Floors in the basement and cellar
Rebus method by Lev Sternberg. Parental experience

Rebus method by Lev Sternberg. Parental experience

Text: Tatyana Zhidkova

Zaitsev's cubes, Doman's cards, Voskobovich's "Folders" and many other developmental techniques offer parents help in teaching children the most important process - reading. Some recommend starting classes immediately after being discharged from the maternity hospital, others advise waiting a little and waiting for the baby’s first conscious word, and still others generally discourage teaching children before school.

Today we will introduce you to a few more simple techniques, about which Letidor was told by their author and creator - teacher, actor, chess player Lev Sternberg. And even if you have already decided on the answer to when you should start teaching your child to read, teaching recommendations will be useful to you.

Slogophone-talker is an online game, the principle of which is extremely simple: in the game field there are buttons on which syllables are written. When the child presses a button, the computer speaks the selected syllable in a recorded voice. Thus, by adding the syllables in the correct sequence, the child hears the words, but the computer pronounces them without stress. The child’s task: to understand the meaning of the word he heard and correctly correlate it with the desired picture.

Lev Sternberg: “This technique clearly and rationally teaches the mechanics of syllabic reading, and at the same time leads the child to recognize whole words. The slogophone practically combines syllabic reading (words according to Zaitsev) and global reading (whole words according to Doman). And the fact that the computer sounds all the buttons pressed makes the child completely independent from the adult. Children, as a rule, very quickly and without any explanation themselves figure out what and where to press in order to play this game. But this is provided that the child is already able to hold a mouse, and can also by ear recognize a word pronounced in words. Typically, children develop these skills by the age of three.

Rebus method
This is an oral game where a child learns to read words independently without even knowing the letters.

The rules of the game are also very simple. The adult names a word familiar to the child, the baby must repeat only the beginning of this word. For example, in the word “cat” - “KO”, and in the word “spoon” - “LO”. It is important to select for the game only those words that begin with an accent. Otherwise, the sound of the first syllable changes, for example, we will hear the word “kitten” as “kittenok”, and “bag” as “bear”. The next step is to offer the baby two words in a row, of which he still pronounces only the beginning: mask-mask - MA-MA, teapot shoes - TU-CHA.

If the number of words is increased to 3-4, we get -mask-leaf-pillowcase - MA-LI-NA, mask-cone-pillowcase - MA-SHI-NA, cook-bear-house-fish - PO-MI-DO-RY .

Here, to make the task easier, you can offer the child visual support in the form of images of objects. In essence, this is a rebus that can be easily solved according to a given rule. A four-year-old child completes the task in a few minutes.

Lev Sternberg: “The rebus method is based on the fact that children perceive the beginning of a word, for example, MA in the word “car,” as one indivisible sound, and logically expect that this sound is written with one letter. (After all, children do not yet know that adults have agreed to denote one sound with two letters. It is two letters instead of one that are a difficulty for a child.) We can say that I came up with new letters - MA, LO, DU - for children it is like one “letter” ", equivalent to the sound heard, but adults know that this is a syllable. To make it easy for the child to guess which “letter” is encrypted here, I depicted the simplest picture clues.

The “rebus method” is distinguished by its creativity: each word has a certain focus, a riddle that needs to be solved. And when a child recognizes a word, then for him this is a small victory in this game, and not just learning to read.

Kids not only solve puzzles, but also learn to say them out loud to someone else. It is then that we can say that the game has been mastered. By the way, many parents also play this game with no less passion than their children.”

How to understand that a child is ready to learn

Until three or four years old, children do not understand that a word can be divided into some parts, and that a word can be composed from some parts. The word FLY for a baby is one thing, but the word MU-HA is completely different. And from an age point of view speech development This is fine. In the Russian language you can play around with words: slow down, speed up, divide into parts, pronounce them this way and that way - the meaning of the words does not change. If the adults in the child’s family diversify their speech with such speech beauties, then the child is able to discover quite early that it turns out that speaking can be done in different ways. But in other languages, for example, in Chinese, English or German, any lengthening of the sound leads to a change in meaning, i.e. to the formation of a completely different word. And if this same child is placed somewhere in England, then by the age of 3-4 he will make a completely different conclusion that words cannot be divided into parts. And even at 8 years old he will not be ready for the very idea that whole words consist of separate sound pieces.

Readiness for learning depends on how varied speech the baby hears, do they read poems out loud in the family or kindergarten, sing songs, play with the rhythm of speech? If all this is missing, then the child may not be ready to learn to read until school.

Adult participation in learning

Previously, learning to read depended almost entirely on the presence of an adult, on his perseverance and patience. In Glenn Doman's method, for example, the child is not even asked about his desire to learn - the baby is simply shown cards with printed words, and these words are spoken out loud. In principle, this role of a teacher could be played by a TV set, if it could grab a crawling baby by the scruff of the neck or promise candy in exchange for a couple of minutes of attention. In Nikolai Zaitsev’s method, during the first few months (or even several years, if you start working with a very young child), the adult is also required to sound out syllables on blocks at the first sign of the child’s boredom.

In the Rebus method and Slogophone the situation is completely different. Here, the child only needs an adult for the first two minutes to explain the simplest rules. The child then does everything else himself. In addition, the techniques of the Rebus method and Slogophone are so simple that after a few lessons the children are able to explain these games to each other.

Difference from Zaitsev's cubes

The slogophone-talker and the Rebus method, as well as Zaitsev’s cubes, are based on working with sound warehouses. For Zaitsev, all warehouses are written on the faces of the cube, i.e. one die depicts six warehouses, and this is a whole combination, which is much more difficult to manipulate than one individual element. Therefore, I believe that buttons with one fold are much more convenient for a child than cubes (If the syllables are written on cardboard cards, then it is also difficult to figure it out when there are a lot of cards). I pressed the button and the computer announced it. Moreover, you can press it at least a thousand times, the computer will pronounce the desired syllable the same number of times, unlike an adult, it will not get tired or get angry.

Children like to press buttons in random order, it amuses them. But if the sequence is correct, then separate words are obtained. And this is not only fun but also learning.

Doman cards - execution cannot be pardoned

Memorizing entire written words is an important skill for developing speed reading techniques. Cards with whole words, which are in the Doman method, form speed reading, I also use them in my games. However, while I have a good attitude towards Doman cards, I have a very bad attitude towards the idea of Doman. Now I will explain why.

His idea is not to read whole words. From time immemorial, children in the West have been taught to memorize entire words. This practice was used in parallel with the so-called spelling (among the British) and spelling (among the Germans) - that is, with the technique of spelling a word: for example, “Bauer = Bobby, Anna, Ursula, Eva, Robert.” To pronounce a word in this way, you must first of all know how the whole word is spelled, and in Western European methods, spelling is always preceded by reading whole words. That is, reading whole words has always been used in the West, and Glenn Doman has nothing to do with it.

Doman's innovation was that he proposed teaching a child to read not from school, but literally from the first days of life. Based on the fact that in infancy any information is remembered more productively than at an older age, there is no need for the baby to stare senselessly at the empty ceiling; let him remember the written words better. Doman suggested writing the words on the cards in bright red font, because a newborn cannot yet distinguish other colors. But at the same time, the red color informs the baby of danger; his pulse slows down and his breathing quickens. And it is precisely this state of stress that Doman considers the best incentive for a child to remember incomprehensible squiggles and words spoken by someone at that moment.

Glenn Doman was a military neurosurgeon by profession, not a psychiatrist or psychologist. And for Doman this whole method of early influence on a child was only part of his scientific work, in which he argued that in people with an injured brain it is quite possible to compensate and restore some mental functions if they are influenced by the “spare” (Doman called them “hidden”) capabilities of the psyche. This is how Glenn Doman restored the ability to read in people with injuries to the left hemisphere of the brain. However, I think, what does this have to do with small children, who have nothing damaged and for whom nature has determined the gradual, step-by-step activation of brain structures? Abstract graphic signs, as well as all phonemic-letter European writing, are highest degree conventions comprehended by the left hemisphere of the brain. In a child of approximately 6-8 years of age, the brain connections necessary for such activity have not yet matured; the connection between the hemispheres through the corpus callosum has not yet been fully formed. And to this immature brain, Doman imprints entire written words into memory - not as combinations of letters, but as an indivisible image. Why would a baby need this, who still has no idea what those scary red squiggles mean or what those spoken words spoken by an adult mean? I can assume that such an impact on the child’s natural reflexes can subsequently result in many different didactoneuroses.

Counting to 10 - know it like your own ten fingers

Many methods try to teach a child to count within the first ten, that is, to perform arithmetic operations, add and subtract numbers within 10. But I believe that it is in principle impossible to perform arithmetic operations within the first ten.

Within the first ten it is only possible:

a) consistently count objects one after another;
b) guess the answer, often making mistakes;
c) know the correct answer by heart.

Neither the first, nor the second, nor the third is, in principle, an arithmetic calculation in its process. Calculation is when a person decomposes complex example on the simplest operations, then performs each of the operations in the form of naming the correct answer by heart, and then connects the entire chain of answers into a final number. “Three plus two makes five” is not a chain of operations, it’s just an answer by heart. Having formulated this as the “grain” of the methodology, I developed a simple system, very logical and small, of how to lead a child from sequential recalculation to knowing the correct answers by heart. For example, let's take counting on fingers. If a baby is able to say “I’m five years old” and at the same time show an outstretched palm -

- this does not mean at all that he understands the meaning of the number 5. Show him five fingers in a different combination, for example, three on one hand and two on the other, and ask again: “Five?”

The child will most likely shake his head negatively and say, “No, that’s five!” and again shows the memorized hand.

It becomes clear that the child is not yet ready to understand abstract numbers, and that it is too early to offer him written numerical tasks 3+2 and even 1+1.

I note that almost all bunnies and squirrels in modern textbooks are only suitable for sequential counting and do not give the child the opportunity to count and add objects in small groups at once. Therefore, the child cannot get used to the formulation “Three and two make five,” he only learns “One-two-three, and another four-five.”

For this reason, I use other objects for sequential recalculation, visually strict and compact, for example two-color pyramids:

A pyramid of ten circles (Pythagoras drew attention to this harmonious geometric combination) gives the child the opportunity to grasp and instantly understand all the components of a number at a glance - all it takes is a little habit. Children learn by heart that five is “three and two”, or “two, two and one”, or “one and four”. If the task is to find eight red circles in a pyramid, then the child will not count, but will immediately point to the blue twos, because “eight is ten minus two” - the child must learn by heart.

No uniqueness

There is not a single unique element in my methods; all this has already been encountered in world history: syllabic pictographic reading, counting on fingers, and counting on pyramids. For me great luck It turned out that before I took up teaching, I had a decent amount of knowledge in game theory. I am an actor by training, and also a good chess player, that is, I know a lot about the game and how different games are built. Therefore, I was able to combine the content of reading and counting, familiar to me from the history of mankind, in the form of games already familiar to me. I built both reading and mathematics in a single game key, and although these seem to be different methods, the principles and techniques in them turned out to be very similar.

Where it all started

While still a student at the acting department, I became interested in developmental pedagogy. Even then, at all-Union seminars, where I taught acting and acting techniques to school teachers, I first heard Nikolai Zaitsev’s lectures. What he said and did was very consistent with my pedagogical views at that time. Therefore, I can safely say that I am a student and follower of Nikolai Zaitsev. But, in my opinion, there are gaps in Zaitsev’s methods. He probably left me a chance to make up for them.

Intensive practical work with children, which later became the basis of my methods, began in Mogilev, where I moved from St. Petersburg in 1995. In the kindergarten where I worked, the first group of children studied before breakfast, then before lunch there were another 4-5 groups. Then in another kindergarten, where I taught 3 more classes. Thus, 8 classes a day for three years. I had an excellent opportunity to try, check, correct, improve, and refine the technique.

In addition, there was another incentive to work. In those years in Belarus the population had neither money, nor work, and sometimes even food. Therefore, in order for parents to pay for classes, I had to be very convincing. Then I suggested that parents not pay tuition if their child did not learn to read in two months. Quite an incentive to develop the right methodology, wouldn’t you agree?

In 1998, I returned to St. Petersburg to demonstrate the Rebus method at the Education Committee. The method was received with a bang, and as a result, 18 schools wanted to purchase my teaching aids for every first-grader. In the summer I was already preparing the edition for printing, but in August the ruble collapsed. And my family and I had to urgently leave for Germany. The money that could have been used to print many thousands of textbooks in July was barely enough for a couple of train tickets at the end of August.

In Germany, I worked mainly with adults: I taught reading to Iraqis, Afghans, Africans, and even the Germans themselves. And at the same time he continued to improve the technique. At first, I believed that in order to master reading well, it was necessary to have well-developed speech, but experience told me otherwise. I spoke German with an accent, but at the same time I famously taught migrants to read who did not speak German at all. German language, and even more famously taught the Germans themselves. It was here that it became clear that teaching reading techniques had nothing to do with the general cultural development of either the student or the teacher. You just need to know the right training techniques, and then it happens on its own. I lived in Germany for 11 years, and in the fall of 2009 I returned back to Russia

First of all, I recommend that parents do not start learning to read before the age of 4-5. A five-year-old child can easily learn in a month everything that a three-year-old will take two years to master. You should always remember that no child likes to do something that he is not bad at. And if a child takes a long time to learn to read and does not enjoy reading, then he risks falling out of love with reading even before he fully masters it. The faster the stage of “reading through a stump-deck” is completed, the more the child will love reading. In older children, this stage of learning occurs much faster than in younger children. Secondly, of course, I will advise parents to teach their child to play Slogophone Talking and the Rebus Method. These are not only easy and high-quality methods of teaching reading, but also fun games that children really enjoy.

Every four-year-old child dreams of learning to read. Books, magazines, advertising, signs on the streets and on TV, on candy wrappers and on toy packages - written language surrounds the child everywhere, it is so desirable and, alas, so incomprehensible! The kid enthusiastically responds to the adult’s offer to learn to read, but!.. But then an “ambush” awaits him.

It turns out that before you read anything, you need to learn letters for a long, long time, learn complex rules connecting them, studying for many days, weeks, months, but still not being able to read! It’s good if the teacher is cheerful, can play different games and knows how to tell a funny story “from the life of letters.” This doesn’t make reading any better, but at least the activity stops being boring to the point of yawning. Now, if it were possible, then I’ve already learned it! I've already read it! Once, I even understood the word I read! A baby's dream!

It is this child’s dream that our “Rebus Method” embodies. In a few minutes you can learn to read without even knowing the letters, practically without studying at all. Well, let’s not even read whole stories, or even sentences, but at least just individual words. Well, even if not yet with the help of letters, which are so difficult for a child, but for now only with the help of syllabic pictograms, as the ancient Sumerians read. Before reading stories, the child has to go through a long learning path - letters, then words, then words, then phrases and sentences - everything that other textbooks offer. But with our book, from the very first lesson, the child will learn the most interesting and important thing in reading: to understand the meaning of what he read.

Just two rules

The “rebus method” is, first of all, a game, and an oral game at that. In order to understand the sound principle of our game, it is necessary to perform all the tasks we have indicated out loud, loudly and rhythmically. Our child does not yet know letters, does not yet know how to read, and therefore is able to rely only on spoken words and sounds.

Our game has only two rules. The first rule is how to distinguish by ear from a whole word its first sound pattern (in the word MASK not the first letter M and not the first syllable MAS, namely the first warehouse MA). For a four-year-old child this is no problem, and within two to three minutes the baby masters our first rule. The second rule is how to select their first words from several whole words, loudly and rhythmically pronounced out loud one after another, and understand the new resulting word.

From the very first minutes of the first lesson, children are captivated by the amazing transformations of one word into another. The teacher’s task at these moments is to demonstrate the rules of the game and restrain himself from unnecessary explanations. There is no need to explain to your child what a sound, syllable or sound pattern is. There is no need to tell what and how many letters the warehouse is written with. You don't even need to show pictures or objects. You just need to say clearly and rhythmically, like rhymes:

mask – MA
palm - PA
mouse - WE
cone - SHI
cat - KO
spoon - ...

... - LO
ball - MY
teapot - CHA
branch - BE
net - ...
pen - RU
Bug -...

Children really enjoy playing with names in this oral game:

Kolya - KO
Olya - Oh
Masha - MA
Dasha - YES
Petya - PE
Fedya - FE
Ira - I
Kira - KI and etc.

The names, of course, should be familiar to the child. Any adult can easily select two or three dozen suitable words. The only thing that needs to be taken into account: each word must begin with an accent, because unstressed vowels change their sound ( little kitten, bear).

The rebus method allows you to conduct classes with children who are already reading and with children who have not yet read simultaneously in the same group. Features of the method are the possibility of oral play, which completely imitates all the mechanisms of reading. The principle of reading is understood by children in a matter of minutes. Extremely exciting for children, very convenient for teachers, and absolutely understandable for parents.

Once the child understands the rule mask – MA and began to echo the teacher, you can move on to the next step. Again, no unnecessary explanation is required, you just need to say clearly and rhythmically:

mask-mask - MA-MA
palm-palm - PA-PA
teapot shoes - TU-CHA
teapot chicken - KU-...
ball mask - MA-...
ball cactus - ...

Two words - it's quite easy. It is more difficult to keep in mind three words:

mask-bump-pillowcase - MA-...-...
mask-leaf-pillowcase - MA-...-...
beads-mask-tie - BU-...-...
tie-zebra-sneakers - ...

As a rule, children 4-5 years old quite easily solve three-word tasks by ear from the first lesson. But tasks with four words cause difficulties even for six-year-olds:

beads-cancer-tiger-scissors - ...
letters-cancer-bear-lady - ...
cloud-girl-box-spoon - ...
chicken-chicken-pen-hare - ...

Children forget the original words, lose the sequence of sounds, try to “guess” the final word and often make mistakes. Lack of concentration and inability to concentrate. On the one hand, for the sake of developing these important qualities, it would be worth continuing such oral training. But you can also make the task easier by finally giving the child visual support in the form of objects or their drawn images.

When visible objects appear, the process of real reading begins. It is necessary to promptly and repeatedly indicate to children the direction of reading. Without prompting from an adult, children try to name the elements from right to left. And they achieve this with amazing consistency.

It is to these simple actions that the role of the teacher in our methodology comes down. No complicated explanations, no long preparatory stages, no multi-part role-playing stories used today by teachers with the sole purpose of entertaining a child who is bored in class and making the lesson fun. In the "Rebus Method" children are quite captivated by the reading process itself, and children enjoy this process.

By the decision of the expert council of the Education Committee of St. Petersburg dated December 25, 2009 "Rebus method - learning to read using syllabic pictograms" approved for use in primary school as an additional teaching method.

It may very well be that the child is still too young for such exercises; he does not yet understand what the beginning of a word is and what this adult generally wants to achieve from him. We strongly advise against engaging in such games with children whose speech skills and concepts have not yet been established. For example, three-year-old children are able to seriously transfer the rules of shortening words into everyday communication and thereby provoke artificial speech. If a child still does not have enough memory, attention, abstract thinking, and, if you like, a sense of humor to master the “Rebus method” - this can be observed at four, five, or even six years old - then with this child It’s just too early to start reading, syllabic-pictographic or even more so phonemic-letter. The "Rebus method" is both a good training and an accurate testing exercise.

Oral rebus examples

Oral puzzles amazingly develop a child’s sense of rhythm, attention and concentration.

Adults also find it fun to solve such puzzles by ear. For oral play, we provide examples of puzzles below.

The simplest puzzles - two words

mask-mask - MA-MA
palm-palm - PA-PA
teapot shoes - TU-...
teapot chicken - ...
cactus ball -
ball sled -
mask box -
woodpecker woodpecker
bow pillowcase
cactus pen
leaf sled
letters-lamp
pinecone pillowcase
lamp skirt
scissor brush
cherry scissors
robot hare
bath bunny

The first difficulty for a child is plural

tiger girl
scissors-weight
pigeon fish
brush pen
bull goose
mouse box
scissor fish
disk chandelier
cat-thread
tiger girl
scissors-weight
pigeon fish
brush pen
bull goose
mouse box
scissor fish
disk chandelier
cat-thread

Simple puzzles of three words

mask-bump-pillowcase
mask-leaf-pillowcase
stork-chicken-lamp
beads-mask-tie
tie-zebra-sneakers
cancer-cap-slippers
kettlebell-slippers-cancer
palm tree-mask
cactus-turnip-slippers
cancer-d ear-tie
hare-knife hare-hare
hare-cancer-hare
cancer-barrel-slippers
tiger-bump pillowcase
stork-chicken-ski
zebra-pumpkin tie
weight-slippers-fish
cancer-cap-pumpkin
letters-cancer-pumpkin
lamp-house-threads
tie-spoon-bump
palm-cap-pumpkin
letters-toad-mask
onion-toad
duck-tube-weight
fish-can-whale
palm-duck-whale
cactus-skull-leaf
skull-pumpkin-turnip
duck-umbrella-fish
palm-handle-sleigh
duck-robot-whale
mask-ski-bump
chicken-lamp-whale
robot-leaf-whale

Four word puzzles

stork-pillowcase-pillowcase-cheese
palm-duck-tiger-pillowcase
beads-cancer-tiger-scissors
goose-heart-thread-king
hen-chicken-handle-rabbit
jar-slippers-turnip-box
letters-stork-thread-scissors
cloud-girl-box-spoon
sleigh-sea-vase-fish

Puzzles with unstressed o, e, i

Difficulties in understanding what is read arise in a child when the unstressed vowels O, E, Y appear. The child simply does not recognize the word he read, because in life it sounds different.

sun-jar-cactus
sun-jar-brush
house-robot-tie
house-robot-weight
scissors-tie
cloud-zebra-robot
cat-mask-fish
dove-crayfish
pillowcase-teapot-spoon
spoon mouse
spoon-palm-slippers
spoon-palm-pumpkin
cloud sled
cat-hare
letters-robot-weight
robot tie
cat robot pillowcase
cat robot vase
cat sled
sun-robot-cactus
sun-robot-whale
dove-spoon-sleigh
dove-spoon-vase
barrel robot lady
cook-spoon-sleigh
lightning-spoon-cat
cook-pigeon-lady
wolf-robot-sneakers
umbrella-spoon-cake
robot lady pigeon
wolf-spoon-cheese
barrel-spoon-cake
wolf robot pillowcase
Spoon-grouse
black grouse-watering can-tie
watering can-squirrel-disk
sun ball
robot pepper
gun-tie-spoon
tree-cherry-king
sun vase
spruce-lady
cat-watering can-sun
cat-watering can-scissors
turnip-cactus

Puzzles with individual consonant letters

The consonant letters in these oral puzzles are pronounced not as letter names (Be, eM, Ka, etc.), but as real short sounds. Children understand the meaning most easily in long puzzles.

Stork-pillowcase-pillowcase-C
sledge-zipper-bath-R
lightning-spoon-cake-K
palm-robot-wolf-Z
shorts-cat-lammpa-D
cloud-goose-turnip-C
cook-bear-house-R
cook-gun-tie-Y
wolf-robot-squirrel-Y
fly-cancer-broom-Y
leaf-lightning-N
jar-pillowcase-N
can-rak-N
jar-can-can-N
G-pen-ball
G-lamp-hare
K-thread-tie
K-fish-ball
chandelier-K
sun-K
sun-N
scissors-S
hare-L
cook-L
lightning-L
sun-L
handle-L
girl-NY
month-D-broom-D
Z-broom-Z-lady
...

In principle, any parent can come up with their own puzzles. There is only one thing to remember: every picture word must begin with an accent: cat, but not kitty. Because in the word "kitten" the first ABOUT sounds like A, and any kid will say CA instead of KO.

Accent

the main task reading - understand the meaning of the words read. Let's try to explain to our adult reader with a few examples what exactly, besides letters, prevents a child from understanding the meaning.

Let's take a simple word CAR.

The meaning of this word is really simple to understand: a certain unit, mechanism, maybe on wheels.

But here we write this word twice and ask you to read it out loud:

MACHINE MACHINE

And it is absolutely impossible for the baby to understand the rhythmic and semantic difference between the two following sentences, despite the apparent simplicity of their reading:

THIS MACHINE IS A MACHINE
THIS IS A CAR MACHINE

Changing the writing of just one letter completely changes the rhythm of the phrase read aloud. In addition, the words THIS and THIS are pronounced exactly the same in oral speech.

Another example, two words:

SCARECROW, RAVEN

It is clear that we are talking about one scarecrow and one black bird. But in a sentence

SCARECROW SCARECROW

it is not about two scarecrows and one bird, but about the same single scarecrow that scared away the whole flock.

The examples given explain why some children fail to understand what they read, even if they know all the letters and can easily form them into sounds. Flip through any children's book, and you will find that without strong reading skills, it is very difficult, even impossible, for a child to understand its text. The greatest difficulty for understanding are short words with modified unstressed vowels, for example THIS, SHE, IT, GOAT, FOOD, FEATHER and so on. Children simply do not recognize them when reading, because in oral speech it is customary to pronounce them accordingly: ETA, ANA, ANO, KAZA, IDA, PIRO. Long words like BLANKET, PIANO, QUEEN are recognized by children much easier, although they require greater concentration of attention.

— Barrel-rose-lady, — We give the child an oral task.

- BEARD, - he solves it by ear and cannot understand the resulting word, because in life it sounds like BA-RA-DA.

— Dove-rose-lady, — We continue the task.

- CITIES, - The child deciphers and cannot understand the word in the plural.

- Cook-rose-lady.

- PO-RO-YES, - and again he doesn’t recognize, but not because he doesn’t know about the different breeds of cats and dogs, but because he didn’t think of rearranging the emphasis in the word.

It is this task—training concentration and stress placement—that the “Rebus Method” solves even before the child becomes familiar with the letters.

Comment on the article "The rebus method and its place in the process of learning to read"

A lion! I'm interested in your method. I even think I would use something in Ukrainian. But most of the children I work with are developmentally delayed. I read that you stipulate that not everyone can do it, and it even happens that then children “shorten” words in a real conversation. We had a manual for speed reading by Edigey, which gave the same effect - after reading the “confused” words, the children read the regular text “confused”.
I would apply this approach with caution to poorly prepared children, but to those who have already begun to read, I would give it as a useful entertaining exercise. I also use “windows” to work with a table of warehouses (systematization by vowels, like Zaitsev’s second table), when we come up with a fairy tale with characters for certain warehouses (I cut out a square window in the silhouette of a train or a house, or a robot and catch the warehouses with the window).

16.02.2010 02:08:31,

Total 5 messages .

and its place in the process of learning to read

It turns out that before you can read anything, you need to learn letters for a long, long time, learn complex rules for connecting them, study for many days, weeks, months, but you still can’t read! It’s good if the teacher is cheerful, can play different games and knows how to tell a funny story “from the life of letters.” This doesn’t make reading any better, but at least the activity stops being boring to the point of yawning. Now, if it were possible - once, I’ve already learned it! once and already read it! times, and even understood the word he read! A baby's dream!

It is this child’s dream that our Rebus method embodies. In a few minutes you can learn to read without even knowing the letters, practically without studying at all. Well, let’s not read whole stories, or even sentences, but at least just individual words. Well, even if not yet with the help of letters, which are so difficult for a child, but for now only with the help of syllabic pictograms, as the ancient Sumerians read. Before reading stories, the child has to go through the entire long learning path - letters, then words, then words, then phrases and sentences - everything that other textbooks offer. But with our book, from the very first lesson, the child will learn the most interesting and important thing in reading: UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF WHAT YOU READ.

Just two rules

Our game has only two rules. The first rule is how to isolate by ear from a whole word its first sound pattern (in the word MASK not the first letter M and not the first syllable MAS , namely the first warehouse MA ). For a four-year-old child this is no problem, and within two to three minutes the baby masters our first rule. The second rule is how to select their first words from several whole words, loudly and rhythmically pronounced out loud one after another, and understand the new resulting word.

mask - MA
palm - PA
mouse - WE
cone - SHI
cat - KO
spoon - …

… - LO
ball - MY
kettle - CHA
branch - BE
net - …
pen - RU
Bug - ...

Children really enjoy playing with names in this oral game:

Kolya - KO
Olya - ABOUT
Masha - MA
Dasha - YES
Peter - PE
Fedya - FE
Ira - AND
Kira - CI and so on.

(names, of course, should be familiar to the child). Any adult can easily select two or three dozen suitable words. The only thing that needs to be taken into account: each word must begin with an accent, because unstressed vowels change their sound ( little kitten, bear).

Once the child understands the rule mask - MA and began to echo the teacher, you can move on to the next step. Again, no unnecessary explanation is required, you just need to say clearly and rhythmically:

mask-mask - MOTHER
palm-palm - DAD
teapot shoes - CLOUD
teapot chicken - KU-…
ball mask - MA-…
ball cactus - ...

Two words - it's quite easy. It is more difficult to keep in mind three words:

mask-bump-pillowcase - MA-…-…
mask-leaf-pillowcase - MA-…-…
beads-mask-tie - BOO-…-…
tie-zebra-sneakers - ...

As a rule, children 4-5 years old quite easily solve three-word tasks by ear from the first lesson. But tasks with four words cause difficulties even for six-year-olds:

beads-cancer-tiger-scissors - ...
letters-cancer-bear-lady - ...
cloud-girl-box-spoon - ...
chicken-chicken-pen-hare - ...

When visible objects appear, the process of real reading begins. It is necessary to promptly and repeatedly indicate to children the direction of reading. Without an adult's prompting, children try to name the elements from right to left, and they fail at this with amazing consistency.

Of course, not all children are equally successful in learning. If a teacher conducts a lesson with a whole group of children, then the most intelligent and active students become a “model” for the lagging child: do as they do, catch up with them, get ahead of them, compete with them. If an adult is working with only one child, and he suddenly does not understand the rules of the game, well, you can always stop and put it off until next time. It may very well be that this child is still too young for such exercises; he does not yet understand what the beginning of a word is and what this adult generally wants to achieve from him. We strongly advise against engaging in such games with children whose speech skills and concepts have not yet been established. For example, three-year-old children are able to seriously transfer the rules of shortening words into everyday communication and thereby provoke an artificial delay in speech development. If a child still does not have enough memory, attention, abstract thinking, and, if you like, a sense of humor to master the “Rebus method” - this can be observed at four, five, or even six years old - then with this child It’s just too early to start reading, syllabic-pictographic or even more so phonemic-letter. The "Rebus method" is both a good training and an accurate testing exercise.

Oral rebus examples

Oral puzzles amazingly develop a child’s sense of rhythm, attention and concentration.

It also entertains adults, solving such puzzles by ear. For oral play, we provide examples of puzzles below.

THE SIMPLE PUZZLES - FROM TWO WORDS

THE FIRST DIFFICULTY FOR A CHILD IS THE PLURAL

SIMPLE THREE WORD PUZZES

cancer-barrel-slippers
tiger-bump pillowcase
stork-chicken-ski
zebra-pumpkin tie
weight-slippers-fish
cancer-cap-pumpkin
letters-cancer-pumpkin
lamp-house-threads
tie-spoon-bump
palm-cap-pumpkin
letters-toad-mask
onion-toad
duck-tube-weight

fish-can-whale
palm-duck-whale
cactus-skull-leaf
skull-pumpkin-turnip
duck-umbrella-fish
palm-handle-sleigh
duck-robot-whale
mask-ski-bump
chicken-lamp-whale
robot-leaf-whale

FOUR WORD PUZZLES

PUZZLES WITH UNStressed O, E, Z

Difficulties in understanding what is read arise in a child when the unstressed vowels O, E, Y appear. The child simply does not recognize the word he read, because in life it sounds different.

PUZZLES WITH SEPARATE CONSONANTS

The consonant letters in these oral puzzles are pronounced not as letter names (Be, eM, Ka, etc.), but as real short sounds. Children understand the meaning most easily in long puzzles.

In principle, any parent can come up with their own puzzles. There is only one thing to remember: Each picture word must begin with an accent: cat, but not kitty. Because in the word "kitten" the first ABOUT sounds like A, and any kid will say CA instead of KO.

Accent

The main task of reading is to understand the meaning of the words read. Let's try to explain to our adult reader with a few examples what exactly, besides letters, prevents a child from understanding the meaning.

Let's take a simple word

CAR .

The meaning of this word is really simple to understand: a certain unit, mechanism, maybe on wheels.
But here we write this word twice and ask you to read it out loud:

MACHINE MACHINE

After a short hesitation, the adults come to the conclusion that we are not talking about two units, but only one, which belongs to some Masha. For children, such inference is almost impossible without a certain skill. The child finds it difficult to create many different stress options; he still does not know how to freely improvise in the rhythm of speech. Two simple words are not understood by a child when he reads them.
And it is absolutely impossible for the baby to understand the rhythmic and semantic difference between the two following sentences, despite the apparent simplicity of their reading:

THIS MACHINE IS A MACHINE
THIS IS A CAR MACHINE

Changing the writing of just one letter completely changes the rhythm of the phrase read aloud. In addition, the words THIS and THIS are pronounced exactly the same in oral speech.

Another example, two words:

SCARECROW, RAVEN

It is clear that we are talking about one scarecrow and one black bird. But in a sentence

SCARECROW SCARECROW

We are not talking about two scarecrows and one bird, but about the same single scarecrow that scared away a whole flock.

Rebus method by Lev Sternberg. Parental experience.

This is how you can easily teach a child to read!

All previous pages of this chapter were written before I became acquainted with Lev Vladimirovich Sternberg and his rebus method. This acquaintance did not completely change my idea of learning to read, but it enriched it many times over.

The rebus method is such a simple, elegant and (seemingly) obvious method that it seems completely incredible that it was only invented recently. For advertising purposes, it is sometimes claimed that with its help a child can be taught to read in a few minutes. This, of course, is a very strong exaggeration, if by the ability to read we mean the ability to use books. However, in a sense this is true. Judge for yourself.

To begin with, I start a simple oral game with the child to “cut off” words.

“Listen,” I say. - Here's how I do it:

SPOON - LO...
CAT - CAT...
BALL - ME...
TEAPOT - CHA...

Gradually, I involve the child in this game and ensure that, when he hears the word I speak, he returns his “stump” to me:

- PEN.

- RU...

- PALMA.

- PA...

- SCISSORS.

- BUT...

(It should be noted that in all the words that I offer the child, the stress certainly falls on the first syllable. This makes the task much easier for the child and saves us from confusion with vowels, which in unstressed syllables are often pronounced differently from how they are written.) Then I make it more difficult. rules, and we start playing with two words at the same time:

— SHOES, KETTLE.

- TU... CHA...

— CACTUS, BALL

- PORRIDGE...

— SCISSORS, WEIGHT

- LEGS...

— DOVE, FISH

- MOUNTAINS...

In the same way, the game can be continued with triplets of words:

— SPOON, PALM, SLIPPERS.

- LO... PA... TA...

- CAT, WATERING CAN, SUN.

- WHEEL...

Now let the child play this game with himself. To do this, I show him hints in the form of pictures (pictograms). For example, a child sees

and says:

- CAT, THREAD - KO-NI.

And when I see

He says:

- MElon, CANCER - HOLE-RA.

(You may need to help your child at first by pointing at the pictures with your finger.) Here are a few more examples:

- TIE, ZEBRA, SLIPPERS - GA-ZE-TA.

- LAMP, HOUSE, THREAD - LA-DO-NI.

- BEADS, CANCER, TIGER, SCISSORS - BU-RA-TI-NO.

- CLOUD, GIRL, BOX, SPOON - O-DE-I-LO.

It turns out that the child, looking at the sequence of symbols, pronounces the words encoded in them. What is this if not reading?

So, we have barely started studying - and the child is already able to read something. We immediately took the bull by the horns, and we can only improve. Gradually there is no need to pronounce full names objects depicted in the pictures - it is enough to limit yourself to just the “stumps”:

So far, in our repertoire there are only words that I personally call “Japanese”, because they are composed only of the simplest open syllables ending in a vowel. You have to try very hard to compose a coherent text from such words, although this is, of course, possible. Here is an example (suggested by Lev Sternberg):

Dasha and Kasha

Our Dasha was eating porridge.
Dasha could barely eat.
Dasha is tired of porridge.
Dasha didn’t finish her porridge.

Now the point is to gradually enrich our repertoire. For this we need letters. But you don’t have to cram them. At first they appear at the end of long words:

The child guesses these words from the first syllables and thus learns how to read an unfamiliar letter. After that, it can be placed at the beginning or in the middle of the word:

Acquaintance with a soft sign occurs in exactly the same way:

When a child masters all the consonant letters and the soft sign in this way, he, purely theoretically, can independently read any text - it is enough just to write down all the vowel letters, as well as all the “consonant-vowel” letter pairs, in the form of pictures. However, in practice, we are faced with the fact that not every such pair can be easily encoded with a picture, since in the Russian language there are simply no suitable words starting with this letter combination. This includes not only all sorts of exotic syllables, like FE and BYO, but also the fairly common HU, ZHO and SYA. There are two possible ways out of this situation. Firstly, it is not at all necessary to give your child any texts to read at this stage. After all, you can limit yourself only to those in which difficulties of this kind do not occur. Secondly, we can leave non-coding syllables in the form of letters and simply tell the child how to read them, as needed.

Our next task is to gradually, one by one, replace the pictures with letters. This is done, for example, like this:

By writing letters instead of a picture, we leave a hint in the child’s field of vision, by which he can easily guess how to read an unfamiliar letter combination. It is important to note here that the pair of letters “consonant-vowel” is actually perceived by the child as a single indivisible symbol (similar to how we perceive the Russian letter “Y”, consisting of two separate characters). The child does not have to learn to merge individual letters into syllables, as required by traditional methods. At the same time, he is freed from the need to stupidly memorize more than two hundred warehouses, as do those who learn from Zaitsev’s cubes. Everything that constitutes the main difficulties of other methods is simply absent in the rebus method.

After a child completely moves from pictures to letters, he, in fact, already knows how to read almost fully in words. Unless we still have to tell him about lowercase and capital letters, about the solid sign and about how syllables that are not coded by pictures, like FE and SYA, are read (unless, of course, we haven’t done this before). But by this time he already has quite a wealth of reading experience, so assimilation of this information cannot cause him any difficulties.

This is the essence of the rebus method in a nutshell. However, for all its advantages, it has one serious drawback (which, hopefully, is temporary): this method is much less widespread than it deserves. This means that with methodological manuals and other developments, things are, frankly speaking, not very good. Currently (summer 2014), the full list of benefits consists of two items:

1. Lev Sternberg. Rebus method. Initial learning to read using syllabic pictograms. Workbook. Sternberg Publishing House, St. Petersburg, 2009.

From the annotation: “The notebook contains more than 300 words of varying levels of complexity, which are repeated many times in both pictographic and alphabetic writing.<...>The notebook also contains many exercises for drawing, drawing, and writing.”

From the preface: The workbook “contains only individual words-nouns, there are no phrases and sentences. All words<...>written in capital letters only. It means that<...>the child must continue his education using other methods.”

From my own impressions: Excellent, good material, with which it is very good to start learning to read. Unfortunately, as rightly noted in the preface, this material is not enough - it is not enough for a full mastery of reading.

2. Lev Sternberg. Word cards “Rebus method”

From the annotation: “The set contains 456 cards. On one side of each card the word is written in syllabic pictograms, in the form of a rebus, and on the other side - in letters. This combination allows you to do a lot of things with cards. different games for learning letters and developing reading speed.”

From my own impressions: Here you can find even more diverse words that complement the “Workbook”, but this is still not enough.

That's all, actually. It would also be nice to have a workbook with short sentences and texts, in which a gradual transition from pictures to letters would be implemented, and even better - a computer program that would allow each of us to create arbitrary materials for the rebus method according to our own taste and discretion .

The pictures on this page are taken from the mentioned manuals by Lev Sternberg and published with the kind permission of the author.

Rebus method by Lev Sternberg. Parental experience

Just two rules

Oral rebus examples

Accent

More on the topic “How to teach a child to read and understand what they read?”:

and its place in the process of learning to read

Just two rules

Oral rebus examples

Accent

This is how you can easily teach a child to read!