019 - How Do Reading Skills Develop? The Stages of Learning to Read with Reading Intervention Specialist Teacher Tasha Mendoza

Are you struggling to teach your child to read?
Do you feel like you've tried everything but your child still can't seem to grasp it, and you're already feeling frustrated and you're wondering if you're failing?
 
As a parent, I wanted to know you are not failing. Instead, listen to this episode with Reading Intervention specialist teacher Tasha Mendoza.

We'll discuss why waiting for the right time and approaching reading in the right way can make all the difference.

We'll talk about common struggles and provide practical tips and strategies to help you and your child succeed. Don't miss out on this valuable advice. Tune into this episode.

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Transcript

 Are you struggling to teach your child to read? Do you feel like you've tried everything but your child still can't seem to grasp it, and you're already feeling frustrated and you're wondering if you're failing? As a parent, I wanted to know you are not failing. Instead, listen to this episode with Reading Intervention specialist teacher Tasha Mendoza.

We'll discuss why. Waiting for the right time and approaching reading in the right way can make all the difference. We'll talk about common struggles and provide practical tips and strategies to help you and your child succeed. Don't miss out on this valuable advice. Tune into this episode. 

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That's why we created Discerning Parenting, the podcast that helps you cut through the noise and focus on what truly matters in your parenting journey. This podcast is jam-packed with valuable insights and practical tips, specifically tailored for parents of kids age five and below. So join us and discover how you can use the combined power of science knowing your child and your own intuition in making the best parenting decisions for you and your family.

Welcome to the Discerning Parenting Podcast. This is the second of a series on reading that we're doing with teacher Tasha Mendoza. Teacher Tasha is a reading intervention specialist and mom of four. She has special training and years of experience in evidence-based methods to help kids learn to read.

By evidence-based, we mean there are actual well-conducted research studies that prove they work. I also want to share something new about Teacher Tasha that I didn't share in the last episode. Decades ago, we were actually next-door neighbors. Remember that? Tasha? Yes. We had this wall dividing our houses.

Then we would stand on chairs so we can talk over that wall. And then their family moved away. We lost touch and I was so surprised when decades later I saw Tasha at our developmental pediatrics convention and found out she's a very much sought-after reading specialist. So here we are, and I'm fortunate to be able to share her expertise with all of you today.

So teacher Tasha, where do we start in teaching reading? How do reading skills develop? Mm-hmm. That's a big, big question, but I think that I would put it in this way. No. When we teach reading, even to very young children in the early years, I would like parents beginning with the end in mind, meaning to say, why are we teaching reading? It's actually for the long term. Right? 

Yeah. That's a beautiful mindset. Mm-hmm. So we're not just teaching right now to be able to answer the worksheet in front of us, but we look in the long term. Yes. What is this that we want? Yes. And I would like to ask this question  to parents. I mean, not necessarily, maybe you also to Victoria would like to think about it.

Are we teaching reading for academic success in the long term or are we teaching reading for joy? Because these are two different things, and in the reading experience, a lot of students feel like, you know, some of them will enjoy reading because it's fun and it's become part of their lifestyle and it's a leisurely thing to do or, or some of them will do it because it's a requirement in school, they'll do it painfully, but they'll do it anyway.

Some of them will fall back and struggle, but they'll do it anyway because they have no choice. But what I see with the kids that come to center that need help is that in the beginning, certain attitudes have been already formed. No, and this is starting from as early as preschool. Let's look at reading disposition before we look at.

Where do we start with re beginning? Beginning reading? Yeah. So what we want kids to learn is that reading is fun and reading is something that they can enjoy. And why do want to see this? Because if our kids learn that reading is fun, it's going to make the rest of their lives so much easier. Yes. Yes.

And I'd like to start there No, before the worksheet, because. A lot of parents will look at their three-year-old or four-year-old struggling with a worksheet. Honestly, I don't teach reading using worksheets. I think that reading should be taught first and foremost by a human being. I realize human being a teacher, a mother, a father, a sister, these are the best ways to learn reading from, because there is an example of, of an actual person reading who is modeling the reading.

Kids really learn that way by modeling, yes, holding a real book, and most importantly, going through the experience of enjoying the narrative with someone. Interacting with someone. And that is really the joy of reading and yeah. And why is this important? It's important because it forms reading this position.

Yeah, good Reading this position and what happens if we jump to teaching them to read without this good reading, this position? What happens if we teach them to read in a way that doesn't build the love of reading? Then we see a student who struggles through. Academic life, really. We've seen too many of them.

Nowhere a student struggles to read, doesn't matter if they learn to read a 3, 4, 5, or six, but they struggle to read with comprehension in the grade levels and in high school because they didn't like it in the first place. Yeah. And when we backtrack, it's because in early childhood they did not like it.

They did not like the act of, of instruction, of complying to instruction. They did not like the pressure of memorizing or answering a worksheet because they have to make a grade. They enjoy listening to the stories, but they did not like reading it themselves. Maybe they were not ready, but they're being forced to.

We see reading this position, whether negative or positive, to really push itself through the years. So what we find is in the lifespan. Not even just in school. No, in the lifespan. Excellent Readers and those who find it to be a joyful experience have a habitual reading lifestyle. Like it's in their lifestyle.

It's built in, it's easy. So that's easy. Even when they're adults, they're reading for pleasure. Yes, yes. And we find that because they had very good modeling in reading and. When they were in early childhood, they were also given instruction at the right time. Yeah. They learned to read their phonics  they learned to go through their phonics instruction when they were ready.

Not very early. Yeah.  Not very late, but just at the time when they became curious with letters. Yeah. Start to explore books by themselves. Even if they didn't know how to read yet they start to become independent and pay attention to anything on print for the first time they pick up books. That's the time we want to start  giving instruction, not forcing them.

Into sitting on a table and answering worksheets very early on, because this has a long-term impact. No negative impact. Yeah. On reading this position. So they're only gonna go through an experience of learning to read ones. Yes. We want that to be. Nurturing and a pleasant experience for them. Exactly. Yeah. 

And reading is such an important skill because as they grow old, everything that they need to learn, a lot of it, they'll need to learn through reading. Mm-hmm. Not just in school, but also as adults. And if it's something that they enjoy doing, it's going to make learning so much easier. Yes. So teacher Tasha, are there stages in learning to read?

Yes, there are stages in learning to read. I know that a lot of parents are concerned about. Teaching their child to read early because they want their child to be successful throughout their school years now. So grade school, high school, it becomes more and more demanding. But what I'd like to share is that if you build good solid foundation later on, when they go through the more challenging stages, you will never.

Look back. No. You will never go back and say, oh, I have to review this. Oh, I missed out here. Or there's a gap here. Cuz that's what we see now and we're addressing them. Maybe because some of the stages were skipped. Yes. And then, or they were rushed along. Yes. And now when they go to the Center for Intervention, you have to bring them back. Yes. And then teach those earlier stages. 

Yes. Yes. I like to share a bit about the stages. No, I mean, you can read about this. There's a lot of information in the internet now, but I'd like just to go through it just very quickly. So your child  from zero to six. Right, and this is where we start off. We start off with speech and language.

We always try to develop how well they listen to sounds and words and structures of sentences. We like to teach them to develop their own ability to. To express themselves and communicate. They're expressing themselves in sounds and in their own words, in their, their sentences and building vocabulary.

This is the very, very basic foundation. If you start off with this kind of family culture. Where the child is freely expressing himself in language and, and, and that's promoted in the family, then you're off to a good spot. Yeah. So this means talking with a child, having conversations. Mm-hmm. Having them participate in family conversations.

And actually, this is the topic of my book, father Talking, boost your child's language and brain development in three easy steps. Mm-hmm. So if you don't have that book yet, be sure to go to ler-talking.com and get yourself a copy of the book because this is about. Building oral language skills. And these are the foundations of learning to read.

Yes. And mind you, for the kids that come to us that are in grade school level and they're behind in reading and writing, we go back again to oral language and listening as if they were in their early years and develop that alongside the reading skill. So between zero and six is so critical. We're also preparing them for more alphabet knowledge. So those would be the next stages after oral language, there would be, yes. 

Awareness of sound, awareness of sounds. You have alphabet knowledge. They are putting these sounds together to make words. When is that? A lot of parents ask, when is that?  My answer is when they're ready. So again, or readiness comes with can they pay attention?

Do they have the processing ability in terms of visual?  They can, they put together the image of the letter of the alphabet and the sound. Yeah.  Can they us processing that? Yes. Yeah. Do they know that relationship? Right. Between what they see as a symbol or a letter or a group of letters and the sound.

That entails a lot. And I have to say this, for some kids it, the readiness comes at three, sometimes at four, sometimes at five, sometimes at six. So that's, it's a whole spectrum. 

Yeah. And what we want to emphasize is that no one ages better than the other. Yes. That's what we find in our research. You know, as long as reading is successfully taught in those years in a good, solid phonics instruction, that's systematic and multisensory because they're still playing at that age.

Yeah, multisensory. That means it's not just something that they see on the worksheet, but it's also something that. Teacher or somebody a human is talking to them about. Yes. So if they can play through the, yeah. The instruction. Using their senses, their sight, sound, touch, smell, taste. Yeah. And trying to remember, recognize, recall, and instantly.

And even body movements. Yes. Yes. Those letters. Yeah. Right. We want to make use of that from zero to six. We're introducing them. To as, as much vocabulary development in terms of written communication, we're exposing them to the symbols of the alphabet.  Having what, giving them the time to memorize. The 26 letters, how they look like, what they're named and what they sound like, right?

And practice, practice, practice, listening, putting those sounds together and manipulating sounds. We call it  phonemic awareness and phonological processing. Also, those are technical terms for putting sounds together to make words.  When we teach them rhyme, this is part of it also. And they should really take their time.

You have six years to do that, not rushing into it. By seven they should be reading. So the next stage is actually at six to seven. They should be reading or decoding. That's basically word reading. So when they see letters put together and they're able to read from left to right to read the word, then they're reading successfully on the word level.

 But we wanna see at six to seven as also they can read words. In sentences fluently and understand that sentence and it's, it's with independence without having anyone help them. So at seven grade one  your kids should be able to, to read already with joy because they understand what they're reading, right?

 We don't hurry up the zero to six. I don't recommend it  because the foundation is the most important. You can have agreed. Two kids or grade three kids regress back when they're not mastering the alphabetic system, how it works. So we want to spend time and enjoy the teaching of reading and beginning reading stage.

Yeah. Thank you for sharing that with us. So reading really happens in stages, and then we don't want to skip stages, we don't want to rush them along and we need to wait for readiness. Yes. And then of course, you are looking at academic success and the joy of reading, right? Yeah. And I, I, I would like to present also to the parents who have kids now who are age two, three, or or four that you focus on.

Your child being ready at that age so that you can equip them with what's to come in the grade school years. Because stage two to three is important. No. Going from learning to read. Yeah. And then reading to learn. Yes. So those are two different things. When they read to learn, they'll be about grade four.

Grade three, grade four, up to probably grade seven or eight. Yeah. They're already reading by themselves and choosing their own material or developing vocabulary on their own. We want to equip them with that positive reading disposition so that they're not intimidated by the reading or they don't avoid it.

So when they see, for example, words that are not familiar to them in the grade school level, there are two kinds of students. One is they'll pursue looking for the meaning of words that are not familiar. Or unknown, the others will avoid it. Yeah. Then you have a struggling reader.  So I don't, I don't know any  middle ground?

No. It's either your chil children like it or they don't. Yeah.  If they say, yeah, okay. Reading is, is I, I'll do it. I'll do it because I have to. It's such a waste because. Reading should be done with joy. It, it's an, it's an enjoyable experience. Yeah. And I wanna talk 

more about the difference between learning to read and reading to learn, because a lot of people do not realize that there's a difference.

Mm-hmm. So learning to read would be the stages that you talked about, where they're still learning whether it's  they're learning about sounds or letters, or they're learning about words, or they're still building fluency. So this would be the earlier grades where they're learning to read. And then in reading to learn, they've already mastered the art of reading.

And then they will use reading to learn something new. And I want to  emphasize this also because sometimes kids are expected to read, to learn. When they're still learning to read. Yes. And that's a challenge. Like my favorite example here would be a word problem in math. Yes. Okay. Let's say a child who is still learning how to, let's say, decode words and learning to read fluently, and then suddenly they're given  word problem in math.

So this means they have to decode that word problem, and at the same time, they have to bring it together with understanding what the problem is about and then what are the math skills. So this can be a huge challenge. Yes. And that's why we want to reserve, ideally, these tasks that are reading to learn for the later grades when they've already mastered reading.

Yes. Rather than having the child struggle with. Learning to read, and at the same time, they're struggling with the math concepts. And all of these can be advanced. Sometimes even the math concepts are advanced. Yes. And then the child has to struggle with all of these all at many skills, all at the same time.

And the expectations are so high and. If I break it down for you, you know, the, the learning to read is actually loaded on. So the cognitive load or, or the, the burden of the child is really in the decoding if they're not able to, to go through that stage. By decoding. To decode. By decoding you mean?  They see the letters of a word and then they know how to put those letters together and pronounce that word.

Yeah. So that's word reading. Decoding would be identifying the sounds. In sequence and speak, sounding them out and correctly  saying out the word and actually doing this to string of words so that you form a sentence. So you can read on the word level, you can read on a sentence level with comprehension, and you can read in the paragraph level with more comprehension.

And there are strategies that we teach in order for them to accomplish this. They have to master that.  They have to master how to read before they read to learn. And if they don't, it's like skipping that stage. Right? And again, when we go even lower, zero to six, your foundation is always how language works.

How do sentences  work and how are they constructed? How do you respond back in a sentence? So these are foundations. So we find that struggling readers in grade school. Have some lapses in the zero to six stage in terms of instruction or practice. And also in the six to seven stage, maybe they struggled with decoding and word reading before they were  given even tasks on comprehension, which is higher one.

So fluency and comprehension has come together. Now. Fluency is the ability to process, to process words, read them. With accuracy and speed enough to comprehend, so it enables comprehension. So if they're reading too slow, they will not comprehend what they're reading. If they're reading too fast, they will not comprehend what they're reading.

If they're reading inaccurately  they will not comprehend what they're reading. Yeah. So imagine reading, there's really so much that goes into reading. Mm-hmm. But teacher Tasha, how do we reconcile that with the expectations? Because we're here talking about going through the stages and waiting for readiness.

And then this is a very common question. I get the parent goes to the school and then apparently the school wants, well they said the school wants kids reading at each five or even earlier. Mm-hmm. How do we reconcile that? Mm-hmm. So the schools come to us. Yeah. So the schools come to us. There are very few  reading intervention centers in the Philippines.

It's a few, not enough. No. The catchment of struggling readers really are, are not. Sufficient.  We catch them at the stage where there's already a significant delay or difficulty, but that's exactly why part of our mission is to communicate to schools. Now what, what do we give children in terms of reading and writing requirement based on what's developmentally appropriate?

Because I think a lot of schools and parents are always vying for. My son or my daughter needs to read as early as possible because there's some competition, or the school has to prove that we're producing early readers. But the question that we have on our side as reading intervention specialists is why?

Why? Again, when we interact with schools, we ask them also to reflect on their curriculum and say, why are you asking them to read so early? At the expense of having children not like it, dislike it or, or avoid it.  If you put joy for reading at the center of the curriculum, we find that the culture of reading in schools become so positive in nurturing and they love to do it, and they will do it independently.

And there's a lot of support from both parents and teachers. 

That's how we prepare kids for the future. Yes, because when we ask parents, Why do, or even schools, why do you want kids reading so early? It's always for long-term success because they feel that's going to equip them better. Mm-hmm. And now we find that based on the science of reading, we actually equip them better if we wait for readiness.

Mm-hmm. Rather than if we push it early. Mm-hmm. And that's a huge revelation for us. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And the studies will final. There are countries that push back their reading, phonics and structure.  In Europe we have  it's countries that push it back. To grade one really six years old. We don't present to them reading materials or reading instruction on worksheets or drill them on memorizing their alphabets until they're six years old.

And what does that do? Their curriculum from zero to six is on play. Yeah. Really? What does play, develop? Communication, speech and language vocabulary. Development and vocabulary is hard. I think vocabulary is very hard to teach when they're already in grade school. You, you teach that very early on. And when you capitalize your energy and your teaching instruction on, on play from zero to six, you're already building good solid foundation from when they're ready to sit down and learn their for formal phonics instruction.

I think that's the ideal. We see kids that are confident, are not afraid of the work and enjoy reading at that age. So they love school. Yeah, basically. These are kids who love school. They love stories, they love reading, they love to write. They're not intimidated by very thick books when they get to grade school or high school.

In fact  children who are brought up in a reading environment that's non-threatening and they learn to read in every stage and take the challenge  very confidently are the ones who do well in school. No, because the reading strategies in the foundation are set, the new reading strategies when they get to grade school.

Especially in high school or you have strategic reading and different kinds of text presented to them. They're not intimidated by them. They will love to get to know more  and learn more through reading because it's easy. And it's done with joy. Yeah. And that's exactly our mission here.  Teacher Tasha and I started a website called Mom Teaches Reading, and this is exactly our mission.

We want to help parents so that we can raise readers who have a lifelong love for reading and learning. So head over to discerning parenting.com/reading and we have a free guide to prepare your child for reading. Then you'll get this guide as well as practical and bite size parenting tips in your email, and also information about our programs to help you build reading skills in your child, in exactly the way the teacher Tasha says, which is going through the stages and waiting for readiness.

So in our programs, we talk exactly about what are these skills that. We look for knowing that they're ready and what are the steps to take so that you build reading with joy and confidence. So head over to discerning parenting.com/reading, and I'll also link to this in the show notes. Now this is a series of four episodes with Teacher Tasha about helping kids learn to read.

So be sure to listen to others. We have another episode about how do kids learn to read, and we have two other episodes coming up. So be sure to follow the Discerning Parenting Podcast so you don't miss any of these valuable insights.