By Dee Tadlock, Ph.D.

Each month we bring you a column by Read Right developer, Dee Tadlock, Ph.D. Read Right empowers kids with the philosophy that, if a child isn’t learning to read, it’s not because there’s something wrong with the child. Rather there’s something “wrong” with the way the child is being taught! Let’s show you what we mean.

Can you understand the meaning of the following paragraph?

Aoccdrnig to rseerach, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are prseetend. The olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pclae. Th rset cn be a toatl mses nd yu cn sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.

You probably got the meaning even though you couldn’t have sounded out most of the words! Nor could you have recognized any of them by sight! Now try this:

With hocked gems financing him
Our hero bravely defied all scornful laughter
That tried to prevent his scheme
Your eyes deceive he had said
An egg not a table correctly typifies this unexplored
planet
Now three sturdy sisters sought proof…1

You didn’t get the meaning, did you? Even though you “read” all the words the first time, you probably didn’t understand the author’s meaning. Now read it again and this time think: Christopher Columbus1.

The Read Right system was developed by a mom, Dr. Dee Tadlock, who was determined to help her son, a struggling reader. This required her to discover how the brain learns to read successfully. During her extensive research, she found that reading (whether early reading development or remediation) must be grounded in meaning, not decoding. Since 1991, Dr. Tadlock and Read Right Systems have helped thousands of children, teens, and adults in the United States, Canada, China, and Germany through school-based programs, telephone tutoring, and at-home programs.

Read Right’s premise that all children can learn to read, plus their phenomenal success rate, is why NSFM partners with Read Right. Reading empowers the lives of children and, together with Read Right, we are in the business of empowering kids.

1J. Dooling and R. Lachman, 1972, “Effects of Comprehension on Retention of Prose” Journal of Experimental Psychology, Volume 88, pages 216-222

Have you ever watched a child learn to figure out how to do something? Grasp a toy? Walk? Tie her shoes?

Brains are wonderfully adept at figuring out how to do things. Think of everything your child could do moments after birth. It’s a short list, isn’t it? Think of everything she can do now! If you should actually make a list of everything she has learned to do since birth, many processes won’t even appear. For example, you probably wouldn’t include “She knows how to scratch her nose when it itches?” but she certainly couldn’t do that at birth.

How did your child learn that particular process? Did you teach her how to scratch her nose when she needed to relieve an itch? Or, did she make attempt after attempt until her curious and adaptive brain figured it out for itself? That’s how the brain learns processes such as talking and reading—through interaction with the environment via a continuous cycle of: 1) attempts at performing the process, 2) failure, 3) implicit analysis of the result, and 4) implicit adjustments in future attempts until the desired result is achieved. It is a simple formula every brain uses to figure out a process: attempt, fail, analyze, and adjust with the next attempt. You can use this knowledge of how the brain learns a process to create an environment in which your child can figure out reading—or any other process—if she chooses to do so.

THE RIGHT ENVIRONMENT FOR FIGURING OUT SPOKEN LANGUAGE

Virtually all children learn to speak because meaningful sound (language) is consistently dumped into their brains, and their brains are compelled to “make sense” of it simply because it is there. Making sense is what brains do—we call that learning. Language learning starts very early. Newborn infants with just a few days of exposure to their mother-tongue can distinguish it from other languages they have not been exposed to. When infants first babble, they do so in a universal tongue, producing all the sounds the human speech apparatus is capable of producing. By about eight or nine months of age, they babble only in their mother-tongue.

Children have a strong motivation to figure out language because they are, by nature, social and they want to participate in the communication that is going on all around them. This is obvious to anyone who has observed very young children communicating without language. They are creative and persistent in such communication, but they also display frustration when the communication fails and they simply cannot be understood.

The right environment for figuring out spoken language is one in which there is a consistent source of meaningful language together with a “coach” who spontaneously provides feedback on performance and encourages the use of language even when it is peppered with mistakes. No parent gives their children talking lessons, yet virtually all of them learn to talk. How do they do it? They figure it out for themselves!

THE RIGHT ENVIRONMENT FOR FIGURING OUT READING

The Catch 22 in figuring out reading is this: how can meaningful print be consistently “dumped” into the brains of young children if they can’t read? The obvious answer: someone else must read to the child and position him so he can see the print.

Earlier columns have explained that the essence of excellent reading is to anticipate the author’s intended meaning. It makes sense to read to your child from highly predictable books so he will automatically begin to predict the meaning. For example: I like to go to the beach. I like to go to the park. I like to go to the swimming pool. I like to go to the bakery. I like to go to the movies. If this were a book with one sentence on each page together with representative pictures, it wouldn’t be long before your three- or four-year-old would be reading it to you!

You will find that if you choose to read such books to your child, he will eagerly and spontaneously respond positively to your comments of invitation: “I bet you can read this page. Want to try?”

Brains that are deeply engaged in figuring out the reading process recognize that highly predictable books are the vehicles through which they figure it all out. Some parents expect children to be bored by highly predictable books, particularly if the child is already engaged in more complex reading material (e.g., listening to Harry Potter) or, if the child is old enough to think of some of these works as “baby books”. We can engage such a child in the reading process by asking her if she wants to learn to read. If she says, “Yes!” then suggest that you read some simple books together to make the process of figuring out reading easier. This establishes a different purpose for the activity, thereby preparing her for the simpler, highly predictable books. Instead of setting her up to judge the early readers based on interest level, she will be motivated and prepared to become highly engaged in the implicit activity of figuring out the complex process of passage reading for herself. The goal is for your child to want to figure out the passagereading process on her own because she sees value in it, and she wants to get on board for an exciting ride into the world of reading.
 

About the Author:
Dee Tadlock, Ph.D. is the founder of Read Right Systems. In her book, Read Right! Coaching Your Child to Excellence in Reading she explains how some children figure out the reading process with no apparent help. www.ReadRight.com

December 2007