I have been teaching a few kids for a little less than a year now.
When I started, they were plainly on the wrong textbook – despite not yet knowing all their phonics for single letters, but they were on a textbook dealing with mainly blends.
I carried on with the textbook and a sequel of sorts because I figured despite being a suboptimal approach they’d surely figure it out. I should say we’re an Eikaiwa and it is only the first half of the lesson that is for literacy – once I get through the textbook lessons and a game covering the content, there’s not really much time at all before I have to move on to the conversation component.
The approach hasn’t yielded the results I wanted at all.
They’re about 6 to 7.
They were so far along into the blends textbook when I arrived that it would have been a bit of a loss of face to go to some ABC INTRO let alone now.
What can I do to get them out of this rut? Any textbooks or workbooks you would recommend?
5 comments
I’d scratch any text books, especially if they are struggling with the sounds of the letters.
Firstly, I’d go back to the alphabet and make sure they can do the basic phonics in games and activities…yes I’d make it simple and stupid, but yes I would also try and make them engage in the lesson.
Then move onto sight word pronunciation.
Then whole sentence reading.
Bring it down, gamify and try and get them enthused to do the basics. At the moment they are just obeying the teacher and seeing out the lesson, because that is the nature of Eikaiwa students.
Use your current text book to cherry pick materials. If no one is in your class with you, no one will know.
They are on the wrong textbook because no one cares, and selling the textbook makes more money.
Make the students happy and you’re safe, that’s Eikaiwa 101, it’s sounds stupid to just be ‘genki’, but I say genki real hard by just trying to make them enjoy the lesson, make it simple and build to whole sentence reading.
In about 3 weeks you’ll get the measure of who can actually read something, who can’t and who won’t. Work with that.
They have to work on it at home with their parents. If the parents arent willing to make the effort then what example does that set the kids
Getting ready for work over here but I would spend the ¥650 or so to pick up this preowned book [Sumiko Leeper’s “How American Elementary Students are Taught to Read” – volumes on Phonemic Awareness](https://amzn.asia/d/buYZrtn) and [Guided Reading](https://amzn.asia/d/656Qd0Z).
If you’re American, you could hardly find a better selection of texts, activities, and examples for setting up starting sounds and all the terrible ways we put vowels together through well known decidable readers, activities for developing phonemic awareness just as it says on the over, and then applications for using those via rhyme schemes, picture books that allow activation of sight words, etc, with authentic texts.
More than anything, I find these books will help YOU. You’ll have a lot of “let’s use this tomorrow” resources ready for you.
Yes, it’s in Japanese; no, the actual selections and tasks are not. It’s a wonderful resource.
Try teachyourmonstertoread if they like games.
If you’re given “half” the time for reading, that’s great. Sometimes there isn’t enough time for that.
Start with phonics, make sure they know at least 80% percent.
With that, they can start to read their own CVC words with some practice.
Concurrently, you should be teaching sight words like “the, what, this you,” etc.
Drill them and review every class. Then give some kind of activity to practice. Ie one student says one of the words and the others have to find it and touch it. That way they’re reading/speaking and listening.
If you have low level books, use them. Don’t worry about them understanding and being able to read every single word. It’s more about the flow of sentences and using words together. They’ll eventually pick up on it.
Using these steps kind of currently, your students will learn to read much faster. Believe it.