letters were turned the right way, although a lot of them were still backwards. They were all capitals. He was recognizing many more words by sight. Mostly short words like the, cat, top, etc., but some longer ones that he had seen over and over again.

Sometimes he would get phone calls from relatives asking about his reading progress. He would say "no, I'm not reading, yet". One day, I told him I thought he could probably read more than he thought. We opened up "Hop on Pop" and he slowly read some of it. He stopped as soon as he didn't consider the words easy, but from then on, he would tell them, "yes, I'm reading".

Alex was very interested in Japanese Anime. We bought a huge comic book for him. This was probably the first book he ever tried to read seriously. Just like his stories, you would read the book from back to front. He thought that was pretty cool. He would spell out most of the words to me, but he would try to read them on his own first.

Playstation games started replacing the computer games. Between the Lions was still one of his favorite shows. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was released on video and for the first time, Alex wanted to sit still and be read to.

We had the first four books of the series. He hadn't shown an interest after the first movie, but now he was excited. He wanted to know what was going to happen in the next movie. He sat riveted while I read "The Prisoner of Azkaban", and then sat through many more hours and days as I read "The Goblet of Fire". Next I read the first two books in the series to him, and when the "Order of the Phoenix" came out, I read that one to him.

One day we went to the park to read and while I was driving, Alex tried to read the book. He was able to read many of the names and some of the other words. Since he was very familiar with the subject I think it was easier for him to figure out some of the words. He didn't spell out very many words to me.

Around this time he started spelling out words to me from candy wrappers, food labels, ps2 instructions, buildings we passed, street signs. Just about anything that had a word on it was fair game. Sometimes when I told him the word he would say "that's what I thought". I never asked him things like "what do you think it is?" or asked him to try sounding it out. I always gave him a direct answer. Sometimes the words were really simple and he'd asked me so many times that I was positive he knew them, but I didn't say anything. I just answered him.

How Alex Learned to Read - Part Four

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