When it comes to reading, first grade is a critical year in a child’s academic development. It is during first grade that most teachers define their students as emerging readers, fluent early readers, or struggling. Unfortunately, it is also in first grade that common instructional practices are arguably most inconsistent with how intelligent children who are analytical by nature learn. There has been a lot of research on visual learners, auditory learners, and kinesthetic learners, but there are two other types of learners that we don’t hear as much about. They are: the memorizers and the analytics.
Memorizers need to know the how. That is, show them how to do something, they memorize it, save it for future reference, and repeat it to you on demand. Memorizers tend to do well with reading and social studies. Memorizers can remember the spelling of a word or fact without having to come up with logical explanations as to why. However, analytics needs to know the “why” as well as how something is done. Analysts are logical thinkers and if something doesn’t make logical sense, their brains will reject it. Analysts are critical thinkers to the highest degree. They tend to excel in math, technology, and science. The problem arises with analytical learners when you try to teach them a topic without the “why”.
This is where things can take a turn for the worse for analytical learners and they risk being prematurely or mislabeled as learning disorders when they may not have a learning “disorder” but a learning “difference.”
Case in point: In order to read, even emergently, children must know how to combine isolated sounds into words. To write, children must know how to break words down into their component sounds. This is where the problem arises: since many first grade teachers focus primarily on phonic awareness, for words that don’t sound like they are spelled like (off) (of) (where) (this) the analytic learner doesn’t understand why that the English language is not always written as it sounds phonetically. As a result, he may fall behind his peers when it comes to reading. This was a problem for my son who had to repeat first grade because he was not reading at his grade level despite the extra services provided by his school.
I made the decision to homeschool him and developed my own curriculum according to state standards to bring him up to date. I always knew my son was a kinesthetic learner, but I didn’t realize until recently that he was an analytical learner. He is a critical thinker and will ask a million questions and solve problems until he discovers a concept. With this new information, I began teaching my son spelling rules in addition to phonics and sight word memory. We worked on all the constant combinations (sh) (th) (wh) (ch) I taught him the vowel combinations that (ea) like read, bead and teach make long e sound but (ea) also make short e sound as head, dead, read (past tense). I explained the (how) of spelling in very basic terms. Part of our language arts homeschool program includes you reading 4 books independently (two starter books that you are required to read independently, followed by two books that are slightly above your level. Instead of reading to you aloud, you must read aloud to me and tell me the main idea, the main characters of the book and at least 2 characteristics of each character and how the book relates to something in real life, then I write three vocabulary words from the book read out loud, which you should use in a sentence that is not only correctly punctuated with words evenly spaced, but also makes logical sense.
It amazes me to see my son glow with pride as he begins to experience success with reading. He went from hating reading to reading a minimum of four books a day. As my son is not a child “because I say so”, he needs to know the “why” (logical reason broken down) as well as how something is done. This is why math and science come naturally to him. These subjects follow a logical order, a sequential pattern, being the result of something else. He needs to be taught in a way that speaks to his analytical nature, his rational reasoning. It’s also worth noting that many autistic and dyslexic children are virtual math geniuses.
If you have a child who is struggling with reading, meet with your child’s teacher often to find out what instructional methods they are using to teach your child and how they are working. Take the time to discover your child’s dominant learning style. Are you a memorizer or an analytical learner? You need to know this. Knowing this will make all the difference in your child’s academic success. you never know Your struggling reader may be a lot smarter than you think.