Right Reads…

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I found this tag on Drey’s blog and decided to join in!

What are your favourite books? Can you create an ABC list of them? Here’s mine:

A - Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery and Atonement by Ian McEwan
B - Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield
C - A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and China’s Son: Growing Up in the Cultural Revolution by Da Chen
D - Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster, Different Seasons by Stephen King, Does This Thing Look Big on My Head by Randa Abdel-Fatah and Down to a Sunless Sea by Mathias B. Freese
E - Elegance by Kathleen Tessaro
F - Firestarter by Stephen King, Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy and First Wives Club by Olivia Goldsmith
G - (The) Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

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Tags: reading

Otherwise known as the “Keywords Reading Scheme with Ladybird”, this set of 36 books is famously known all over the United Kingdom and possibly within the Commonwealth countries.

Did you know that this reading scheme is 44 years old? Now, I’m a strong believer of “old is gold” especially as these books are developed based on research on literacy.

The author, William Murray, an education adviser and together with an educational psychologist, Prof. McNally studied writing materials and spoken samples of English (using a tape recorder).

From their study, they found that:

12 words make up 25% of spoken, printed and written English,
100 words make up 50% of spoken English and
300 words make up 75% of spoken English.

Using the above ‘keywords’, he came up with the Ladybird Keyword Reading Scheme. If you read the books with your child, they will be able to recognize these words on sight (by memory) and have the basic and essential vocabulary to read, speak and write in English.

Basically, you’re building a strong foundation in English with this set of books!

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Tags: Ladybird, reading

“But my son or daughter doesn’t want to read!”

As an English-as-a-second-language (ESL) teacher, I hear this common complaint all the time when I ask if their children read at home.

I also hear interesting stories about how parents try to get their children to read by:

buying books and magically wait for their kids to read them

promising them rewards if they read them

threatening them with “unpleasant consequences” IF they don’t read them

lecturing them about the “benefits” of reading the books

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Tags: reading

I know many Mums who buy the Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby VCDs by the dozen - after all, which Mum wouldn’t want a baby to grow up like Einstein?

As a Mum myself, I’ve bought a bunch of VCDs for Lucas to watch when he was a year old plus. I’m glad that I didn’t start him on these when he was a baby because this article from TIME magazine, “Baby Einsteins: Not So Smart After All” report that having babies watch VCDs will do them more harm than good, especially in the area of language learning.

Led by Frederick Zimmerman and Dr. Dimitri Christakis, the University of Washington study reported that:

“…with every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants learned six to eight fewer new vocabulary words than babies who never watched the videos. These products had the strongest detrimental effect on babies 8 to 16 months old, the age at which language skills are starting to form.”

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Tags: Baby Einstein, reading