Help With Meaning

It's not uncommon to hear, "I read it again, but I still don't understand." The problem of making meaning (sense) out of a piece of writing is not very great for us, but for a beginner it's sometimes overwhelming. We all learn things at different rates, and very bright people sometimes have trouble with making sense out of words. When I was in the early grades in school, I had what was called "a reading problem." I went to special reading classes. My friends called me dumb. This hurt. I wasn't dumb, I just didn't start to understand when most of the rest of the kids did. I'm sure that many of those friends are reading at about the same level now as they were then.

If your young reader needs extra help, don't worry. Be glad that you're there and want to help. The more help you can give, the better will be your relationship. I was always glad when my son needed my help. What a good feeling to give help to someone you love.

For those of us who have been doing it for a long time, the process of reading has lost some of its mystery, and, unless we think about it, has become an automatic process. But for the very young, reading can be almost magical. Think of the wonder in a child's mind when it's first discovered that those strange black marks in a book are words and that they have meaning.

We forget how difficult it was when we were young to understand what someone else meant when we read what that person had written. The mystery in reading is not something that's bad; in fact, it's one of the wonderful things about it. I'm not suggesting that you disenchant your young reader, rather that you expand your reader's ability to understand the wonder.

The following exercises in this essay and in the next one will help your child construct meaning from a text because it will help with the transmission of ideas in all the categories listed. They are only models, so read through them and decide on specific ideas (words that you'd like to use in addition to or in place of those in the examples), to use with your child.

ANALOGIES

Don't force this one. If your younger reader doesn't understand how this works, wait. This exercise teaches that words are related to each other. When this is understood, the reader has to see that two other words can have a similar relationship. This works like this:

1. Big is to little as tall is to ___.
2. Full is to empty as fat is to ___.
3. Knife is to cut as pencil is to ___.
4. Cat is to mouse as spider is to___.

Sometimes the relationships can be very subtle, and some people just can never see the subtlety. Other people are very good at seeing relationships, and this is an easy exercise for them. Whichever is the case with your reader, this exercise will help with meanings and the logic of relationships well into the teen years.

ANTONYMS

These are words that have opposite meanings. In this exercise you are to give one word and your young reader is to give a word that means the opposite. This works like this:
1. big—little
2. good—bad
3. light—dark
4. sideways— (I don't think there is an endways)

CAUSE AND EFFECT

It's important that a reader understand the relationship that words have because one condition causes another. To help your reader see this relationship, you should create a sentence that has a cause and effect relationship in it and have your reader tell you why what happened did happen.

"I forgot to water the plant and it died." You are to ask your reader: "Why did the plant die?"

This seems fairly simple. And it is, but this can be confusing to a very young reader. What appears obvious to us may be an entirely new experience for a child and not clear at all. But, watch this one, the cause and effect relationship can be tricky. In the following exercise, the sentence is fairly complicated and the cause and effect relationship is not so clear. Try this one yourself.

The fat but short candle, glittering alone there on the dirty table, even though casting dancing shadows on the walls, did not light the surface of the pages well enough for Paul to read the wrinkled map, and, twisting the map to see better, he touched its comer to the flame—which quickly ignited, burning the only place on the whole map which named the town the treasure was near.

Here are some potential reasons why Paul couldn't find the treasure: The map was made of burnable material. Paul burnt the map. The candle was not bright enough. Paul didn't make a copy like he should have. Paul didn't bring a flashlight. Paul wasn't careful enough when he read. Paul had poor eyesight. The map maker put the town's name on only one place on the map. John didn't change the bulb in the lamp when it burnt out, so the candle had to be lit.
Ron has good eyesight but he didn't offer to read the map like he should have.

It was fate!

CLASSIFICATION

This exercise is designed to teach your reader to arrange objects into groups that have similar characteristics. For instance, two and four legged animals: "Put the following animals into two groups: one for two legged animals and one for four legged animals: chicken, duck, cow, man, mouse, monkey, cat."

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As vour reader gets older and better at classification, this exercise can become fairly sophisticated. For instance: "Classify the following objects into three groups: airplane, boat, roller skate, ski, trampoline, car, canoe, swing, roller-coaster."

This can be turned into a game that the whole family can enjoy together, and all the children can learn this important skill at the same time.
continued....

CONTEXT AS CLUE

Now that your reader understands that a word might have a number of meanings, it must be understood how to figure out a reasonable or intended meaning. This can be done by study of the context (the ideas presented before and after the word). Notice how you can tell the meaning from context in these two examples: "The grocer said he'd knock down the price and "The grocer said he'd knock down the price sign." In one instance the words knock down mean to cut or reduce, and in the other they mean to turn over or push over. In this exercise your reader should learn to determine meaning from context. This should start fairly simply, but as you both get used to it, you can make it as complicated as you like.

You should write/speak a sentence with a word in it that is not used in its usual way. Your reader then must tell you what the word means in that context.

"Uncle George said he'd try and put a good face on it."

"Make it look good."

"Bill said he'd drop over."

"Come to our house."

"That car is really a lemon"

"I don't know, could it be a yellow car?"

DEFINITION

A good mental exercise for training young readers to understand meanings is to teach their to define words. A good definition has two parts. The first part establishes the general category of the word, and the second part gives some specific information that clearly identifies the object. An example of this is a definition for jackknife. A jackknife is a cutting instrument (general category) small enough to carry in a pocket and has a blade which folds into its handle (two specific characteristics which identify it).

In this exercise you supply the word and your reader defines it using a two-part definition. Taking turns with this one can be fun. You can have your reader give you a word, and you can define it. Both experiences will help your reader understand words better. You might have to give a good deal of help at first. That's okay, your reader will catch on. Other examples of this exercise are:

Pickup truck
General: truck
Specific: small open bed behind cab
Garbage can
General: container
Specific: designed for trash

DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES

The object of this exercise is to help your young reader understand that things/words can be similar and yet be different both at the same time. You're to give two words and your reader is to tell how the two objects or words are different and similar. An example will help me make this clear.

1. Dog and Cat
Similar: "They both are pets and have four legs."
Different: "The dog barks, and the cat meows."

2. Sock and Shoe
Similar: "They both go on the feet."
Different: "The sock is cloth, and the shoe is leather."

You could give some variety to this exercise when your reader is ready. You can give the difference and similarity and the category and have your reader name the objects. This works like this example:

"The category is clothing."
Similar: They both cover one end of a person.
Different: One is worn on the head, and the other is worn on the feet.

ESTABLISHING ORDER

It's important for a reader to understand the order of events in a narration. It seems second nature to us, but it's sometimes not at all clear to a new reader that when a sentence has after in it, the event talked about is established in some time frame.

You're to write/speak a sentence which establishes time order (using words like: then when, next, after, while, during, before) and your reader is to describe when the event take place. It works like this:

While the boat burned, we swam to shore.
"When did the people swim to shore?"
"While the boat was burning."

We went home after we 'd eaten dinner.
"When did they leave?"
"After they'd eaten."

IDENTIFYING CATEGORIES

We categorize constantly and automatically when we function in our adult lives, but we had to learn to do this. If a person were not to have this skill, each new object he'd come across would be in its own category and soon there would be too many categories to keep track. You can help your young reader learn this skill.

You're to list five or six words, and your reader is to tell you which word is not like the others or is in a different category. To do this your reader will have to place the words in an appropriate category, and the one that doesn't fit will be the one identified. This can be done orally or you can write out the listings. It could look like this listing: skate, car, ball, bike, wagon, bus
Your reader will have to recognize a category that five of these objects will fit into and then will have to understand that the sixth one doesn't fit and will have to identify that category. In this case the category could be means of transportation. Your reader might respond this way:
"They all are ways to get somewhere except the ball, and that's a toy."

You'll have to be careful with this. Your child could see it this way:

"They are all the same. They all roll on the ground, so they are all in the same category."

Boy, these kids!

In the next essay I'll give you another group of exercises to continue this training with your young readers. Have fun with these, I did.

About the author:
Dave Marks is the author of the popular and effective Writing Strands series (from elementary to college level), Reading Strands, and the Dragonslaying is for Dreamers trilogy complete with his “Analyzing the Novel”. Visit his web site for more information:
http://www.writingstrands.com