{"id":552,"date":"2022-09-06T19:13:07","date_gmt":"2022-09-06T19:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stand.org\/indiana\/?p=552"},"modified":"2022-09-06T19:13:07","modified_gmt":"2022-09-06T19:13:07","slug":"skipping-over-the-basics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stand.org\/indiana\/our-stories\/skipping-over-the-basics\/","title":{"rendered":"Skipping over the basics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Thinking back on how I was taught to read, I don\u2019t know that all of it was beneficial. While it has been a long time and I don\u2019t remember everything by any stretch, I recall being taught to \u201cskip ahead\u201d when I struggled with a word.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After I \u201cskipped ahead,\u201d I could go back and decide what that word was later based on context clues. Or I could just skip the word and do my best to understand the paragraph based on the words I did know. In those cases, I wasn\u2019t being asked to stop and sound out the word and therefore, I wasn\u2019t being corrected when I wasn\u2019t sounding it out properly. I also wasn\u2019t learning what the word meant.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because I was shy in school at this time, I used \u201cskipping ahead\u201d as a way of not having to sound silly if I wasn\u2019t confident in my ability to read a word aloud in front of my class.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, I love reading. The thought that someone can combine words and create enchanted lands and stories that lift us right out of current situations and into new worlds is magical to me. The ways books can be used to help us understand those around us and share or better understand lived experiences is breathtaking. But I did have to train my brain to not just skip over unknown words and that was difficult for me for a long time. <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a mom, I love reading with my son. I love trading pages. He gets the left page and I take the right. I LOVE how he laughs when I make voices for the characters and how he now does the same.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But to be completely honest, I never really thought about there being ONE right way to teach my son to read. I just purchased books of all kinds and started reading with my child every single night. I printed out sight word flash cards. I searched for the best ways to teach my son, but I didn\u2019t know exactly what to search for. I didn\u2019t have a method at all when teaching my child to read. I just knew that I wanted my son to be a good reader and to one day share my love of reading.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re wondering, I didn\u2019t teach my child to skip ahead. And now that I am learning about the Science of Reading<\/a>, I am glad I didn\u2019t. But there are a lot of other lessons I am learning.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not only have I found that skipping ahead is a bad practice, but I\u2019ve learned there are a lot of other ill-advised practices that are common (and found in many of our classrooms) too.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not an expert on the Science of Reading, but I hope you\u2019ll benefit from what I have learned so far:<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n