Day 5 Three Questions

Welcome to day 5. Has your summer been as jam packed as mine? Well, I hope along with reading that you and your children are able to also have lots of fun. Today we are going to be taking a look at the three types of errors that kids typically make when they are reading and come up with some questions that can help them fix their errors on their own. Just like in the try again strategy, you want to get your child to be responsible for correcting his/her own reading errors. If you do it for the child, then you become the strategy called ask a parent instead of encouraging the child to figure it out.

The three magic questions are
1. Does it look right?
2. Does it sound right?
3. Does it make sense.

There are also three specific times that you ask these questions. Let’s take a look at an example of does it look right.

Child: “It dumped into Rani and Brother Dove.”

Parent: “Does that look right?” (Parent points to the word dumped.)

Child: “Oh, I meant bumped.”

In this example the child fixed her error immediately upon the question being asked. Many times kids will flip b’s and d’s. However, when they read it in context for a second time he/she is able to usually fix it.

The second question is does that sound right. The purpose of this question is to focus the child’s attention to sentence structure. Often times children will read the way that they speak and not notice the way that it was actually written. Also, kids will make tons of errors on the little words, inserting a different little word in it’s place. For example,

Child: “It took off his mask.”
Parent: Does that sound right?
Child: “Not really.”
Parent: “Try Again.”
Child: “He took off his mask.”

Parent: “Great, you fixed it yourself.”

Notice how it would not be grammatically correct with his in the sentence. The point of the question is not to be nit picky, but rather get the child to correct his/her own errors.

The last qustion is does that make sense. This question promotes the reader to make sense of what he/she is reading. Here is an example.

Child: “I am always the lion wolf.”
Parent: “Does that make sense?”
Child: “No”
Parent: “Try again.”
Child: “I am always the lone wolf.”
Parent: “Does that make sense?”
Child: “Yes.”
Parent: “Excellent, keep going.”

In this example, lion instead of lone does not make sense. It kind of looks like lion. It begins the same and it ends in the same sound, but it does not make sense. If reading does not make sense, then kids can develop comprehension problems and a low motivation to want to read independently.

When it comes to reading, the goal always needs to be to foster independence. Often times in our busy lives it is much easier to fix the mistake for the child, but this is not really helping him/her reach the goal of fixing the mistakes on his/her own. Odds are, that when he/she comes to a word on his/her own and get’s it wrong, then he/she will just keep reading and it will effect his/her overall comprehension.