“It is much easier for a homeschool mom to teach a child to read than for any teacher, no matter how much training they have to teach a whole room full of little kids to read at the same time.” ~ Andrew Pudewa
Watch this full interview on our YouTube Channel.
Andrew Pudewa joins Yvette Hampton to dive into the essentials of teaching Language Arts in our Homeschooling Every Subject Series. Learn effective strategies for teaching reading, understanding developmental readiness, and the importance of phonics. Perfect for every homeschool parent looking to confidently teach their child to read!
✅ Key Topics Covered:
1. Teaching Reading at Home
2. Understanding Developmental Readiness
3. Benefits of Phonics-Based Methods
4. The Role of Audiobooks in Learning
5. Reading Comprehension Tips
Come back Wednesday and Thursday for the rest of this conversation.
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Recommended Resources
Institute for Excellence in Writing
Introduction to Public Speaking
First Form Latin from Memoria Press
Latin for Children from Classical Academic Press
Podcast Recommendations:
Homeschooling Every Subject Series
The Arts of Language Podcast, with Andrew Pudewa
More from Andrew Pudewa on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast
Alex Newman – Should I Teach Phonics or Sight Words?
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Discussion Questions:
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What are some key reasons Andrew Pudewa believes homeschooling parents are better equipped to teach their children to read compared to traditional classroom teachers?
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Andrew Pudewa mentions that some children show readiness to read at different ages. How can parents identify if their child is developmentally ready to start learning how to read?
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Andrew Pudewa talks about the relationship between auditory input and reading comprehension. How can parents incorporate more auditory-based learning into their homeschooling routine?
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Why does Andrew Pudewa advocate for a phonics-based approach to teaching reading, and what are some common pitfalls of other reading methods according to him?
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Discuss the concept of “reading with your ears” as mentioned by Andrew Pudewa. How do audiobooks fit into this concept, and what are their advantages and disadvantages compared to traditional reading?
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What are some strategies parents can use to ensure their children comprehend what they are reading, besides using worksheets and standardized reading comprehension tests?
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How does Andrew Pudewa suggest parents deal with children who want to reread the same book repeatedly? What are the benefits and potential drawbacks of this habit?
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How can movement and physical activity contribute to a child’s ability to listen and comprehend stories being read to them? Discuss specific examples given in the episode.
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According to Andrew Pudewa, how does spending time with parents and away from screens contribute to a child’s language development? What are some practical ways parents can facilitate this?
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Reflect on the idea that children’s understanding of language may be higher than their ability to articulate it. How should this affect the way parents assess their child’s comprehension and learning progress?
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One of the worst things that we do in this country is we
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try to force young children to read,
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many of whom are not developmentally ready for that.
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Consequently, they start to hate it,
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and then they can continue hating it even
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after the point where they could learn it more easily. But they’ve been hating it
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for a year or two, so now they just never want to.
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Hey, everyone, this is Yvette Hampton. Welcome back to the Schoolhouse Rocked
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podcast. I am back this week with Andrew Pudewa, and we are
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here talking about Language Arts. This is part of our series that we are in
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the middle of on teaching every subject. And so, of
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course, Language Arts is one of the most important subjects. I
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would say they’re all important, but, I mean, we have to know how to speak
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well and read and write well. And so
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in order to learn the other subjects, we have to know
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these things first. And so I would say this is definitely in the
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top couple of subjects that we need to be able to teach our kids.
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And so Andrew is here to help us through this. But before we get into
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our conversation, I want to say thank you to our sponsor, BJU Press Homeschool. If
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you’re looking for great Christian homeschool curriculum that will point
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your kids to Jesus and everything that they do, check them out
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bjupresshomeschool.com, and they’ve got every subject,
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every grade, every age, anything that you need for your homeschooling, they’ve got
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something for you. Check them out at
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bjupresshomeschool.com. Well, Andrew,
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welcome back. You were with us last week, and as I mentioned, we’re
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recording these both in the same day. So we are wearing the same
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wardrobe. We’ll call it wardrobe because that makes it just sound more
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classy. Classy and official showbiz, right? Exactly. So we’ve. We’ve
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got our wardrobe people, which basically meant me going into my closet and finding this
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shirt. And you probably do my favorite blue shirt. I know. I like that blue
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shirt. If you can’t see in the pic in the, in the video, for those
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watching, Andrew has very blue eyes, and so his blue shirt makes his eyes look
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really blue. And even Garritt said, that sure looks good on you.
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So it’s a great shirt. What’s funny is I almost wore my blue shirt today.
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That would have been funny. I would have had to change it. Cause then it
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would have looked a little bit too coordinated. Intentional.
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Yeah, but it’s like the exact same color. Blue. Black and blue always go well
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together. It does, yes. As long as it’s not a black and blue bruise like,
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you know, on your eye or something. Anyhow,
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we are here to talk about language arts, and I, I love this
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topic. I love to write, which is kind of funny because I don’t write a
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lot, but I love writing. I have always enjoyed writing.
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I’m one of those people who’s just naturally a very good speller.
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I have just enjoyed language arts. That’s been one of my subjects since I was
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a little girl that I’ve always enjoyed and found to be fairly easy
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to learn. Science, not so much. I struggle with science, I
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struggle with math, but language arts has been a fun one. But I will say,
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and we will talk about this maybe later this week, sentence
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diagrams, parsing out sentences. Oh, no, that’s not fun for me.
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So we’ll talk about maybe the necessity of that and whether or not it is
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necessary. But let’s kind of walk through all
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the different aspects of language arts,
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because when we think about language arts, it’s, it,
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it’s the first question that I think every new
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homeschool mom asks. How am I going to teach my child to
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read? That’s the scary question. You know, for those who
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are not a kindergarten teacher, you know, they’re not
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teacher trained. It’s the scariest thing. How am I going to teach my kid to
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read? So let’s talk first. Let’s kind of jump off into the topic
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of reading and the importance of reading.
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We’re going to talk about reading comprehension, how to teach reading.
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Sure. Well, one thing I would say in response to your comment
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there is it is much easier for a
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homeschool mom to teach a child to read than for any teacher,
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no matter how much training they have to teach a whole room full of
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little kids to read at the same time. So
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don’t in any way imagine that you are
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somehow not qualified to do this.
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Most of the teachers who have been through a
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teacher training program, degree, whatever,
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they may have some theoretical training about
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reading, but they get into a classroom and they have this
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huge spectrum of aptitude and they
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may or may not even have good materials or methodology to do it. So
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you are much, much better off trying to teach your
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child to read, not really knowing how you’re going to do
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it than putting them in a school where some other
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teacher is going to have to try and do that en
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masse. So that’s the first thing I would point out. The
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second thing that I think is so very important is for
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us to understand that reading really is a brain
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function more than an academic
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subject that can be learned, taught and
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learned on demand. So you may have a
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child, let’s just randomly say just six years old, right?
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So right in the middle there, and you will
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discover that some six year olds
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are very interested in reading. They start asking you
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questions, they start trying to figure out what are the words in their
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environment, and they’re showing a readiness.
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Other children, maybe the exact same age, couldn’t care
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less, aren’t trying to figure out anything, have no interest
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in looking at words. Why? Well, they’re
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just not developmentally ready. And just like all
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children grow physically at different
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speeds in different ways and reach different sizes,
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reading is the same way they are ready at
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different times. And one of the worst things that we
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do in this country is we try to force
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young children to read, many of whom are
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not developmentally ready for that. Consequently,
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they start to hate it, and then they can
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continue hating it even after the point where they could learn it
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more easily. But they’ve been hating it for a year or two, so now they
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just never want to. So, you know, there’s that
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oddity. Sure. One of the reasons
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this happens is because overall,
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in schools over the last hundred or more
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years, reading instruction has gotten worse and
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worse and worse. And so there’s been little
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waves and pockets of people kind of returning to the
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better way to teach with a good, solid phonics based
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approach. But we’ve seen the luxe method, we’ve seen
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the whole language stuff, we’ve seen the blended stuff.
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And so a lot of children are not
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learning well. And so what happens then is say, oh, no,
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our second graders can’t read. We better push it harder in first grade. Oh, no,
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they’re not learning in first grade. We better push it harder in kindergarten. Oh, no,
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they’re not learning. We better create a pre k reading curriculum, which
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could be very damaging to many, many children. So
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I am always suggesting it’s actually better
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to wait a little bit longer than
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to push it too early. And some countries that get far
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better educational outcomes than we do in the United States,
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Scandinavia, would come to mind. They don’t really push reading or writing at all till
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the kids are around eight years old, which would correspond with
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what other kind of educational luminaries? Charlotte Mason,
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Marie Montessori, Blumenfeld, they all had
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this understanding that if you push it too
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early, the negative consequences far
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outweigh any potential gain. But again, you look at your
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child, if they’re interested, by all means. But
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if they’re just completely unengaged and tuning out.
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Why bother? The other thing I would notice, and you just have two
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girls, but very often if you have a
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boy and a girl, you will notice that the girl will take to
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it at a little bit earlier age. The boys tend to be
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when it comes to reading neurology,
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a little later, sometimes a year or two later.
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And that’s not a good or bad thing. That’s just the way they are.
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So that would be my first bit of advice, is don’t stress
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and don’t push it. Right. So what are the signs that a
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parent should be looking for when it comes to whether or not their
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child is ready to learn how to start reading? Well, they’ll let you know you’re
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reading a book. They’ll try to figure out words on the page. They’ll, they’ll
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look around in the house and see the things, and they’ll
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want to know, and they’ll learn their Alphabet happily.
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And, you know, there’s just, if you spend time with the
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children, unfortunately, most homeschooling parents are spending
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a lot more time with their children than parents who have
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to send their kids to another building
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almost all day. Half the time of the year, you’ll
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know, you’ll see that. And same thing with
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writing, they’ll do. But one thing I’d like to
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talk about, because this is something a lot of people do not
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intuitively pick up, and that is the
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relationship between listening
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and reading. Right. Okay, can we go there?
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Yeah, absolutely. So when you think about it,
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right. If you’re a little kid and you’re learning to read, you’ve
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hopefully been taught with a phonics based method. So you’re
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looking at letters, remembering the sounds that go to those letters,
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remembering the sounds that go to a combination of letters, and
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you’re trying to then sound out a
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word. Well, once you do that, you have
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to kind of hear what you heard yourself
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say, and then you have to know
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if that is a word or not. So for young
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children, reading is very much the process of
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elimination. They try to figure it out. If they figure
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something out and it does sound like a word, they
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know they can read it, they can understand it, but
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if it doesn’t, for one reason or another, they can’t.
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So, example. Yeah, I was just going to say, give me an example. Let’s say
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you’re a little kid and you’re reading along and you come to this
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word, and so you try to use your skills. You say,
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sul I ga
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sle g.
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There is no such thing as a sligaha. Now, how do you know there’s
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no such thing as a sligaha? You’ve never heard it, right?
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Right. So in your world, it doesn’t exist.
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So you say, well, it can’t be a sligaha. It must be something else.
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So you stare at it a while longer, and if you’re lucky, you recognize
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that e I g h combination and you say, oh,
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that’s that a like in eight.
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So let’s try again. Slay,
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slay, slay. It’s a sleigh, right? And you’re so happy because you
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figured it out, right? But that only works if you already
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know what a sleigh is right? Now,
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how, as a little kid in today’s world, how are you going to know what
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a sleigh is? Where would you ever have you’ve heard. It in a book that
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your mom’s read to you? A book? A book, maybe a movie, a song,
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possibly a movie. I mean, you might possibly see a fake
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sleigh with a fake santa and a fake Christmas and a fake mall. But,
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you know, I try to stay away from fake. So you have to
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have the auditory input of that
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word in context with some kind of
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definitional information attached to it in
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order to read it. So that’s
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where a lot of kids are falling
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off, is they might be able to decode
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a word and sound it out. But if they don’t already know
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the word, it doesn’t make sense. They can’t read it, they can’t
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comprehend it. So there’s a very direct relationship
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between auditory input of language and reading
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comprehension. And I think that’s where we’re seeing the
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biggest problems in the schools, is kids are
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spending most of their time with peers, with busy
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parents, or most of their time with screens and media.
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They’re not getting a high level of language if they’re not
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being read to, if they’re not getting
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the more sophisticated language, vocabulary,
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sentence structure, syntax, nuance into their mind
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through the ear. And that’s why I have been pushing for a
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long time the importance of reading aloud to
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children because that’s going to create the raw information
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from which will come competent
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speaking, competent reading, and competent
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writing. Yeah. So the input cannot
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be neglected. Yes. Yes. So, good. Let’s take a break. We’ll be right
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back.
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We are back with Andrew. We’re talking about the
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importance of teaching our kids to read, of course, but then
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them being read to. And I know your answer to this question, but I’m going
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to ask it. For our listeners who don’t know your answer to this question, is
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listening to an audiobook considered
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reading? Yeah, absolutely. I’m a huge fan of
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audiobooks. You know, the
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advantage of reading aloud to a child is if there’s a
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word or an idiom or a name or an allusion that they might
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not recognize or know, you can kind
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of stop and explain that, define the word,
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talk about the connection. That’s the
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advantage. The disadvantage is it’s totally
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dependent on your time. And most moms I
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know are very busy and they don’t
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have hours a day to read aloud to their kids.
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Audiobooks have the advantage that
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your kids can listen to the audiobooks while they’re doing other things,
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playing with Legos or drawing pictures or doing chores or whatever.
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Audiobooks don’t get tired and fall asleep on it.
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I have done that before. The disadvantage
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is that the child is not necessarily going to get a
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chance to say, stop the thing and ask questions
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or learn the definitions. They’re going to have to, which is why they’ll
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very often be happy to listen to the same book several times,
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because the second time through, they understand a little bit more. The next time through,
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they understand a little bit more, builds the picture. So both are
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important, both are good, but it’s not cheating. The other thing I
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would point out is that children’s
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understanding, right, their
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auditory comprehension level of language is
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way above their decoding level of
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written language for at least six years.
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So they start reading at, let’s say, six years old,
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and they’re forced to read awful stuff like
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Max the cat sat. Max sat and sat. The
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rat sat and sat. You’re just like, ugh, this is mind
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numbingly, insultingly stupid stuff,
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but you have to do that to practice your decoding
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skills. You want, at the same time,
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to be cultivating their imagination, their love of
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story, their higher level of linguistic
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appreciation through reading aloud in audiobooks. So
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just because a child starts reading on their own doesn’t mean
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you should stop giving them the auditory input as well.
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And that’ll continue up till twelve or 13. Their
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auditory comprehension will be higher than
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their decoding skills. And I’ll give you a great example,
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is if you let a twelve year old child
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listen to Tom Sawyer, they can follow it
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and understand it and enjoy it tremendously. If you try to make them
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read on paper, Tom Sawyer, the dialect and
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the oddity of it, they can’t translate that into
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the language they would understand more easily, and they might not like it. They might
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hate it. So I think most of us have an experience of
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maybe having tried to read something that was just a little too
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odd and hard. Right. But if we heard it,
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it would be a completely different experience. And it’s
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essentially one’s reading with your eyes, one’s reading with your ears.
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At some point, your visual decoding skill matches your
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comprehension skill. Late teens, probably.
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But I still, to this day, I
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listen probably ten to one audiobooks
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over paper books that I read. Right. And I will accidentally
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say, oh, I’m reading right now and tell somebody, oh, well, to tell the
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truth, I’m listening while I’m driving. But it’s the same thing.
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Sure. And you’re not just hearing, you’re listening. As we talked about in last week’s
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episode, talking about music. There’s a difference between just hearing and
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listening. And sometimes I find myself, because I also listen to audiobooks
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sometimes. But I’m a visual learner and so I do much better.
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I like actual paper books. Garritt loves reading on his
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Kindle. He sometimes listens to audiobooks. I can listen to some
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audiobooks, but not all. It depends on the voice. It’s the weirdest
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thing. Some voices, I just can’t hear them. Do
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you find yourself? Absolutely. A good reader can make all the
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difference? Absolutely. A bad reader can destroy even the best
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book. Right? Yes, I find that to be true. But
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I like reading actual paper books, though.
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My girls, my youngest one, she loves to listen to
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books. Whether it’s me reading to her or her listening to audiobooks, she
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listens to lots of audiobooks. And for younger teenagers, I
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think that if you want them to read a more challenging
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book, kind of a classic, like a Dickens novel or something,
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to be able to listen and watch
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the words go by on the page can be hugely beneficial
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because just listening, they get distracted or lost
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just reading. Its overwhelming entire. But when you get
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that double sensory input, sometimes that can really
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bring it up to the higher level of enjoyment, understanding and
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enjoyment. Yeah. That’s actually how I read my bible, is I have my
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youversion app on my phone and I listen to it in the ESV
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version. And then I have my ESV paper bible open in front of me and
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I follow along in my paper bible as it’s reading to
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me. And I find that I’m able to much better comprehend what I’m reading
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because my mind doesn’t wander as much because I’m getting it and through my eyes
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and through my ears. Yeah. And, um. And so, yeah, that’s very, very helpful
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for me. Um, re reading comprehension. Let’s talk about that just for a minute.
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We’re almost out of time for this episode, but reading comprehension, I know, is, is
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difficult. You know, as I said, I have a hard time sometimes listening to audio
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because my brain just goes all over the place. How can we know
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if our kids are actually comprehending the things that they’re
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reading or that we’re reading to them? Well, I
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don’t recommend, you know, worksheet style, you
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know, reading comprehension tests. Right. Because
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when people read things, they get different things out of it. If
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you read Jane Eyre and I read Jane Eyre and then we
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started talking about it, we would discover that I remember and
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thought about things different than what you would remember and think
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about. So that’s why kind of a standardized reading comprehension
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test, I don’t think is very honest. Right.
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And the other thing to keep in mind is that
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for kids, their understanding level
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is above their verbal articulation level,
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right. So they won’t necessarily be able to tell
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you everything that they did understand. So don’t judge
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it that way. But I think the most important thing is to engage in
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conversation. And so it’s
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best if you are familiar with the book that the
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kid is reading, if you have time, you know, read along with
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them. If not, then try to figure out
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enough that you can ask them some good questions and let them tell
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back, what do they remember, what was significant, what was funny,
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interesting, what was hard.
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And really, if something is worth
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reading, it’s going to be a bit challenging, and
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it’s going to require more than one reading to get full
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value out of it. Definition of a classic we mentioned this in the
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music segments, where, you know, a classic is something you can
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read or experience again and again and again and again and get more out of
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each time. That’s why you’ll see some children. I had one daughter. She
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would read the entire lion, witch and wardrobe series, all of the
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Narnia books, and then she would go back and read through them all again. And
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then she would go back and read through them all. She spent a whole year,
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basically all her spare time, just. And I remember my wife
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saying, do you think we should make her read something else? I don’t know. She’s
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just a little kid. She wants to live in Narnia. What’s wrong with
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that? So that would be, the other
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thing is don’t be afraid. If
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kids want to camp out in one book for what seems like
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a long period of time, sometimes
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more time in one book would be better than less
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time in more books. Right, right. Yeah.
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One last question. When it comes to reading, um, and then we’ll. We’ll continue on
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with the conversation tomorrow. But, um, in regards to reading, I know that a lot
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of moms get very nervous when their kids are not sitting still,
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crisscross applesauce on the floor, looking at them, paying
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attention, quote unquote, because it seems like they’re distracted if they’re doing
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something else. Talk about the importance of kids. Sometimes they need
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to be doing something with their hands. They need to be what
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seems like distracted in other ways in order to be able to
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actually listen and comprehend what’s being read. Think about yourself
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in an audiobook. I mean, would you just sit there and do nothing?
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Right. You’d be more likely to get distracted and
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not hear what you’re listening to. Whereas
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I particularly find that driving,
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cleaning, and cooking
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or exercise are really good
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for listening because I’m using
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my body and doing things in a nonverbal way
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that causes me not to be
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distracted so that I actually get better verbal input. Kids are
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the same way, so they can play with blocks or legos or
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color or, you know, the girls sometimes learn to
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crochet or do needlepoint or something. I’ve even had people
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come to my lectures, sit in the front row and pull out needlepoint or
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crochet. And I know that they know that they will actually
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listen better if they are doing something with their eyes and hands.
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So that would be my son one time. He
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was very dyslexic. We’ve talked about him before, but
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he was in a class I was teaching with other children,
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and he was just doodling on this piece of paper. Everybody else is
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dutifully taking notes, and it’s my son who’s just drawing dumb
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pictures. And I stopped at one point,
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and I said to him, chris, are you with us?
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And without even looking at me, he just said, do you
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want me to tell you everything you just said for the last ten minutes?
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I said, no, no. Okay, whatever, but keep doodling.
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It took me some years to understand that,
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but now I do see it very clearly. Yeah. Yeah. It’s
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sad, because when you think about a classroom. I used to be a preschool teacher,
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and I remember I would sit the kids down on their little carpet
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squares, and I would say, okay, sit, you know, with your legs crossed and your
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hands in your laps, and be very, very quiet and don’t move. I’m gonna read
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this book to you. And they would wiggle around and, you know, and now I
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look back. And I think, oh, how Sadeena. They just wanted to move. Like, if
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I had given them something to do, but I didn’t know. You want to know
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something really interesting? Yeah. What is the primary function of the
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ear? To hear. No. To listen. No, no. I don’t know. Tell me.
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Balance. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. The primary function of
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the whole ear system is balanced. Right. So
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for young children, for them to balance their
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body and be attentive auditorily can
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sometimes be a conflict of energy interest. Interesting. And
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I taught a preschool for a few years, and what I would notice is when
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I’m reading to the kids, they would want to sink down
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and almost get, you know, prone or flat or
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spread out. Right. Because then they didn’t have to
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hold their body upright. So when you say to a little boy, sit
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up, right, and do this, it’s almost
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like, well, he’s going to use all of his mental auditory
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attentiveness to sit up. Right. He’s not going to have anything left over to
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listen or write or do math or whatever. Yeah. So very
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often homeschool parents will discover, wow, my kid actually does
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00:27:11,338 –> 00:27:14,842
better slouched. Down in the couch
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or flipped upside. Down or moving,
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because when you’re moving, you don’t have to spend quite as much energy
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to balance your body as if you’re trying to stay still. Right. The only reason
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preschool teachers do that is to keep the kids from bumping into each other and
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creating conflicts. And then you never get anything done. Right. Right. Oh, Man. All right,
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well, we’ve got lots more to talk about. Andrew, you are
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the owner, the founder of the Institute for Excellence in Writing. You guys have all
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kinds of amazing language arts curriculum. Tell people where they can find out.
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00:27:43,746 –> 00:27:47,570
IEW.com. It’s an
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00:27:47,650 –> 00:27:51,266
easy link. And I have a podcast called the Arts of
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00:27:51,298 –> 00:27:55,074
Language Podcast, and we talk a lot about all of these listening, speaking, reading,
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00:27:55,122 –> 00:27:57,682
writing things. We have free lessons. If you go to
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00:27:57,706 –> 00:28:01,348
IEW.com/free-lessons, you can get writing
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00:28:01,404 –> 00:28:05,080
lessons, grammar lessons, poetry, memorization lessons,
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other things. I don’t even know all the things we have. And you have several
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of your lectures on your website as well that people can go back and listen
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to. I remember listening to one, we’ll talk about spelling, but listening to one
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00:28:16,292 –> 00:28:19,940
several years ago on spelling and you talking about stories about
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teaching your kids how to spell. And so we’ve used Phonetic
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00:28:23,388 –> 00:28:27,116
Zoo for our girls. Go straight to YouTube and just search my name.
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00:28:27,188 –> 00:28:30,108
Yeah, yeah. So lots and lots of great information on there so we’ll put that
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link in the show notes. Um, thank you for being with us today. We will
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be back on Wednesday to continue talking about language arts and how to teach it
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in your homeschool. Thank you guys for being with us. Stay tuned to the very
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end to hear what’s coming up next on the podcast. And,
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um, if you could share this video with your friends or podcast,
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however you’re taking this in, whether it’s by visual, video, or
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00:28:50,516 –> 00:28:54,052
auditory podcast, share it with your friends and it will bring the
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encouragement that they need for their homeschooling journey. Have a great rest of your day,
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and we will see you back here on Wednesday. Bye.