The 'Huh. That IS How Words Work' Stance

I was listening to an amazing CLC Tutor this summer, and she did something really cool when her student read a word in a non-standard way.

So, the student was reading out loud, and said, "nie-guh-huh-tuh"* (Take a second to make those sounds out loud. Thanks). Then, the student looked at his tutor, very, very confused. Because that wasn't a word.

This is when the tutor nailed it.

Before I write about it, though, I would like to take a moment to note what she could have done. She could have said, "Sound it out." She could have read the word for him. She could have said, "Try again." If your child or students are anything like the 2nd grader (HOW ON EARTH IS HE A SECOND GRADER?!?!?!), the response would have been something along the lines of, "I did! Stop it! I don't want to read anymore! I'm tired!"

But that's not what the tutor did. Instead, she said, "Huh. That didn't make sense, did it? What made you read the word like that?"

The student said, "I was sounding out all the letters."

The tutor said, "That IS how words work sometimes. Are there any letters that might do something different if they were grouped together?"

The student looked at the word again. "OH! GH is silent! It's night!"

The tutor said, "Wow. You really stopped to think about that word."

I know. The tutor was amazing. She knew about phonics, she knew about letter combinations, and she knew enough to make a guess about why the child had made the mistake that he made. Knowing those things most certainly helped her to work through that moment really successfully.

That said, even people who don't know incredibly particular details about phonics can act in ways that demonstrate the same the attitude the tutor had. When the student struggled, rather than assuming that the child had made a mistake, she assumed that the child had made a decision. So, she asked about the decision ("What made you read the word like that?"). Then, she noted the value of the decision ("That IS how words work sometimes"). Then she observed the thinking the child had done, all to read that one word ("You really stopped to think about that word.").

In his book, Lives on the Boundary, Mike Rose observed that, when he took the time to ask his college students, "Why did you make that choice?" about essays that initially seemed to be inelegantly written, they almost always had an incredibly logical reason for the choices they made. This tutor showed me that applying that stance to early readers can have similar effects: the learner's thinking is validated, and other options are made visible.

And, if you're the parent of an early reader who gets annoyed when corrected, you might avoid the screaming.

For some other ways to respond to reading frustration, here's a link on things you can say other than, "Sound it out."

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*I know, I know. That's not how you write sounds, and reading teachers will notice that I didn't clip the sounds. If I wrote what he said using standard notation for sounds, though, it would have looked like this: /n/ /i/ /g/ /h/ /t/, and it would have given the word away.

Rose, M. (1989). Lives on the boundary: A moving account of the struggles and achievements of America's educationally underprepared. New York, NY: Penguin.