Reading For Beginners - Word Shapes (1969)

[Music] this is part of something you've seen before can you guess what it is here's another part of it do you know what it is yet does this part help you let's see all the parts together it's a chair its shape tells you that all the parts are there that you saw before the legs the back the seat but it's really seeing the shape of the whole chair that helps you know what it is and you know that the chair is now beside a table all the parts of the table give it a certain shape all you need is a quick look like this or like this and you can tell if you're seeing a chair or a table or both of them you see what was that now do you see did you recognize the words chair and table they have a certain shape too the letters give them their shape there are 26 letters in our alphabet and every letter has a shape you know what this letter is because you recognize its shape its shape comes from a small round part on the bottom and a tall straight line on the right this is a d d is a tall letter O is a small letter it has a shape you recognize too like a circle and if you recognize the shape of this letter you know it's a g it has the tail and the three letters make a word you recognize dog dog a dog has a certain shape and so does the word dog we can help you see the shape like this do you see even without the letters you can almost tell from the shape that this is the word dog see the letters give it its shape and all you need is a quick look and you recognize the word all the words you read get their shapes from their letters let's think about a dog again like this and let's think about an elephant like this now you might not recognize the word elephant when you see it so here it is and here is dog but we're thinking about shapes now you know that different letters are in the two words but can you see another difference well the word elephant is longer than dog you see the number of letters in a word helps to give it a certain shape too shall we try a test test here are two word shapes one is the shape of the word for this a helicopter and the other is the shape of the word for this a jet all right which word is helicopter the top one that's right even if you couldn't recognize the word helicopter you probably guessed that it was longer than jet words that look very different like helicopter and jet and dog and elephant are easy to tell apart because they look so different but there are many words that look very much alike we're going to make some now one of them is the word pot the other is the word pet when you look at a pet and a pot it's easy to tell which is the pot and which is the pet all you need is a quick look but was that the word pet or pot you see the words pot and pet look very much alike pot has three letters and pet has three letters the two words have almost the same shapes that's because they both begin with p and they both end with t and both of their middle letters look very much alike o and E are both small round letters there's just a little difference the O is is closed the E is open on one side and has a line across it it's just a little difference but it's an important one you have to be able to notice the small things that make words different if you want to recognize them correctly sometimes the Small Things Are letters that look very much alike let's see how good you are with two other words that look alike here's a girl she's going to wear something it's a did you look carefully is she going to wear a bell or a belt if you saw the little difference between an l and a t then you know the girl is wearing a bell so when the shapes of words are alike you have to look carefully to notice the little differences in the letters let's try one more test think of going uphill and think of going downhill and think of the words uphill and downhill ready was that uphill or downhill here's the word again were you right here is downhill these parts of the two words have the same shapes you see you have to notice the differences in the parts that aren't the same to recognize the whole words but usually words aren't by themselves when you read words they're usually in sentences this is what the girl thinks she's reading the lion had a large yellow name does that really Mak sense let's look at the words the lion had a large yellow is the last word name no it's the word Main a lion's man is the long hair that hangs down around its neck the lion had a large yellow main Maine do you see how much alike M and name look the only difference is in the different positions of the n and M you have to see the difference for the sentence to make sense now it makes sense when a sentence doesn't make sense sometimes it's because you didn't recognize a word suppose the girl thinks she's reading this the bike had two flat tries flat tries let's look at the words do you see a word the girl didn't recognize correctly right it isn't tries is it the bike had two flat tires so you see recognizing words is an important part of reading you have to see little differences was that sun or soon is the next word West or vest is the next word charged or changed want another look now what about word shapes is this the shape of the word television or radio you have to notice big differences too sometimes you notice the shape of the whole word sometimes you notice the shape of certain letters and sometimes you notice the position of certain letters in the words all these things help you recognize words with just a quick look like this did you recognize those words is this what you read then you know that this is the [Music] end