If you’ll recall from our last Reading Essentials post, there are five essential skills your child must learn in order to be proficient in reading. Over the coming weeks, we will be exploring each of these skills in-depth. In this first post, we’ll be discussing the first skill that your child must acquire—phonemic awareness—as well as tips and strategies you can use to support your child along the way to mastery of this skill.
When your child first learns to read, it may seem like magic, but there’s actually a science to the process of reading acquisition. Knowing about the fundamentals of reading instruction can help you support your child as he or she begins the journey to becoming a reading superstar!
Typically when we think of the skills required for reading, phonics, phonemes, and blending come to mind. While these specific elements of reading are no doubt important, an even more basic skill is often overlooked—memory! Research has linked working memory to reading comprehension, meaning that the stronger your child’s memory, the more equipped she will be to read fluently and understand what she reads!
Remember clapping syllables as a kid? Did you ever wonder why your teacher had you do it? It turns out that having knowledge of syllables is yet another way for young readers to figure out new words.
Educators have long debated whether phonics-based or whole language-based instruction leads to the most effective reading instruction.
Ever wonder why your child’s teacher stresses the importance of practicing the words on those dreaded flash cards in Kindergarten and First Grade? Believe it or not, the top three hundred or so sight words make up about two-thirds of all written matter. Imagine, then, how much easier it will be for your child to read once she masters them!
My child is struggling with reading skills and you want me to check his ears? Many parents know that vision is important, but hearing is just as essential to a child’s developing reading skills. A child can appear to hear just fine and still have a specific processing skill weakness that will affect his ability to decode words when reading.
Who isn’t familiar with Jack and Jill tumbling down the hill, or Little Boy Blue falling asleep and letting his animals running amuck, or Little Miss Muffet getting scared by a spider? I remember reading nursery rhymes as a child from a big Mother Goose book that was very old, and is still packed away in the attic somewhere. When my daughters were young, they read from a more modern-looking book with larger print and more colorful illustrations.
These stories have been around for hundreds of years, and while fun to chant (I can still recite many of them from memory), they also serve a very important purpose in your child’s reading development. Read on to find out why these old tales are still so important to share today.
Most parents of preschoolers and kindergarteners have starting thinking about how they can help their children get ready to read. Hopefully by the time your child is 3 or 4 years old, he has had plenty of exposure to books, nursery rhymes, songs, and the letters of the alphabet. Take a look at my last post, Literacy Activities: Toddler to Preschool, if your child has not yet had these experiences.
As your child becomes more comfortable with the sounds that letters make, you can begin to help her connect the letter-sounds into words….
In my last post I discussed how you can get your child’s reading development off to a good start with activities for infants and toddlers. Those budding skills will need to continue being nurtured as your child moves from toddlerhood to preschool.