Providing In-depth Literary Understanding
By Mimi Rothschild
A survey given to parents of homeschool students has revealed that only 25 % feel that their homeschooler reads at a level that is equal to his or her full potential. The survey states that 77% of homeschool parents want to know more about the theory and practice of giving reading instruction. Their goal is to make the reading process so natural that the homeschooler does it automatically without realizing it.
Most adults who have been reading for several years do not notice their effortless utilization of reading tactics. Reading is a complicated procedure that brings together several different learning processes. It can however, be broken down into three basic parts, that when working together, come together to form a balanced homeschool reader.
Before beginning their homeschool education, most young children began to learn about sounds. Learning to speak helps them develop phonemic awareness, or the ability to distinguish sounds within the words they are taught. The ability to recognize one sound from the next leads to the proper pronunciation of the word. Eventually this will help the child sound-out words when they begin homeschooling and learning to read. All beginning homeschool readers are presented with unfamiliar words when they first begin reading that must be sounded-out. As their education progresses they will encounter fewer and fewer unknown words. Adult readers on average may still uses the skill of sounding-out on unfamiliar word less than one percent of the time.
The English language however, is made up of several words that are “non-decodable words” often called “sight words.” Homeschoolers must be taught to memorize these words since they cannot be sounded out. Students must be exposed to them through reading, or study such as flashcards. The more a homeschooler reads, the greater their list of memorized words becomes. Memorization also occurs over a period of time with words that are “decodable,” and that can be sounded-out.
The purpose of reading is to absorb language. Homeschoolers read for entertainment information and communication. They not only need to know how to sound-out words and recognize known words, they must be able to understand the meaning of each word they read, as well as the overall concept of the passage read. Understanding what they read as they read it also gives the homeschooler the ability to check that they are sounding-out words properly, and recognizing known words. A good homeschool reader will use the meaning of the story to help them sound out the word correctly, as well as how it is used in the sentence.