My 5yo was reading on his own, but didn't grasp the notion of phonics, so when we started K, I started phonics with him. Right now, we are just reading the story books that come with HOP and BOB books (boxes 1 and 2). He does something I find really interesting. He covers the pictures before he reads. He seems to find them misleading in terms of what the words are. With my older son, a few times I had to cover the pictures to remind him to read the words, not guess based on the pictures. This child, after I did the same for him, covers all the pictures, unless he already knows the story well and it's more familiar. I'm glad he's adopted a strategy that works for him, but I never heard of any child doing that before - especially since many sites list looking at the pictures as a strategy to help (supposedly) identify words in the story. So I guess my question is - does anyone else's child do this? Has anyone noticed a child who is misled, rather than assisted, but the pictures in a story? Thanks.
No, I have to say that's unique in my experience. Although I will mention that when I read to my kids, or now when I read to my grandkids, I generally point to the words or run my finger under the words as I read, and turn attention to the picture after. The opposite of what I was taught in first grade myself - which was to glean all the info possible from the picture before looking at the words.
I've never noticed children doing that, but I think it's a great strategy. Pictures are cool, especially when learning non-phonetic words, but they're also distracting because most words can be learned phonetically.
My 5yr old son has never covered the pictures, but he definitely tries to guess based on the picture! He is a very visual learner...maybe your son is too and finds the pictures too distracting? I'm not sure, but if he's reading I wouldn't worry about it
My dd had so much trouble when she was learning to read because she would guess what the sentence said by looking at the pictures. I WISH I would have thought of covering the pictures for her! Now she does much better but I really like chapter books for her anyways because she can read them so much better than books with pictures. Must be a visual distraction for her.
I am the only one who I know that did that. I learned to read purely with phonics, I used HOP and when I started reading other books, (Dr. Suess) pictures didn't help because, well, it's The Doc. You couldn't tell what stuff was anyway...then I read chapter books and that was that. Pictures were distracting but it was also just a habit. Guessing got me nowhere and so I'd get a loose leaf page to cover pictures and or the next page so that I could focus on what I was reading. Later I learned to use a bookmark to help me keep my place by line and I didn't need the pictures.
