Rolling on with Readers

(I couldn't resist the alliteration for the title after yesterday's post on Stepping into Spelling.)

Anna has read through four sets of Bob Books and now she needs something that will challenge her to read longer works, without increasing the phonetic difficulty too markedly. I found the fifth box of Bob Books was quite phonetically challenging, so we have put that to one side for the moment. We'll get back to it at some stage. Or not.

Instead, I have bought an almost complete collection of Endeavour Readers very much second hand. The collection includes books with school stamps from all over the country, as these books were being used as classroom readers when I learnt to read. I have finally realised why I think that certain ways of writing letters are "correct" compared to others - it is because my idea of what certain letters really look like was formed from exposure to the Endeavour Readers' chosen typesetting font. So watching my daughter read through these books is aesthetically pleasing to me, if nothing else.

The Endeavour Reading Programme was produced in the 1970s with a very Australian ethos. The stories tell of typical Australian situations, use classic Australian literature, or present Aboriginal legends. They are written with an eye to developing not only the child's literacy skills but also their social understandings as well. Of course, having been written three decades ago, the Australia they portray is not quite equivalent to the Australia of today. They (so far, at least) have managed to heavily focus on the family of two kids/mother/father plus pet/friend, which is nice for someone like me who strongly values our own nuclear family. There are other things which have raised eyebrows in my daughter, however, such as the complete absence of seatbelts in the car on the holiday travelling scenes of Basic Reader 2, Holiday with Jim. I am sure the scenes of Pam and Sam playing with Digger with the hose spouting water randomly all over the back yard would cause consternation in the eastern states of Australia, which are on far stronger water restrictions than here in Perth. But these have mostly led to interesting conversations, rather than being a cause for confusion.

I first ran across these readers when Joshua brought some home from school for his reading homework. Having sourced and bought a set online, Anna read through the first set and is now on to the second. The entire Programme consists of a few "pre-readers", then nine levels of 1 basic reader + 2 extension readers + 2 or 3 "library" readers (the third library readers were published later than the rest of the set and are harder to acquire now). After the nine groups of readers there is a further series of "Reading for Pleasure" Books 10-21. I have borrowed the Teachers' Manual through my local library on inter-library loan, so have been reading up on how they are all meant to be taught. Originally, there were also workbooks and reading cards (with cloze reading type exercises) to accompany and support the books. Each of the first nine levels was planned to take about one term (at that stage, one third of an academic year) to get through, taking the children through grades 1-3.

The teachers' manual is very helpful in that it tells me just how the language for the readers was proscribed. The authors of the Programme didn't have the same understanding of the importance of phonetic teaching that I do, but there was a very careful structure to the decoding skills necessary in each level. The approach is not whole word, but they have been more careful about the introduction of longer, more complicated words than the Bob Books readers. So the first set introduces V+C words (eg "on") and C+V+C words (eg "dog"), then single grapheme C+C+V+C (eg "trip") and C+V+C+C (eg "went") words, then words with digraphs ("ship" and "with" and "black"). However, they introduce vowel digraphs very very slowly compared to the later levels of Bob Books readers (which were fantastic at taking things slowly in the earlier stages). A few "high interest" words with vowel digraphs are introduced in the sight words mentality early on (such as /ou/ in "out") but it isn't until the second level that the "e at the end of the word makes the vowel say it's name" rule is used regularly. I am hoping this will help Anna to consolidate her phonics knowledge steadily at the same time as she is increasing her ability to concentrate while reading more pages each containing more text.

Anna, who is technically in the pre-primary cohort, is presently doing well with the level 2 readers, and with the phonics instruction she has had already and the spelling instruction I am now introducing her to, I see no reason why she should not continue to read through about two levels each term, possibly even taking her almost to the end of the grade 3 readers before she begins school. Of course, this requires that she will continue to be able to concentrate for the length of time necessary to read the books as they gradually get longer. I don't think this will be a huge problem because at the same time as we have been working through these readers, she has already begun to ask me to listen to her read other books, such as Frog and Toad stories after her brother started reading them, her Beginner's Bible New Testament and a Leapfrog book from the library with a simplified version of The Nightingale (originally by Hans Christian Anderson). She is enjoying the poetry that is introduced in the second set of readers also. And five or six books in five weeks isn't that big an ask.Joshua is going to be getting a dose of Level 2 readers over the coming school holidays as well.

I am very impressed with the way Anna has begun to look at herself as a reader, and not simply as a listener to, or teller of, stories. Yesterday during our reading lesson she told me, "Mummy, I will read stories to my kids when I am a mummy. I will read stories to my ten kids and I will teach them to read and I will bring them to visit you and you will love it when they visit." I'm looking forward to meeting those ten kids one day!