End of “Reading Rainbow”

LeVar Burton of Reading Rainbow

Seems kind of fitting that the last episode of Star Trek – The Next Generation was titled “All Good Things.”  The PBS show “Reading Rainbow” hosted by LeVar Burton (who starred as Geordi LaForge on TNG) ended today after 26 years of being on the air.  As NPR notes in a wonderful article: ‘Reading Rainbow’ Reachie Its Final Chapter – That makes it the 3rd longest running PBS show.  However, it was behind the times…. It seems we no longer want to teach kids the love reading.  No.  We want to teach the mechanics of reading… on TV.  Excuse me if I don’t quite get this.

We live in an era when we no longer want to encourage kids to pick up a book and read?  Kids read little enough as it is, usually only what they are assigned at school.  Why is that?  Usually because their reading skills are lacking.  They don’t have the background knowledge necessary to understand many of books of any depth, so they read fluff, if anything at all.  I worked in my daughters school library for awhile.  I saw first-hand how poorly many students read (5th and 6th graders reading 3rd grade material for credit!).  I saw how many of the students whined and complained about having to read anything at all and then the so-called book reports that ended up being craft-projects.  There may have been 20,000 books in the school library, but the students swore there was nothing to read!

So yes, we need to encourage a love of reading in our kids, just as we need to teach them the basics of reading.  We also need to teach real content in our school curriculum.  All of these things are important and work together.  A child will never love reading unless they can “decode” the words, nor will they love reading unless they can understand the content of the story enough to enjoy it – and hopefully learn something new while they read.  That is the joy of reading.

Updating Our Curriculum

I swore I wasn’t going to do it.  I wasn’t going to use a reading curriculum.  I was going to just have my DD read novels and classical literature.  We were going to continue with spelling and grammar for our Language Arts program.

I changed my mind.  (I do that sometimes… rarely, but sometimes.)

I attended a homeschooling conference this summer even though at that time we were going to be sending DD to a charter school.  I knew in my heart of hearts that she would be homeschooled again.  So I went to the homeschool convention anyway.  And I listened and and I looked at the curriculum offerings.  And there was a lot – it was overwhelming.  One of the speakers I heard was Mary Schofield.  Her subject was teaching children in grades 4-8 and preparing them for high school.  She discussed various subjects of course, but one she focused on was the importance of reading skills.  She didn’t advocate any one program over another, as every child is different, but she did emphasis the importance of certain skills.

As I perused the various vendors in the curriculum fair I looked through the reading programs and materials.  One caught my eye as being something I could work with.  Abeka.  I am a Christian homeschooler, but I don’t use a set Christian Curriculum and I tend to use secular books.  I add religious studies separately.  We talk about God and religion throughout the day as issues or thoughts come up ( i.e. teachable moments ).  Though my grammar books are Christian (Rod & Staff: Building Christian English Series) that isn’t why I bought them – I bought them because they teach grammar so well.

I decided to go with a reading curriculum after watching my DD continuing to struggle with her reading comprehension.  She also has problems with vocabulary.  (I’m purchasing a separate vocabulary program to address this issue – though her reading and other studies will also work on it.)  Since she her spelling is already at the high school level, I decided to drop that totally.  We’ll work spelling in with her other subjects as we go along.

The Abeka Reading Program offers integrated vocabulary and reading comprehension.  It’s focus is on phonics based reading skills.  They also have speed reading quizes as well as comprehension tests throughout the course.  The program is also balanced between fiction reading – some of it taken from well known classic fiction – animal tales, biographical stories and poetry.  My DD took a peak at some of the books and she was excited about starting the program.  Cathy Duffy gives her review of the whole program on her website: Cathy Duffy Reviews.

So our revised curriculum for Language Arts is now:  Abeka Reading Program with free reading of novels and classical literature.  She will do summaries of free reading choices.  Vocabulary will be the WordlyWise 3000 program.  Grammar will continue with the Rod & Staff Series. For fun we will use MadLibs.  For writing we will use Susan Wise Bauer’s Writing with Ease program (Which I will write more on later).

143rd Carnival of Homeschooling is Posted

This Week’s Carnival of Homeschooling is being hosted by Miss Jocelyn at  A Pondering Heart.  There are some great posts and links there – be sure to check them out!  Next week one of my favorite blogs – Principled Discovery will be hosting the Carnival of Homeschooling. Here are some of my favorite posts from the Carnival.

There’s a great link on the Carnival for finding great books at a Works in Progress.  Here in Arizona we have the Grand Canyon Reader Awards where Arizona Schoolchildren vote on their favorite books in a variety of categories – there are ALWAYS some good choices!

Kris at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers has some great ideas for science in her Blog Entry: Studying Science: A Review of Christian Kids Explore Biology.  I love the Jell-O Cell! (How Cool is that?) And the Science Notebooks are great – cutting out pictures from a cheap textbook (magazine? online picture?) to supplement your studies is great!  I know my DD will love that!