Help teaching PG with 6 yr old

I don’t do specifically PG, and will leave those specific questions for others, but I do work with six-year-olds and will give you some general advice from that point of view.

(a) CALM DOWN! (Ooops — yelling makes you worse too, doesn’t it?) a tutor/mother who is stressed out will not communicate a positive attitude to the child. Take a deep breath.
Remember, he’s only six!! Lots of partents here had to start when their kids were ten or more and had years of failure behind them. Relax — your kid has plenty of time to catch up with his peers and probably surpass them.
Remember, we’re all human and we all make mistakes. If you do something that doesn’t work in the tutoring, back off and try another approach, or try again later. If you tell him something wrong and realize it later, apologize to him, tell him that it’s your first time through this book too, and be sure to repeat the correct way several times so he doesn’t integrate the mistake into his learning. Not the end of the world.

(b) Six- year-olds have a *much* longer attention span than the educationists give them credit for (how long will he fight to master his favourite video game or puzzle?) but this is new work to him and it is HARD, so don’t overdo.
Because I work as a private tutor by the hour, I most often have an hour-long block. In this block, I do 20 minutes or so of phonics (and PG will do that) *including* teaching the child handwriting and having him do exercises writing sound patterns; 20 to 30 minutes of the *child* reading connected text — the first book is either a “decodable” book with words from the learned lists, OR a “high-frequency” book with only 17 words total; and 10 minutes or so of what falls into the general category of “word study” — writing words on file cards but NOT “flashing” them (speed is not the goal, learning is) and practicing words in mixed groups, spelling, making up sentences with known words, etc.
Basically, the child idn’t stuck doing exactly the same thing for more than a few minutes at a time — he reads a few words or a sentence and then does a game or writes something; he reads several *different* pages, always something new; or he spells and writes several different words.
When the child shows signs of boredom and irritability, push him to last out a little longer (you want to increase that attention span, remember?) but after he does push a little longer, move to something else.
If he gets *very* frustrated and is obviously lost in an activity, drop back to a more basic activity to build up the necessary skills. Your model is the tortoise, not the hare.

(c) The total time you spend on any activity is whatever it takes. Some kids will get the “a” sound in one lesson and remember it cold. Others will take months. Big deal — if you didn’t spend the months now, where wouldc he be when he’s seven?
The time on any one topic in one day is ten to twenty minutes for a beginner at age six. This is just as much as his little mind can hold at once. Give him time to digest and absorb.
On that topic, spaced practice, say thirty or forty minutes five days a week, is *much* more effective for learning than intensive blocks — far anyone in any subject. An hour two or three times a week is what I’m stuck with for practical purposes, and it can work. Try not to do one two-hour block a week — that is just too far apart.

(d) The “twelve-hour” promise of the PG authors really annoys many of us. OK, sometimes twelve hours can be enough to really help — to remediate an older child who already can read a fair amount, who doesn’t have any serious LD’s, and who is just suffering from minor dysteachia. A six-year-old will always take longer because he is ,learning for the very first time; a kid with LD’s will always take longer because that’s the definition of an LD, that this is more difficult for him. Be patient and take the time it takes. Better to spend the time doing things right now than kicking yourself in the future.

(e) Corrections are a tricky issue. Yes, DO correct. Where the school is failing kids is in the idea that you make up anything you want and anything you make up is wonderful — alas, the world doesn’t work that way, does it?
DO tell him when he makes an error, and do have him go back and go over it. BUT try to make corrections positive — at least he got the consonant right, now re-try the vowel; he got the first three words, now re-try the fourth; he remembered all the words from yesterday, now look again at today’s; OK, he worked great for half an hour and now he’s starting to flag, take a breath, have a drink, and then get going on the next section.
When you get to connected reading, insist on correct reading of ALL the words. Rushing and skipping is a bad habit that comes back to haunt you later.
Listen to yourself as you correct him. You’ll hear your mother’s voice coming out of your mouth. OK if she was supportive, bad news if she was critical. Stop and bite your tongue if you find yourself coming out with negative personal comments, generalizations about ability, and put-downs.
DON’T RUSH HIM. Remember the golden rule about teaching — *anything* is easy, if you already know how. Trouble is that you as the teacher know how, but he as the student doesn’t. Hey, I think it’s easy to ski down the expert slopes — but I’m not about to take you down them the first day, right?

(f) Continuing on that line, work one step at a time. One little bitty tiny baby step. Get each step solid, 80 to 90% mastered, before jumping into the next one. Sure, you look at it and you think it’s easy. You already know how, remember? And you look at it and you don’t know why certain exercises are included — thy may look silly and a waste of time to you. Well, try them anyway; the author usually had a reason for putting them in, and until you’re ready to build your own program, use the one you have as it was planned so that you get the most out of it. (Major reason for failure of many programs is that they aren’t actually implemented.)

Email me if you have any other questions.

A 6yo is very young, and you have plenty of time.

If you re-read the first three chapters of Reading Reflex, you will note that the authors stress adjusting the lessons to the individual child. I would add that you need to adjust them to suit you, also. In your situation, I would expect a lesson to last anywhere from 5 minutes to 30 minutes. Lesson length and what exercises you choose to do can vary from day to day. Keep in mind you can do one activity for 5 or 10 minutes, come back later in the day and do something else for 5 or 10 minutes, and still have time for another 5 or 10 minutes later on.

It is not good for either the child or the teacher to be stressed out. If your stomach is in knots after 10 minutes, call it quits. Come back to it after you have calmed down.

I would start with *lots* of oral activities to develop segmenting and blending skills. One great exercise — which can be played as a game in the car while you are driving, if necessary (captive audience!) — is the segmenting/blending game. You segment a word such as t r u c k (one second between sounds), and your son blends the sounds together to tell you what the word is. Also, try having *him* segment the sounds in a word, and then you tell him what the word is. This will really pay off in easy development of segmenting and blending skills.

In terms of Reading Reflex, you want your son to achieve about 80% accuracy on Fat-Cat-Sat before starting on Bug-on-Jug. After he’s about 80% accurate on those (kids that age usually *love* sound bingo, which really helps them learn and retain the sounds), start on Ben Bun.

Vary the activities from lesson to lesson. There is no set rule. They all develop skills. Varying keeps interest levels high. Try to always end a lesson with at least a few minutes of actual reading, so your son has a chance to review and apply everything he has learned.

Most of all, take a deep breath and relax. This approach works even if you don’t feel like an expert.

Nancy

I have a six year old K child who I have been helping learn to read. Now he is not LD but my older one is. But just some general observations.

My child has an attention span of about 15 minutes. I personally don’t do too much more than that unless he wants to. Now he does like to read to me so sometimes we do more than 15 minutes.

I didn’t do all the exercises in the book with him—like sound bingo. Didn’t do it with LD one either!! My LD child was 7 when we started doing PG with him.

Now the PG philosophy is to move quickly. Whether that works for you, you will have to see. Depends on your child. Realize that if you do it one way, and it doesn’t seem to be enough, you can always do it another way.

I loop back a lot with my 6 year old to the stories. He has a very good memory and has no trouble learning the code (not true of my LD son) but he still doesn’t automatically recognize many words. He sounds most everything out. So we go back to Bug on a rug (or whatever it is) to read it at the same time as we are working on “sh, ch,” much later.

Six year olds can’t really cognitively handle too much of the advanced code so really there isn’t that much to do. Remember that. You can do it multiple times.
Beth