Parents Coaches As Team

1. You will be interacting closely with your Child as he learns the meaning and usage of each word in his world. You will be an extremely active and interactive person in this process.

2. Learning words must be experiential – each word your child learns must be a realistic part of his life and experiences.* This learning must include as many of the receptive senses; sight, sound, movement, touch; as possible. VAKT is the code for these senses: Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic, and Tactile.

3. The learning will begin with concrete words, e.g., Mommy, Daddy, bed, sock spoon, apple, door, chair, pillow. Later, more abstract nouns will be learned in context, e.g., "It's time to eat lunch." Verbs that are part of the child's experiences; walk, eat, run, hug, jump, will be used when appropriate. All learning of facts and concepts will be done in context, that is, they will be part of a real, meaningful experience.

4. The word and the referent will be tied together orally, written, and concrete. The child will experience the spoken word (door), the written word (attached to the door), and be looking at (visual) and touching the door (tactile, kinesthetic).

This relationship, the Word Meaning Model, will be emphasized over and over:

     1. The Referent – the object; the thing that carries his food to his mouth.

     2. The Spoken Word – say the word, "spoon".

     3. The Written Word – spoon – spelled s-p-o-o-n. (This will be brought in later when the child is ready for this step).

5. Words will be brought together to make sentences, bringing in ‘connecting' words such as; a, an, and, the, or, but.

6. The learning will be done on your child's level and readiness to learn. The learning in child-centered. I agree with James Hymes when he said, "Your child is ready to learn at all times – it is our task as teachers and parents to determine what he is ready to learn."

 7. A complete file of the learned words will be written on Word Strips which will be filed in the Word File. These words will also be used as the child's personal ‘flash cards'.

8. Left-brain and right-brain learning will take place together, reinforcing one another – music and art will be used extensively in introducing some new words. The child will be doing a lot of drawing that will be the basis for learning words.

 9. Writing will begin very early – first done by the parent and moved progressively into the child's creations – creative, spontaneous writing will be encouraged.

 10. There must be a lot of ‘reading to' the child.

These actions and activities should flow easily and naturally as part of your living with your child in whatever family structure or relationship that exists.

* The average child entering kindergarten has a vocabulary of 5000 or more words.

The Activity -- Kim is putting Pat down for his nap. She says, "Well, you really are sleepy. Let me wipe your hands with this white towel. Here is your teddy bear. Sleep tight -- I love you.

Commentary -- It's no big deal? That's Right!

Your child is ready to learn new and ordinary words and he will know that these words (sounds) are connected to something. His condition and "sleepy" go together. Hold your child's hands as you say the word "hands" -- say "towel" as it touches his hands -- say "white" – give him the toy as you say "teddy bear." Don't make a big deal out of it -- this is Natural -- just talk as you use and do things.

Use the words in context and there will be a lot of Incidental Learning. We acquire a lot of our information incidentally, without any planning. This is in contrast to the idea of introducing words in a reading or spelling word list. Many of those words are meaningless to the child and there is no good referent for them. We don't have to keep repeating the word or to give it a nice dictionary definition. We learn a lot by doing and watching.

We're starting out with only two of the elements; the Referent and the Spoken word, using the Auditory sense. Pat isn't ready to look at the Written word.

We are using the most realistic things; hand, towel, toy, bed, sock, spoon, etc., at this time because we need to have Pat gather in a lot of natural experiences, experiences that have words associated with them.

The Word Meaning Model: We have now introduced two parts of

1. The Referent – the towel

2. The Spoken Word – "towel"

We will get to the third part when Pat is ready for it.

3. The Written Word – t-o-w-e-l

This model will be used for quite a while. You simply make this a common communication form with your child. Oh, can you hear the soft music playing on the stereo? It sounds like Mozart to me.

Music, Art, Poetry, and Literature are essential parts of the program. Just bring them into the environment and let your child experience them. Later, we'll put words and stories into the Arts world.

The End of Scenario #1

The VAKT Designations – At the beginning of each scenario you will see some or all of these letters: VAKT. These letters indicate which of these senses are being used in the scenario learning process:

Visual – Using the eyes to get a picture of the word.

Auditory – Using the ears to get the sound of the word.

Kinesthetic – Using the movement of muscles to get the shape of the word.

Tactile – Using the sense of touch to get a feel for the shape of the word.

The Word Meaning Model – Reading is reading only when comprehension (meaning) is present. Recently I read an instruction on how to improve my use on this computer. Actually, I was able to pronounce each word but I simply had no idea on what to do. So, in my definition of reading, since there was no comprehension, I did not read that passage.

We will keep referring to the Word Meaning Model and the three parts of it: In the early stages we will be using only the Referent and the Spoken Word – the Written Word comes later when the Child is ready and able to make the correct connection.

1. The Referent – the object, e.g., the thing holding the food.

2. The Spoken Word – say the word, "spoon".

3. The Written Word – spoon – spelled s-p-o-o-n.

The Commentary Section – The commentary deals with what was done, how it was done, and why it was done this way. Kim says the word FOOT at the same time as she takes hold of Pat's foot and she says SOCK as she is putting the sock on – referent and spoken word together. Later we will add the written word.

Incidental Learning – Much of what we learn is learned in real life and we learn new words, ideas, and concepts, as part of an experience. We call this "Learning" and it is highly individual in nature. It includes Creativity and Critical Thinking.

The opposite of Incidental Learning we will call Programmed Instruction. This uses a method called "Teaching." Teaching is organized, sequential, one size fits all, and self-contained. It generally tends to be non-creative and predetermined.

Numbers and Colors – Words dealing with number and color will occur naturally. Give them their names when the occasion presents itself. When your child sees a nice new car you can say, "That red car does look nice." and "I like those blue flowers in that yard." Also, number concepts; one, two, large, small, big, little, heavy, light, high, low, penny, nickel, etc., will occur naturally and in context.