Reading is just like tracking A book made in Ali Curung

My Gran says reading is just like tracking. She shows me the tracks in the sand, and teaches me how to understand them. “You first learn what the tracks mean, then you learn the rules to understand them. Then you can read the story they tell”, she says.

These are the paw prints of a dog. It is walking from left to right. These are the foot prints of a bird. It is also walking from left to right.

Hh Qq Gg Rr Kk Bb Ii Aa Jj Nn Dd Tt Mm Ee Ff Ll Pp When we read, there are big and little letters – same letter, but we use big ones for names and the start of a sentence. “Can you see the paw prints of a big dog and a little dog ?” she asks.

This bird has walked around in different directions. When we read, we only follow the letters from left to right. is not the same as “stop”= p o t s =

Look closely at these 3 shoe prints. Are they the same? When we read, we must look carefully at all the letters. b,d,p,q are nearly the same, but really very different…. bad, dad, pad, dab. “Learn your letters and look carefully”, Gran says.

Here are two footprints of a small child. “Which is the left foot ?” she asked. “They are the opposite of each other”, I said. “Like a b and a d.” “This is the print of a teenager, It is long but not very wide, as the teenager is tall but not very heavy ”, says Gran. “Wow! Now I can see that myself”, I reply.

Here are three tracks made by car tyres. They are all different. We can match the tyre pattern to the car, and find out who drove here. “That makes sense”, I say. Gran is very clever. She can read tracks and books.

“These are smaller wheel tracks” I say. “Yes. They are made by a bike or a pram”, says Gran. “I worked that out myself”, I say proudly. “You just need to look carefully and think.”

“There is a story in these tracks” says Gran, pointing to a footprint and tyre marks. “Which came past first?” she asks. “The car or the person?” Can you read the tracks?  Was it an adult or a child?  Were they wearing shoes?  Were they taking long steps or short?

Reading a book is like tracking in the sand. The letters are the prints which make up the words on the pages. We look at the first letter of the word. It tells us the sound at the start of the word. We then track across the word with our finger, from left to right, sounding out the letters if we can. = track

We look for patterns that we can learn, like blends and digraphs, which are letters that go together: sh ship shop short shoe ….. Not “s-h” br brown brick broom sk skip skin mask ch chicken chips child watch … Not “c-h”

We look for words that have letter groups like: ay day pay say lay may ow cow town brown flower power now y by my try dry cry ph which sounds like “f” phone photo dolphin th the that this with ight light right night fight ear hear near fear gear rear ar car far tart part chart hard

We look for clues like pictures. We try to work out the word then ask ourselves “Does that sound right?” “Does that make sense?”

But some words we just have to learn. enough (e.n.u.f) onewhere laugh…. “There are lots of those”, I say. ____. ____. ____. _____.____ Sometimes English is a hard language to learn, but the more you read the better you get. Then you can read so many wonderful books, that you will never be bored!

A paw production May 2013