Zach, who’s eight years old now, is a strong reader. We’re sitting at the table, and he’s reading to himself.
“Why don’t you read out loud?” I said.
He didn’t answer.
“What happens when you get to a word you don’t know?”
He finished his paragraph in his head and then answered. “Then I’ll ask you.”
He hadn’t asked me for any help yet. He’s a strong reader but not that strong.
“What happens when you get to a word you don’t know, but you don’t know that you don’t know it?”
I don’t think he processed that. He kept reading on his own.
But that’s the trouble with going it alone. He won’t know when he doesn’t know, won’t know when he mispronounces a word in his head. Isn’t that usually the trouble for any of us, not knowing when we don’t know, not knowing when we’re mispronouncing the world in our head?
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Read “No one knows what they’re doing” (but watch the language) for more on this.
