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Show Easy Does It Last week we brought you some ' pointers on how to help a child who is having difficulty in learning learn-ing to read. We hope we made it clear that this is a very common problem, but to emphasize its universality, uni-versality, we'd like to tell you about a booklet prepared for parents par-ents by the board of education of the Denver public schools. It is called, "There's More to Reading than Meets the Eye," and the first thing parents are told is that all children are different children don't cut their teeth at the same age they don't all weigh the same at the same age they don't all measure the same at the same age some learn to read more quickly than others. (We might add, that the eye muscles don't acquire the ability to focus on the printed page at the same age.) The pamplet contrasts the way Grandma learned to read by bringing bring-ing her reader home and reading aloud a story she had read many time, with the way her grandchild, grand-child, Timothy, learns to read today. to-day. Timothy is ' in the first grade this year. He has already read many books not just one reader. 1 He has learned none of them by ! heart. But he knows enough words now to start reading a story book on his own. He reads books that are new to him much better than i ' did the children of Grandmother's day. The pamphlet explains that Timothy may exhibit boredom with the old-fashioned technique of becoming be-coming acquainted with the shortest short-est words possible, such as "I saw a cat, I saw a dog." Today's child starts with things that really interest him. He learns quickly-automobile, quickly-automobile, engine, airplane. Teach him words that really interest in-terest him, and you'll find that reading is right down his alley. They may even be such long words as caterpillar and elephant. But Denver doesn't stop with explaining ex-plaining methods of teaching reading. read-ing. The pamphlet emphasizes that we have not taught our children to read if their reading means only recognition of words and sentences and paragraphs. We have taught them to read only if: Their behavior and attitudes are improved as a result of their reading read-ing they can think they can choose books wisely and with taste they admit two or more sides to a question and include them in their reading they can detect propaganda they turn to books for recreation as well as education reading is really part of their living liv-ing they find help for their own problems in reading of the problems prob-lems of others they believe in democracy and are dedicated to its perpetuation. The pamphlet goes on to tell how the child gets acquainted with books, learns the alphabet about the time the telephone directory becomes, necessary to him, per haps in the third grade. By the time he's in the sixth grade, he has, learned simple library li-brary proceedures; he has learned that books are friends; he reads them for fun, for information, for help with his own problems. And he grows in understanding the world and the people around him as he reads of life and people in other cities, other states, and other lands. i ' 1 |