Ella and reading

From Deb:

Because I had not pressed Ella on reading all summer, she naturally fell behind in skills, which I of course didn't worry about because she's only 5, after all, and she came so far so fast in the spring. So what I did this week was borrow back my EPS Phonics Books from Tatiana, and start Ella back on the second series of 10 books (she had finished the third in the spring). We'll read them through again. We've done one every day (where usually she has read just half a book in a day as they got harder). This has been very successful the last two days; she is impressed with herself that she is able to zoom through a whole book in about 10 minutes. We'll rapidly be back to where we left off.

Regarding the silent E question, I have noticed an interesting thing about Ella: She is not holding the entire sound of the word in her mind until she actually makes the word-meaning connection, it's still a collection of strung-together sounds that she has to reconstruct by looking again at the first letter. I noticed this because when she is reading a word that has a silent E, she doesn't notice at the outset that there is a silent E at the end, and adjust her vowel sounds accordingly (she had done this well as of about May, so I'm sure it will come back quickly); instead, she sounds through the entire word, comes to a silent E at the end, and stops, confused. She has heard the sounded-out version in her mind, and it doesn't make any sense.

For example, take the word "cake". She'll sound out C-A-K and then stop and see the silent E. She repeats "CAK" in her mind. "CAK" doesn't make any sense to her. But instead of automatically substituting the short A vowel sound for the long one she's using, and realizing that it must be "C-AY-K," she has to reconstruct the whole thing. First, she fixes in her mind that the sound is now "Ay" not "Ah" because of the silent E, and then she goes back to reconstruct the word. "C-AY-K" and now she hears herself saying it, and knows it's Cake.

That probably made no sense to anyone but me, but I find it fascinating. I need to get this stuff down, because there is no recreating the little bits and pieces of exactly how they learn; you have to record it immediately.

One other note: I am seeing glimpses in Ella that she is interested in listening to more complicated stories from chapter books rather than just being willing to sit with me for picture books. I had noted -- not in a worried way, but interested -- that whereas at the age of 3 Madison had wanted to hear books like The Trumpet of the Swan, Ella is still not interested in focusing on those kinds of stories. And by her age, Madison was having me read her the Boxcar Children and Cam Jansen. I don't know exactly what it means that Ella hasn't been ready for these things, maybe it's just that Madison has always had this exceptional imagination that she is willing to substitute for the pictures in the storybooks. I don't know.