Real Life Reading Inquiry

I observed my five-year old niece, Keelyn, for my Real Life Reading Inquiry. Keelyn is in Kindergarten, and from what I have seen, it seems that they are stressing reading a lot more in Kindergarten than I remember. She comes home every day from class with a letter assignment; they randomly go through the alphabet and pick a letter for that day. Then the assignment requires them to pick objects or toys from around the house that begin with that letter, and that are small enough to fit in their backpack. It seems that her teacher is really building a great foundation for these children to start reading on.

I went to my parent’s house to observe Keelyn read, and she knew I was coming so she wanted to show off her new skills, so she already had all the books she wanted to read out on the floor. The first book she read is titled “I am Going” by Mo Williams. The book is extremely repetitive, but seems to focus on some basic first words that are important for children to learn when they first begin reading. She was extremely proud of herself that she could read the whole book by herself, but after a few minutes of listening to her I started to realize a few things about her reading. Although, she was reading some words, it was almost as if she had the book memorized. After talking to mom, I learned that both my dad and mom read that book to her numerous times that week.

After this book, we moved on to a few more books; “Biscuit Visits the Big City”, “Flat Stanley and the Haunted House”, and “Mac and Cheese”. Since these books were a little more difficult compared to the first book she read, I could she her frustration setting in. If she didn’t know a word, like the word never, she would say the word no instead. She recognized the n, but didn’t know the rest of the word. When I corrected her, she would get frustrated and would want to quit reading. I let her finish reading the books and she would ask me for help on at least every page.

From observing Keelyn read, I would say she is in the logographic stage of reading. She acquires small sight vocabulary or written words, and according to the handout from class logographic stage is, "not yet reading the letters in the words but are trying to find any identifiable feature that will help them remember the words." I think she can read some words, but she is still at the stage where she is reading from what she remembers, and recognizes a lot of words.  Regardless of her stage of reading, I think she is the smartest, cutest five-year old out there!

From the books we read, we finished her Thanksgiving class project. It required you reading a certain amount of books, and each book title would be written on a feather. When you are done reading all the books, you put the feathers together to a make a turkey!