I used to be an elementary school teacher. Like many teachers, I heavily depended on a reading curriculum to guide my instruction. These days I homeschool, and guess what? I don’t use a reading curriculum, and my kids are doing well with reading! My kids just read books and talk about what they read. I bet someone out there thinks this is strange, but it’s actually been more enjoyable to teach reading this way than how I used to teach it in school.
When I first started homeschooling, I had every intention of using a reading curriculum, but as I looked at a few, I realized that I wasn’t drawn to some of the curriculum-made books or to worksheets like I was when I was a teacher. I bought one reading curriculum, but I stopped using it because I thought it was boring. In the past, I used worksheets as a means of assessing twenty some children. I only need to asses two children. Also, a lot of the material seemed like busy work. No one wants that! Plus, when you’re an adult, what do you do with a book when you’re done reading it? Do you make a beautiful Venn diagram to compare and contrast the characters? No, you go talk about it with someone else. You narrate what happened.
I will stop here and clarify that not using a reading curriculum doesn’t mean that I don’t teach phonics. I use a phonics curriculum called All About Spelling. It’s worked well with my two boys, and I plan on using it with my other children. I do phonics lessons 4-5x a week. When I say I don’t use a reading curriculum, what I mean is that I pick out books for my children to read. I’m not following a curriculum, but instead booklists. We aren’t doing workbooks to improve our reading skills. We are reading to improve out reading skills.
I remember when I was a teacher, the literacy coach in my school was pushing us to have our students read for forty minutes in class each day. These kids were most likely not reading very much at home, so to make up for that, the teachers in our school had to build that time into the school day. You can probably guess why this was pushed: the more you read, the better you become at reading.
Here are some questions I had when I started to consider not using a reading curriculum.
1. How will I assess if my child is understanding what he reads?
Your child can give you a narration. This comes from Charlotte Mason, who advocated that children be given living books with worthwhile ideas for them to think about. A narration is a retelling of what was read. It’s simple to do, but it requires that the child understands what he or she read. My oldest does oral narrations. Next year I hope to transition him to written narrations.
I also like to ask open-ended questions. Questions like, “How would describe so and so?” or “Who do you most admire in the story?” Personally, I think open-ended questions make you have to think more about the story. It’s also really great to see a child excited about talking about a book that they love. Sarah Mackenzie’s book The Read-Aloud Family is a good resource for open ended questions.
2. Where do I find good books to read?
Books lists are where I find books to read. Here are some of my favorite places to look.
· Amblesideonline.org (look under resources, then master booklist)
I also want to add that I use everyday-reading.com to find books for independent reading.
3. Will my child be missing skills if I am not using a reading curriculum?
So far, I can say that I don’t notice any literary deficiencies in my children, but there’s also a lot more literary input during the day than just the assigned reading. We do audiobooks at lunch, read alouds from a chapter book, a picture book read aloud in the morning during snack, poetry, independent reading, and a Bible story at breakfast. We talk about character traits, we compare and contrast, and do cause and effect, but all in a natural conversational way.
I can’t speak about when children are in middle school or high school, but for now my point is to read a lot to my children and to grow a love of reading in our home.
Conclusion
Homeschooling is going to look different than attending a traditional school. It makes sense that the curriculum would also look different. I remember when I met my first homeschooler who didn’t use a reading curriculum. I was shocked someone would do such a thing, but here I am five years later doing the exact same thing. Like I said earlier, I did try to use a reading curriculum for a week, but it all felt like busy work, which is something I don’t have time for. I like that I get to choose what works for me and my kids, and for us that means ditching the reading curriculum and focusing on reading, reading, and reading.
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