Reading at Sight: Lesson 1 (Part Three)

This post is intended to give an example, step-by-step, of an actual lesson with an actual child (mine!) using the Charlotte Mason method for teaching a child to read as detailed in Home Education. I hope to post a more concise version in Word format soon for others who may wish to try these CM reading lessons with their own children.

Yes, three parts to the first lesson. I would have just called them lessons 1, 2, and 3, except that Punkin and I had still not successfully completed Miss Mason's instructions for the first lesson. So, I'm posting our first three lessons as our "first lesson" :)

I posted about our actual first "reading at sight" lesson last week. There were some issues ;) We made some in roads, though, after figuring out that Punkin wasn't sure what a word was... good grief. How did I miss that?! I've probably lost all credibility with you dear readers :)Anyway, we had a little troubleshooting session and talked all about words and spaces, greatly helping Punkin's success with sight-reading. Yay! Today, then, we continued on with what Miss Mason outlines as the first lesson - the first two lines of "Twinkle, twinkle".

The initial, smaller font

The larger font (in a sideways pic - what happened?!)

I had mentioned the other day that Punkin seemed to do better with her word-building lessons when the font was larger. I decided to test this out with the reading-at-sight lessons, too. I printed out a second copy of the poem, this time with considerably larger font. Miss Mason never mentions the size of the font, but I'd say it's fairly safe to assume that she used the size of regular "book" font, since she gives examples of other reading lessons (word box lessons) that make use of words literally cut from books. But, I wanted to see if the larger font would help Punkin, and I believe it did. Here's today's lesson, a far cry from our true first lesson (Miss Mason's words are in italic):

"Lessons in word-making help him to take intelligent interest in words; but his progress in the art of reading depends chiefly on the 'reading at sight' lessons... The teacher must be content to proceed very slowly, securing the ground under her feet as she goes. Say - 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are," is the first lesson; just those two lines." Home Education, page 204

I was reeeaaallly hoping to get through the first two lines today, and finally finish the material for the "first" lesson :)

"Read the passage for the child, very slowly, sweetly, with just expression, so that it is pleasant to him to listen. Point to each word as you read."

I read the first two lines of the poem. As I read, I pointed beneath each word. However, instead of just pointing beneath the middle of the word, I moved my finger under each word from left to right as I read, picking my finger up at the spaces between the words. This is not mentioned by Miss Mason; I did it to make certain Punkin was clear on the beginnings and endings of the words.

"Then point to 'twinkle', 'wonder', 'star', 'what', - and expect the child to pronounce each word in the verse taken promiscuously..."

"Promiscuously" just means in no particular order. So, I pointed to 'star', 'twinkle', 'little', 'Twinkle' - she knew them from a previous lesson. Now, the test - I pointed to 'How'... she knew it! I pointed to 'are'... she knew it! I pointed to 'wonder'... she didn't. 'What'? Nope. 'I' - yes, she knew that one, and we talked about how it is just the name of the letter, but it is also used in sentences ("I am going home", etc.). She did not know 'you', either. So, I pointed to each of the words that she did not remember and read them again. We focused on just those three words for a few minutes until I felt that she knew them. Then we tried again. I pointed to all ten words promiscously and she did better. We focused in on trouble words again for just a short bit. I pointed to all ten words promiscously yet again, and Punkin read them all several times!

"But we have not yet finished the reading lesson on 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star". The child should hunt through two or three pages of good, clear type for 'little', 'star', 'you', 'are', each of the words he has learned, until the word he knows looks out upon him like the face of a friend in a crowd of strangers, and he is able to pounce upon it anywhere. Lest he grow weary of the search, let the teacher guide him unawares (without him knowing it) to the line or paragraph where the word he wants occurs."

Searching for words (Ack! Still sideways!)

Then I brought out a newly printed page of text (with larger font) and had Punkin search for words as I said them. I had to give her a little help with the general area - "Look somewhere over here", for instance. She found the words, though, all ten of them. We had been working at the lesson for fifteen minutes now, and it was time to stop. But, after such hard work and success, we had to end on the sweetest note...

"...then, when he shows that he knows each word by itself, and not before, let him read the two lines with clear enunciation and expression..."

I slid my finger under each word as Punkin read:

"Twinkle, twinkle little star,
How I wonder what you are,"

And the expression on her face captured in one look all the reasons I love teaching my children at home.

SHE READ IT!!! :)

Reading at Sight: Lesson 1 (Part Two - Troubleshooting)

Last week, I shared how big of a complete flop our first "reading at sight" lesson turned out to be. I mean - really. Clearly, I wasn't expecting her to read perfectly from the get go, but it was obvious that something just was not clicking with Punkin, and I had to figure out what that was.

When we settled down two days later for our second sight reading lesson, I still wasn't sure I had much of an idea. I had plans to introduce fewer words in one lesson, instead of the entire first two lines. Other than that, I was still sort of flying by the seat of my pants. I wondered, though, if perhaps seeing the word all by itself, without neighboring words crowding around it in a sentence, would help Punkin focus in and "see" the word. So, before I took out the "Twinkle, twinkle" paper, I wrote the word "twinkle", slowly, in print as Punkin watched. When I was finished writing, I told her that the word was "twinkle".

She jumped back in her seat, clearly shocked (rather dramatic, I know). But, she was evidently surprised, which surprised me since this word was one that she had sort of gotten in the previous lesson.

"That whole thing?! That whole long word says 'twinkle'?!" she asked (still shocked).

"Well, yes, honey. Don't you remember this word from our first lesson? Here, we begin at the t and read over to the e and that's all one word - twinkle. See?"

Punkin pointed to the very center of twinkle, just as I had done in our lessons, and said, "I thought just this part was twinkle!"

"The i-n-k part?"

"Yes!"

Ahhhh, now all of the confusion from the other day was beginning to make sense. I admit, I was startled myself by our little discovery. Punkin needed some preparatory work that I had taken for granted! We took a few moments to talk about words and the spaces between words. We counted the number of words in the first two lines. Just to be certain we were clear on where a word began and where a word ended, I wrote out some of the words on a piece of paper as she watched me.



I felt like a complete dunce for overlooking something so completely fundamental. The good news is, though, that Punkin made great strides after we cleared the issue up! We only had a few minutes left after our troubleshooting session, but we followed the steps in the first lesson over again and were able to get through the first line. This time, at the end of the lesson, Punkin read the words back to me, left to right - "Twinkle...twinkle...little...star". Then, grinning a very big grin, she looked up at me.

What a sweet moment.

(Praise God we figured that out early on in the game!)

Today we finished Punkin's third sight reading lesson, and I clued in on what I think was the other major issue impeding our first sight reading lesson. But, more of that in my next post :)

Reading at Sight: Lesson 1 (Part One)

This post is intended to give an example, step-by-step, of an actual lesson with an actual child (mine!) using the Charlotte Mason method for teaching a child to read as detailed in Home Education. I hope to post a more concise version in Word format soon for others who may wish to try these CM reading lessons with their own children.


"Lessons in word-making help him to take intelligent interest in words; but his progress in the art of reading depends chiefly on the 'reading at sight' lessons... The teacher must be content to proceed very slowly, securing the ground under her feet as she goes. Say - 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are," is the first lesson; just those two lines." Home Education, page 204

In an effort to adhere as closely as possible to Miss Mason's reading methods, I chose "Twinkle, twinkle" to be our first reading lesson, just as the passage above illustrates. Punkin had had fairly good success with the first word-building lesson, but I really wasn't sure about what to expect with this first Reading at Sight lesson. I taught my older girls sight words, but not this early on in the reading process and not with this methodology. I was interested to see how the lesson would go. I had read the passage on pages 204-206 of Home Education at least a dozen times within the few days before the lesson and I reviewed the pages again before we began. My hope was to follow Mason's instructions line by line. We did this lesson on Wednesday. Here's how it went (again Miss Mason's words are in italic)...

"Read the passage for the child, very slowly, sweetly, with just expression, so that it is pleasant to him to listen. Point to each word as you read."


I had typed and printed a good, clear copy of the poem in font that I thought was pleasing and easy to read. Before I began reading, I explained to my little girl that it was important for her to pay careful attention to each word as I read, because I was going to ask her to remember what each word was later on. She nodded. Then, I pointed to each word as I read slowly (and sweetly), trying to engage Punkin in the lesson. She was smiling. So far, so good.

"Then point to 'twinkle', 'wonder', 'star', 'what', - and expect the child to pronounce each word in the verse taken promiscuously..."

By the word "promiscuously", I take Miss Mason to mean what we would say today as "randomly". In other words, expect the child to tell you any of the words as you point to them at random. So, I did just that. Immediately after I read the two lines slowly (and sweetly), I told Punkin that now I wanted her to tell me what each word was. I pointed to 'twinkle'. Blank stare. I encouraged her to try to remember and I pointed again. Blank stare. She looked up at me for a clue. "You can do it, sweetie", I said. Then she guessed - "star?".

Uh oh.

Now what? Miss Mason doesn't give us a two page explanation of what to do if your child doesn't magically memorize all ten words after a single slow and sweet reading. Should I read it again? Should I just tell her that I'm sorry she wasn't paying more attention and simply put the lesson away for the day? Honestly, that was never an actual thought of mine, but I could hear a few CM devotees suggesting that option. I thought, "Okay... context. This child is four. This is her very first reading at sight lesson. She might need to practice this a little." So, we started at the beginning and did the whole thing again. Blank stare. Oh, boy.

When I taught SweetP and Shug to read early, it was completely through sound blending exercises until we were well into short vowel words, and even then sight words were introduced maybe two or three a day. Never, ever ten in one sitting. Definitely not ten in one reading. I'd be lying to you if I said that I had very strong doubts about this particular lesson. "Maybe I should've just gone straight into the Letter Box lessons?" or "Maybe we should've done word-building for a little while before the first Reading at Sight lesson". You name it, I probably thought it in those few brief seconds as I pondered what to do now that Punkin clearly was not getting it.

I thought maybe it would help if we tried a slightly different approach. I decided to fast forward to Miss Mason's next step for this lesson:

"But we have not yet finished the reading lesson on 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star". The child should hunt through two or three pages of good, clear type for 'little', 'star', 'you', 'are', each of the words he has learned, until the word he knows looks out upon him like the face of a friend in a crowd of strangers, and he is able to pounce upon it anywhere. Lest he grow weary of the search, let the teacher guide him unawares (without him knowing it) to the line or paragraph where the word he wants occurs."


Again, I had a page typed, printed, and ready. At this point, I decided to forget the second line and just hope for some progress with the first line. I read the first line of the poem again and pointed to each word as I went. I then pointed to individual words in the line, asking Punkin to remember them. She did better than she had done when I read all ten words before asking. So, we moved on to the search for those words. I told her that we were going to search for the words that she just learned. I showed her how to point her finger and scan the page, looking for 'little'. On the first go around, one of the words she had done well at learning was 'wonder'. For some weird reason, as she scanned the page looking for 'little', she kept stopping at 'wonder'. But she would say, 'little'!! Did I say "oh, boy" once before?

Because - oh, boy.

I really wanted to end this lesson on a good note. I wanted her to be encouraged. I wanted to be encouraged! But, I had been timing it, and we were already past ten minutes. I decided to narrow the lesson even more. I pointed to several places on the page where 'little' was printed. Each time I pointed to a new 'little', I said "little". Then, I told Punkin to stop me when my finger came to 'little'. Slowly, slowly, I ran my finger under the words. I passed several 'little's before she stopped me, but she did stop me under the word 'little'.

I got really excited for her and gave her a huge hug. She's not easily fooled, though, and I knew that she knew that she hadn't learned all of the words in the lesson. I told her that learning to read can take a lot of practice, and that I was really proud of how hard she tried and how she listened so well. She didn't seem too broken up over it, so I hugged her again and told her that I was looking forward to our next "Twinkle, twinkle" lesson :)

It was a complete bust. Really. I've never had such a flop of a reading lesson. BUT, I'm not giving up, yet. This was our first go at it! I'm going to read the Home Education passage again, pray, and think about what makes my daughter's little mind tick. Something just wasn't clicking with that lesson... I just have to figure out what the problem was.

We had a little troubleshooting session before our next sight reading lesson, and made a very helpful discovery :) You can read about it here.