Ep 111: How to teach our kids to read? with Ruth Rothfeld-Hochman

In this weeks episode of Ask Dr Jessica, speech therapist Ruth Rothfeld-Hochman explains best practices to teach reading to our children.  We know that confidence with reading is a very important skill, that helps in many aspects of life, but how do we best support our children?  

Your Child is Normal is the trusted podcast for parents, pediatricians, and child health experts who want smart, nuanced conversations about raising healthy, resilient kids. Hosted by Dr. Jessica Hochman — a board-certified practicing pediatrician — the show combines evidence-based medicine, expert interviews, and real-world parenting advice to help listeners navigate everything from sleep struggles to mental health, nutrition, screen time, and more.

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Transcript

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Hi everybody I'm Dr. Jessica Hochman, paediatrician, and mom of three. On this podcast I like to talk about various paediatric health topics, sharing my knowledge not only as a doctor but also as a parent. Ultimately, my hope is that when it comes to your children's health, you feel more confident, worry less, and enjoy your parenting experience as much as possible. Today, I have a wonderful guest, my mother in law and speech therapist, Ruth Rothfeld. Hochman, and today we are going to talk about reading, we will not only talk about teaching our children how to read, but also how to love to read. Ruth has personally given me and my children so much guidance when it comes to reading. And I'm thrilled to share her knowledge and wisdom with you here today. And thank you so much to all of my listeners. I know you all live such busy lives. And I appreciate that you take the time to listen to this podcast. Also, please consider sharing this episode with a friend and leaving a five star review. Kind reviews really do make my day. Hi, I'm so excited to have you here. You're somebody in my life that I definitely get a lot of wonderful advice from and I'm so excited to share your advice with my audience. So let's first start by telling everybody, what do you do for work tell us about your career. I'm a speech language pathologist I work with kids, children who have speech issues and language based learning issues, kids with reading issues, and all kinds of issues that affect language. And of course, language affects every aspect of our life as reading expect effects. Every aspect of our life and reading and language are closely connected. And I'm just curious, do you do you like what you do? Do you like helping kids learn to read teaching reading is, is where it all begins. And if that skill is never mastered, impacts every every aspect of both academic life and vocational life, we can flourish in life if we cannot read so reading instruction starts in kindergarten. And as parents will see, reading starts with learning the alphabet letter names and letter sounds. So it starts in kindergarten, and then it progresses kindergarten, first grade, second grade into third grade, which is the primary focus of COP. Of course, there were other aspects and other things kids do at school, but primary focus of education will say in the primary grades K through 2k through three. And it's during that period when kiddos are really learning to decode primarily, but obviously there's also aspects of comprehension. And by the time a kid is is third grade, we expect that child to be able to read at an instructional level in other words at his level, at at a point where he can he or she can start to read, as they say to learn Jean Scholl from Harvard many years ago, I think it was the 50s. But don't quote me on that, you know talked about that transition from learning to read, to reading to learn teachers when it comes to helping their children learn to read well, there are certainly a lot of things that parents can do. And I think one of the things that's very important for parents is to be knowledgeable about reading instruction and to sort of know what, what they should be looking for in terms of their child's reading programme because one of the things that's very disturbing to me as somebody who now I work for most of my career with preschool, or early elementary school kids, but now I work with older kids, middle school, high school kids, and the number of students who are really not proficient readers. And I look at them and I say to myself, why did this happen? How did these kids get to be 1214 16 years old, and still struggling with basic reading skills? So I think for parents to know what's going on in this school and what kind of programme instructional programme is being used for reading is important. Generally, in terms of a formula sort of think in terms of 2060 20 There are 20% of kids who are just wired to learn to read they they just acquired the skill. I hate to say it naturally because reading is not a natural skill. I can talk about that in a minute, but 20% of kids just pick up reading, because of in spite of the instruction they get 60% of kids however, need direct explicit instruction. And without that instruction, they can become kids who have reading struggles, not because they have quote unquote, learning disabilities, but because reading wasn't taught to them in a way that made it understandable and clear and where they could learn it. They're capable of learning the skill but they may have stuck with what we would call learning disabled disabilities or struggling readers, because the instructional methodology used wasn't the best for them. So we have the 20k percent of kids who read pretty naturally, who knows why 60%, who we would call sort of typical learners, the average kid, they need good solid reading instruction. And with that they can do well. And then there are the 20% of kids who may end up or truly who need, you know, a little bit of extra more remedial support and more time, more practice opportunities, so sort of that 2060 20% breakdown. So children, there are structures in the brain that are dedicated to learning oral language. And you know, there were all kinds of stories where people get together, kids get together and, you know, on deserted islands, and so forth, and they, and they develop their own oral language. So oral language speaking, like I'm doing now is sort of Wired part of our brain. And parts of the brain dedicated to that reading, however, is not a natural skill. Not all cultures, not all societies have written language, it's a man made, construct has to be taught. Interesting. And when you say that, it makes complete sense to me, because I think about the English language. And it's so complicated. There's so many different rules, silent letters, what letters are pronounced. So it makes sense that majority of children would need explicit instruction, right. And I talked about the importance of you talked about what parents can do, how parents can help their children and one of them is just to be knowledgeable a little bit about what's going on in the classroom. We talked about that a lot. During the pandemic, parents had more insight into, hey, that's what's happening in the class things they liked things they didn't like. But, you know, one of the things that's also sort of interesting to me is that in the early 90s, when I was in Massachusetts, and I was working at universities and teaching graduate students and, you know, lecturing and giving workshops, on reading, at that point, there was all kinds of discussion about reading wars and the great debate, and what's the best way to teach reading, and we'll talk about some of those controversies in a minute. And then all of a sudden, now I see the same thing happening. It's, it's this was 1990 1992. And what year is it now, so how many years and we're still debating this when I thought it had been resolved. So it sort of really shocks me that it's still an issue, that people are talking about rage debate, focused around two major, two primary points of view of instruction. One is something we call whole language. And I perhaps some of the parents have sort of heard, you know, that term, whole language and the other is a phonics approach. So you have sort of experts and quotes experts on each side talking about well, what's the best way to teach reading what approach whole language or direct instruction and phonics. So let's talk a little bit about what those two things are, whole language teaches reading from the top down. So proponents of that methodology say that the purpose of reading is to understand meaning the true purpose of reading is meaning and so therefore, we should, we should start by teaching reading, by showing children that reading is about great literature and stories. And to that in service of those meaning goals. We talk, we present children with rich literature, and we talk about stories and what's happening in stories and things like using context clues. Well, what word makes sense in that sentence, very creative approaches to reading that are meaning driven. So we tell stories, and then incidentally, randomly as issues about the letters that we see in the print on the page come up, we do some instruction around the alphabet, and so forth. But again, it's the place you're starting is with meaning this is a great story. It's interesting, and you can see why that's very, very appealing. It's exciting. It's great to tell wonderful stories and stories and meaning, of course, are the main purpose of reading. But what happened was with a lot of that approach, what Remember when I talked about that 2060 20% breakdown? 20% of the kids were figuring out how to crack the code just on their own. But there was a big chunk of people with kids right in that middle that 60%, who just weren't figuring out how to read the words when the context wasn't sufficient, or they encountered a new word. And so the other experts, the phonics, people talked about the importance of Yes, of course, meaning is important. And stories and literature are important. But that won't teach kids what to do when they encounter an unknown word, what's going to happen then, and that decoding skill needs to be a primary focus of instruction for the vast majority of population. So it's not that we're abandoning meaning we're going to talk about meaning because obviously, you need both and you need all but that you need to have direct instruction in phonics. And what is direct instruction in phonics is that our system is based on the alphabetic principle. And what does that mean? It means that we have letters which are abstract symbols, highly abstract, no relation to what they refer to, we have to teach kids those symbols very abstract. And we need to teach them how to map a sound someone that they see that grapheme that abstract symbol, that there's a sound that that is associated or paired with that symbol. And when you see that grapheme when you see that abstract symbol, this is the sound that it makes. And that's what we talk about when we talk about phonics, that when we encounter a new word, our word attack strategy has to be looking at those symbols, what are the sounds that are mapped onto those symbols, and then breaking it down sounding out the words, I'm sure that a lot of parents, you know, have have talked about that, or have heard those terms sound out the words, and that's direct phonics instruction, which requires, again, explicit systematic sound, by sound, lots of practice, to learn to do that, because the ability to understand that sounds and those alphabetic symbols are the underpinnings of decoding is critical to get a person to read automatically, fluently, effortlessly. And if somebody cannot look at those sounds, words, and quickly, right, without even expending any effort, read those words, they're never going to get to a point of comprehension. So for kids that are not so interested in reading, do you have any advice for parents? How do we get them interested? Well, okay, let me let me address that the best I can. Because there's no magic bullet number one, we have to start with a child who is getting good instruction so that decoding is automatic for them. If they are not good to coders, reading is never going to be fun. So that's a critical skill. Sorry, if it's not so sexy, sorry, if it's not so interesting, but it really is basic. And kids really get excited when they read those words. I mean, to us, they may not seem like the most exciting stories, but I've seen first grade students feel really, really excited when they can start to you know, see those those abstract symbols and break them down and read them on their own. So even though they're not interesting stories, it is an exciting skill for kids to, to have. And that's where, you know, we talk about parents encouraging children to, to love to read and the way to do that is to read to them to read them great stories. And to make it a really, there's nothing sort of closer and warmer than a child sitting next to you reading a story that you're sharing, and you're laughing about and you're talking about and having fun with. And I'm not only talking about three year olds and seven year olds, I'm talking about 10 year olds and 12 year olds, I can remember reading aloud to one of my sons in middle school or high school, a walk in the woods, Bill Bryson's, you know, book and just laughing out loud together. And I was reading to him he was he could have read that book on his own. Absolutely. But in other words Reading as an activity that shared and that's family oriented and that everybody laughs about and discusses gives us sort of a common topic to talk about, is really you know, what can make reading exciting to to kids, I'm curious your opinion on this. I've always learned that we just want to have our kids read no matter what it is. So for example, a lot of kids will read books like Captain Underpants, Junie. B. Jones, dog, man, and they're not really what I would consider quality literature, but at least you see your kids reading. I'm just curious, what's your opinion on this? Do you think those books are a waste of time? Should we not be encouraging those books? Or do you think they're okay? I don't like them. But kids like them, that's good. They're getting practice in reading, it's at their level, they're probably not making a lot of decoding errors, and they're getting to practice a lot of skills. So that's very important. However, when I'm spending time with my child, I'm not going to read that I probably wouldn't read that book. Unless there was a reason I'm going to select something where I'm going to be able to expose them to higher level material, that probably would not be a book I would read to them. But that's great that they're reading it on their own. And they're practising remember, we said they need to practice and have multiple practice opportunities where we can be pretty sure that when they are reading, they are reading accurately. You know, I hear a lot of teachers to be honest. And a lot of people say, just have your child read and read on their own 20 minutes a day. Well, you know, that's great. But sometimes, when I listen to kids reading, independently, they are making so many mistakes, and nobody is there to give them feedback. And you know, what happens if you keep making a mistake? You keep making a mistake? If nobody points it out to know myself? I can remember. Yes, surprise, when you hear the word said out loud, oh, my goodness, that's how that word is said. So there's definitely I agree with you. There's importance about hearing, hearing oral language. Yes, you need if you make an error when you're reading, you need feedback, wait a second, let's go back, you know, and talk about, you know, what are the skills necessary to read that word so and then you get all in all kinds of vines with comprehension, because at that point, if you miss read those content words, the meaning of the book is totally lost. So you're not getting good decoding practice, and you're not getting good comprehension practice. So when you when the child you know, reads independently, some of those Captain Underpants books and the graphic novels can can be good for those opportunities. But you do have to read to him I in my personal and professional judgement to give him exposure to things that he or she cannot read alone. So for the very young readers, for example, kids that are in preschools, parents will often tell me, my child Moon Oh, my goodness, we're reading that every single night. Is that okay for children? In other words, should parents try to offer a variety of books or is it okay to read the same book every night? The answer is both it reading, reading and rereading and rereading and rereading. The same book is great. Okay, so So now I'm really I'm interested personally, as a working mom, what do you recommend for parents that have limited time? How can we put our minutes to good use for kids? Okay, well, what I would do if I were parents, and I had 20, or 30, quality minutes to spend with my child, I personally, this is a little bit based on professional expertise, but personal experience, I would pick up I would say, heck with homework, I'm not going to worry about that at this moment. I'm not, you know, unless I don't know where child is really pushing me to do it, I'm going to pick up a book that I love to read that I think is great that I know he or she is going to love to read, because it's about a kid his age or an interest he has or it's just a funny book, or it's something I really enjoyed as a kid. And I would spend my time sitting with that child, that child might be four, that child might be eight, that child might be 16. And reading and sharing an experience and a shared reading, joint reading, maybe alternate reading if you want to, or else I would just read on my own. I can remember times laughing out loud, literally practically peeing in my pants, because we read something that was just so funny. And it's just a great memory. And also, when you read to a child, one thing we did not really get into in terms of comprehension. But we talked about, you know, needing to understand vocabulary and complex sentence structure, but we also need a lot of background knowledge. So when you read to somebody about a place you've never been or a scientist you never heard of or a political figure or a time in history that you didn't know about. You're building a corpus of background knowledge that they're going to bring to their social studies class or their history class, you know, their history class, their science class, their math class. And poor readers, one thing we know is because they don't read and because they don't have access to print, their font of background knowledge diminishes and does not keep pace. So they don't read about stuff about space, about germs about times in history and historical figures. So that's how I would spend my time with my child. It's interesting, because it seems like the more you the more you do, the better things are. It really takes time. There's no, there's no shortcuts. It sounds like no shortcuts, but they're fun things to do. I was reading actually to my granddaughter, I have a great book fever. It's about a tie 17 based in 1793. And it's about an epidemic. I guess it's part of her school. It was well actually she's reading it as extra but a lot of kids in her grade read it. And you know, it's about a historical time. And I assume one of the reasons that the teacher picked it was it because it was about an epidemic. And you know, these kids live through pandemics. And, you know, so again, connecting their real life experience, oh my gosh, I stopped third grade because of a pandemic. And this is a contagious disease in 1793. So we get to talk about you know, a little bit the American Revolution. Oh, was that was right after this. And who was president to the you know, when they were it was in Philadelphia? Oh, they were writing the Constitution, just incidental little things that you just talk about that bill again, bills that child Absolutely. Like, the more experiences you have with your kids, the more you read with them, it definitely shows up in other places when you read other literature. For example, we took our kids to hot springs recently, and it smelled like sulphur the kids were asking What is this smell like? It smells like rotten eggs. And I explained how it smells like sulphur. And then the very next week, we were reading a book about Greek mythology. And in one of the chapters, they were talking about how something smelled like sulphur, and my kids said automatically Oh, my goodness, we know what that smells like. So just to your point, I feel like the more you do, the more you experience, it all builds. And it makes it more relatable and more enjoyable. Yeah, I'm when I'm with my older students, I call that the velcro effect. Because I heard that there's something here. So when I see read something else velcro effect, oh, wait a minute, I heard about that before sticks. So you remember it because you already had some experience. And that's how we gain knowledge a little bit now up a little bit more of you know, something else I put to my piece of velcro about that time period or that that concept. So absolutely, you need a nucleus, and then other things, glom on to it. And it'll get richer and fuller and bigger, and expand. And to bring back to what you said in the beginning that reading and the ability to read, it spills over into all aspects of our life into all aspects of school into what we do. So this has been really helpful, really motivating. I think, when I pick up my kids, today, we're going to go straight to the library. Absolutely. And one other thing I know, I'm probably talking too much, but even things like you know, we're talking here about academic knowledge, but social emotional development. So for example, some of the best books I've read, one of the books I really liked to read was something because of Mr. tariffed, it's a it's a fifth sixth grade book, it's about kids in class and their social interactions. And, you know, somebody's being mean, and somebody making fun of somebody and being a new kid. So, you know, there are a lot of things you can talk about social emotional development topics around things, those kids have experienced. Bullying, and you know, how to make a new child in school feel welcome. So you know, all that academic knowledge, self first science, history, and also just human relationships that are depicted in in literature. It's true that you can bring up these situations with kids and use it as a learning experience. That's exactly right. With Have you always been passionate about reading or is it something that became more more of a passion as time has gone on? You know, it's interesting, because I mean, I came from a high socioeconomic family, well educated and so forth, but my parents really never read to me and when I had children, I wouldn't, you know, suddenly started to take them to the library and I realised frankly all that I was a good student in everything and I was a good reader, but all that I had missed and so that's what made me excited about it with my my own children. And now you know, my grandchild. Doing so that's interesting that it wasn't it wasn't something that you grew up with. It was not. It was not which shows you I have parents who say to me, my child doesn't read, he never reads I say, You know what? Kids go through phases. And you never know when somebody's skill is going to sort of pop out and blossom. So we're works in progress. We are works in progress. Thank you so much. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you for listening. And I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of Ask Dr. Jessica. Also, if you could take a moment and leave a five star review wherever it is you listen to podcasts, I would greatly appreciate it. It really makes a difference to help this podcast grow.