The ABC's and All Their Tricks

Yesterday my son wanted to make a gas station for his Lego race cars. He built it but then wanted to make a sign for it. He asked me to help him write "Shell Gas Station". Usually I write on his blackboard and he copies, but this time I realized that if he knows all his letters, it makes more sense for him to write on the blackboard himself. Well, also there was the fact that he wanted most of the letters to be lower case, but wanted the "E" to be upper case. That way there can be extra "legs" added to the "E" to make his favorite letter, the "millipede E". I tried to explain the rules of capitalization, but they didn't stand a chance against millipedes! I was thrilled to discover that he was able to begin sounding out the letters. But when we got to "tion", what was I to do?

Thank goodness I have this handy book! It deserves a special Valentine. "The ABCs and All Their Tricks" by Margaret M. Bishop, goes through all the letters and offers a quick explanation for any and all weird phonics issues that arise in the English language. I was able to quickly explain what is going on with this letter combination, show him a bunch of other words with the same pattern, and add that they are all Latin words. Voila! He may not have understood much of that, but the vital thing for me is that I made it clear that learning to read English is not an impossible task full of daunting hurdles of unexplained phenomena, but a complex rhythm of patterns that can be observed. I sense that my confidence in teaching reading has to be awfully important, because if I, as a grownup, look dazed and confused, how helpful is that? This book is strictly a reference book for teachers, not something you would want to read out loud to your child, but it's truly amazing and very useful. It must have taken a herculean effort to compile all this information in one handy paperback, and it's only about $10. I bet your library has a copy- check it out!