The Five-Finger Rule
A Throwback Article
This was originally published on the Mad Genius Club on January 18, 2014. As part of the team at Raconteur Press bringing Boy’s Adventure Books back to the world, I insisted that authors ignore the lexile score. I want the young readers to enjoy the story, and perhaps to learn words along the way!
I found a post on Passive Voice about the Five Finger Rule, which I wasn't familiar with. I had a good chuckle over his one-finger salute of it, and read the comments for further insight.
In the comments, Will Entrekin came up with a lovely rebuttal, and one I think bears repeating and dispersing widely, as it may be the future of reading.
"Five-touch rule:
1) Touch app icon.
2) Touch book cover.
3) Resume reading. When you come to a word you don’t know, touch the word and choose “dictionary” to display the definition. Continue reading while building vocabulary.
4) Touch number of stars you’d rate the book on completion.
5) Touch social media icons to share that you’ve finished (and enjoyed) the book."
So what was the original five-finger rule?
"1. Open to a page of the book.
2. Begin reading.
3. Each time you come to a word you don’t know, hold up 1 finger.
4. After you finish reading the page, check to see how many fingers you are holding up.
Too Easy: 0 – 1 fingers
Just Right: 2 – 3 fingers
Too Hard: 4 – 5 fingers"
Now, I don't know about you, but had I heard about this as a child, I would have been just as incredulous as I am now. I've talked on the blog before about reading the dictionary for pleasure, reading at age 4, and reading on a college level by the time I was eight. I couldn't have done that if I were constrained to what was 'on my level' as that was a moving target. For my own children, I made sure they had ready and easy access to reading material of all levels. There was a 'kids bookshelf' that was about 4' tall and easily 5' wide. It was loaded with titles, from board books and Hop on Pop to Alice in Wonderland, the Black Stallion, and Have Spacesuit Will Travel.
My own books were not off limits to them, either. With a few rare exceptions that I kept inconspicuous for appropriateness, they were allowed to read them. I read aloud to them on occasion, although not nearly as often as I wanted to. They read aloud to one another, and now they all read voraciously.
I think that's the key, making books easy for them to get. Which is why I gave all four of mine a kindle for christmas. Not the latest and greatest, both for budget reasons and because I didn't want them to be able to play games on them. They have almost 200 books in their collective archive, and they were delighted with the gift. I'm looking forward to hearing what they say about some of the classics I loaded on their readers.
Although studies like this one point out that access to books improve literacy (duh) they also go on to say that the poorest families don't have this access. I call BS. In modern America, families have options. There is the library, various programs that sponsor books for families, and my favorite, the thrift shop where kids books could be had for as little as a dime. We used to be given a book per child every time they went to the doctor's office, through some program promoting literacy. My kids loved that one, as with four of them, we went quite often.
Which leads me to think it's not about access. Its about the adults in their lives, whether they love reading and value it as a skill, or not. Kanye West, a non-entity who has attracted a lot of press, and sadly, a lot of influence on kids through that press, said this: "Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed. I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book's autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books."
With examples like that, no wonder kids have trouble reading. Even more troubling are the methods and limitations placed on kids in school when it comes to reading. The rule of five fingers, the lexile score, sight reading, the list goes on and on. Some clever teachers manage to side-step it, but sadly many of them are victims of that education themselves.
So find a child near you and read to them. Give them a book (I recommend picking up clean, lightly used books in yard sales or thriftshops for pennies and having them on hand). Don't eschew the unusual: as a children's performer I was part of a team that shocked librarians and teachers with Captain Underpants when it first came out, but it is a wonderful idea that is now embraced. If you don't have kids of your own, nieces, nephews, grandkids… any will do. Give the gift of love, and read often.
I learned a lot of words from the context they were in, when I came across them in a book. I rarely had to go look anything up, because you can often figure out a new word by the context you see it in, especially when you see it used more than once.
The fun part was not knowing how to say a word, because you never heard it spoken. To this day I have a lot of trouble with the phonetic alphabet, because they stopped teaching it when I was in elementary school - so I had no idea at all what that funny foreign language stuff was in the dictionary by a new word. And of course there were dictionaries that didn't have that at all.
I guess that was my generation's version of the 'new math' or some such.
Some words will always sound different when I read them, even though I've known for years how they're supposed to sound (though 'Get Smart' spelling Chaos as Kaos did not help, I thought Chaos was pronounced as Chouse - rhymes with house - for like a decade). Though other words, when I ran into them in a context where I'd HEARD them out loud and was able to make the connection helped more than once.
And yes, boys and girls do read words differently. 'Sound it out' doesn't really work with boys - we don't read that way.
It's amazing what you can just absorb through reading.