Reading is truly one of the greatest gifts and life skills we can pass along to our children. As it is a complex process that must be taught, the earlier you start, the better. In the world of early childhood education, Kindergarten teachers do the best they can to prepare children for the next stage of their education, but these teachers have a lot of curriculum to squeeze into a day. Over the years, Kindegarten has evolved into a more academically-centered environment. Children are not only engaging in finger painting and snack time activities, they are also learning the alphabet, letter sounds, core sight words and the basics of mathematics.
As parents, educating ourselves on teaching children to read and initiating the process at home can help ensure a smoother learning process once they are in school. This also helps lay the foundation for the competent literacy skills that are linked to success in so many areas of life.
Auditory Training: The First Step to Teaching Children to Read
The good news is if you have been avidly talking to your child from birth and started reading to them early on, their auditory training is well under way.
Auditory training is preparing your child’s brain for phonics by training their ears. This is done by listening, talking and being read to. From birth, children absorb every word, sentence and story they hear. Even if they cannot say or comprehend the words they hear, their ears are learning to distinguish between letter sounds, and this is a crucial step the brain is preparing to learn.
The next step forks into two methodologies: Phonics and Whole Language.
Phonics Methodology
Phonics is having a knowledge of the different sounds made by letters and involves children learning a series of rules such as consonant letter sounds, blending sounds and short vowel sounds. They memorize these rules and then apply them to sounding out new words.
Cons of the Phonics Approach to Teaching Reading
Phonics lessons can be uninteresting, and coupled with the short attention span of children, focusing solely on this method can be challenging in terms of keeping it fun.
Children can memorize the phonics rules, but when it comes to the next step of applying the rules to connected print, phonics alone will not be enough.
Pros of Phonics Approach to Teaching Reading
Your child will not learn to read competently without a suitable knowledge of phonics. Research has shown that competent readers always use phonics when trying to understand new words.
Whole Language Methodology
The whole language methodology uses connected print to introduce children to reading. Children are encouraged to memorize words as whole units, rather than looking at the individual letter parts and sounds as in phonics.
This process is more hands-on and involves writing and analyzing words in their context while using pictures to communicate the meaning of the words being learned. The whole language theory involves the immediate application of phonics rules to connected stories.
Cons of the Whole Language Approach to Teaching Reading
Focusing solely on the whole language approach without giving your child a solid phonics foundation can make it difficult to decode new words.
Pros of the Whole Language Approach to Teaching Reading
With whole language, children tend to start writing earlier and are more involved in connected print, as the use of their language skills keeps the learning process more interactive.
As the process of learning to read is complex, it is not surprising that the approach needed to teach competent reading is equally complex. Reading is best taught using a combination of all three methodologies: auditory, phonics and whole language.
How to Apply These Methodologies and Start your Child’s Early Education in Reading
If you feel your child has not been read to enough to have basic print awareness such as understanding that books are read from front to back, and that the letters on the page represent words that are read from left to right, it is never too late to start reading to them regularly.
If you feel your child has been adequately exposed to language through communication and has basic print awareness, you can start teaching the alphabet and individual letter sounds.
Teaching the Alphabet, Individual Letter Sounds and Rhymes
Your child may know the song, but the next step is learning to recognize each letter by sight and sound.
Step 1: Buy or make flash cards with a letter (start with upper case) on the front and a picture of the letter with a corresponding word on the back. It is best for kids to learn the letters on their own without pictures first so they are truly memorizing the letters and not relying on the pictures for clues. This is best accomplished with short daily reviews of a few letters at a time.
Once your child can be shown any letter in any order and say what it is, you can move on to the next step.
Step 2: Now you are moving on to letter sounds. Repeat the process with the alternate side of the card and go through the letters, their names and their sounds while relating it to the accompanying picture.
As children start to memorize and understand how different letters make different sounds, you can start showing them the letter card and saying, “Tell me what sound this letter makes.” This is a great time to make a note of any letter sounds that seem difficult for your child to grasp. Auditory gaps identified early on are much easier to fill than those discovered after your child is already behind in school.
Again, this is best accomplished with short daily reviews. Remember this is a process you are initiating. If your child is completely uninterested, you may be starting too early. If your child shows an interest, use their behavior to gauge how many letter sounds to cover in a day. Do the exercises in the morning when they are fresh and energetic.
If a child is losing interest or you feel yourself or your child getting frustrated, stop. You want this to be a positive experience for your child so they can build a positive association with the process of learning to read.
Step 3: A great way to improve auditory skills, introduce word families (hat, bat, cat), and show the letter sounds at work is by teaching children how to rhyme.
As children learn the concept of rhyming, they are learning to recognize that words can have the same sound endings with different sound beginnings and that words can look different but still rhyme. They can also have fun and bond with you while learning to rhyme.
Game to Teach Rhyming
Dr. Peggy Wilber is a teacher, author, and champion of child literacy. She believes it is easiest for children to learn this concept with the teacher modeling how to rhyme. Wilber suggests a rhyming word list and a game where you point to a body part, say a word that rhymes with it, and the child should say the body part.
Step 1: Tell your child that you are playing a rhyming game and that rhyming words have the same sound endings. Tell them, “I’m pointing to something on my body, and I am going to say a word. You are going to say the body part that rhymes with that word.”
Step 2: Show them with an example: “If I am pointing to my head, and I say ’bed’, you say ‘head’.”
Step 3: Repeat the process until your child can do it in reverse also. You can point to your ‘head’, and your child can say ‘bed’.
This game sharpens their auditory skills and letter sound awareness by using the visual cue of pointing in a fun learning atmosphere.
Here is a list of body part/rhyming word combinations you can use for the game: deer-ear, go-toe, bye-eye, pail-nail, gum-thumb, deck-neck, sack-back, put-foot, see-knee, bear-hair, peek-cheek, fin-chin, farm-arm, band-hand, feel-heel.
To compliment your rhyming lessons in a fun way, work some Dr. Seuss into your bedtime reading routine.
Teaching How to Put Sounds Together
This process involves helping children connect sounds into words, and Wilber describes doing this by breaking small words into three sounds for the child to put together.
You would say, “I’m going to say three sounds, and you put them together.” Then you would give them an example: ‘b’-‘a’-‘t’ = “bat.”
Wilber further recommends starting with nouns that are visual and moving on to words that do not create solid mental images: m-o-m, d-a-d, d-e-sk, br-ai-n, tr-e-e, b-ir-d, s-u-n, gr-ee-n, st-o-p, c-a-n, w-i-ll, a-n-d, b-u-t.
Once your child can put sounds together and has made the mental connection between individual sound units and words, you can start to connect these principles to their favorite books and stories.
Applying Words to Print
This is where your child really starts to benefit from all their hard work as their minds can explore the connections between the words and sounds they have learned and the worlds in the stories they know and love.
Step 1: Choose one of your child’s favorite stories and pick a few words from one page.
Step 2: Break up each chosen word into the three sound parts like you did when teaching how to put sounds together.
Step 3: Say the word’s three sounds and then ask your child to put them together and say them.
Step 4: Have your child help you find those words on the page and read them together. Your child now has the visual connection between the word sounds they put together and the print on the page.
The next step is simple: keep reading to and with your child. Before you know it, your child will be reading to you. By initiating this learning process at home, you are helping your child acquire competency, confidence, and the colorful imagination fostered by competent reading.
Sources:
- Birth to18 months: From Babbling to Words. PBS Parents. Accessed July 17, 2011.
- Print Awareness. Reading Rockets. Accessed July 21, 2011.
- Teaching Your Child to Read. Ben's ABC. Accessed July 20, 2011.
- Wilber, Peggy. Succeed to Read. Accessed July 22, 2011.
Lara Smith - is a freelance writer with a Bachelor of Arts in English, History and Religious Studies.
