Saratogan starts grassroots effort to help young children learn to read
By Rebecca Ray
Longtime Saratoga resident Dan Ungaro, who served as principal and superintendent in the Saratoga Union School District for 26 years, is concerned about literacy among American children, so he is starting a grassroots approach to teach children how to read.
Ungaro has written a book called Help Your Child Read for parents of children 10 and under. If participants attend a free one-hour workshop that he'll put on, he says, he will offer them free copies of his book. The book contains visual and sensory techniques for learning how to read, such as approaches that involve music and rhyming.
"At present, schools stress an aural approach to learning, using only the left hemisphere of the brain, which stresses a factual, literal and abstract approach," Ungaro said. When teaching children to read, he says, educators should also encourage them to use the right hemispheres of their brains, which are more creative and intuitive. Imagination and curiosity, he says, provide children with a "thrill ride" to learning.
Ungaro identifies "imagineering," a combination of "images" and "engineering," as the solution to teaching children how to read. He says that through imagineering, pictures will be stored in children's minds for them to retrieve later.
Ungaro says he is targeting parents and other caregivers because only they can provide children with self-reliance, self-esteem and the desire to learn, which matter more to their success than grades and test scores. He encourages parents and other caregivers to "start at the crib" and read to their children every day.
Ungaro says he will set up the time, date and place of the workshop after interested parties contact him. For information, call 408.867.2274, or write to Ungaro at 20220 Thelma Ave., Saratoga, 95070.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
