A Note to Teachers

The idea underpinning Sunshine Readers is powerful, but exists apart from the content it presents. The content puts the sinews and flesh on the bones. It is the choice of content, the dream talk of the content that wins adherents.

One of our future projects includes the following story. (The excerpt below is divided into phrases according to the Vaudio Media style and reads like poetry.)

THE CRAB THAT PLAYED WITH THE SEA
By Rudyard Kipling

BEFORE the High and Far-Off Times,
O my Best Beloved,
came the Time of the Very Beginnings;
and that was in the days
when the Eldest Magician was getting Things ready.
First he got the Earth ready;
then he got the Sea ready;
and then he told all the Animals
that they could come out and play.
And the Animals said,
'O Eldest Magician, what shall we play at?'
and he said, 'I will show you.'

This is the first paragraph of one of the Just So Stories that illustrates the magic of Rudyard Kipling. Most striking to the first-time reader is the ubiquitous phrase, "O my Best Beloved." It is his constant manner of reference to his daughter to whom these stories were addressed. To be a young girl and to be spoken to by your father in this fashion is a wondrous event in a child's life. How does your student feel about such an appellation? Does he/she feel a kinship to the phrase or is it so foreign as to cause disregard, disdain or even anger. The student's reaction to such a charged phrase can remain a secret or it can be made public in discussion. Either way is just splendid.

The power of the structure of Sunshine Readers will make itself felt in conjunction with their rich content. In other stories Kipling refers to geography concepts (latitude and longitude), astronomy concepts (equinoxes), human relations concepts (as in The Butterfly that Stamped), politics, commerce, and nature. With such rich texts, after a while learning inevitably becomes fun.

Another of our projects is the Beginning Readers disk. It contains the Dolch list of 220 basic words, but we decided that the most interesting way to approach the youngest reader was through poetry. Toward this end, we have included classic tongue twisters and Haiku poems.

Each Haiku consists of only a few words, but projects brilliant imagery, precisely the approach we wish to advocate. In approaching these poems and tongue twisters, please do not overlook the time-honored methodology of memorizing and recitation even with beginning readers. Choral reading is also nice, but a lost art.

In the Early America Project some required reading pieces are relatively dull such as The Constitution, but others are blood-boilers. "Give me Liberty or Give Me Death" is hard to resist when read with passion, as is "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere."

In summary, scientists describe synaptic development and strengthening in terms of practice. Surely, a surgeon who performs a procedure daily, does better work than one who performs the identical surgery once a month. The same is true of musicians and their practice regimens. In terms of developing readers, only those who read often and long build up efficient neural mechanisms for handling the ideas that reading presents. Thus, rich contents as a means of motivation should be made available to the reader, if the task is to grow evermore meaningful. With the text and its audio equivalent, no one need be cut off from the intensity and vigor of literature. New ideas are self-reinforcing. Old ideas are new ideas to those who have never heard them. So, in the end, the idea encompassed by "Oh, my Best Beloved" will turn out to be cool in the coolest sense of the word to those who have neither read nor experienced it.

Good learning,
Vaudio Media, Inc.

Return to For Educators Index