Learning to Read With Phonics

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Helping Children Learn to Read Using Phonics

Reading phonetically is a crucial step toward teaching children to read. The phonics method of study teaches children how to relate sounds to letters. Learning to read with phonics is excellent in setting up the foundation of learning how to read, write, and spell in children.

While a child is learning the basics of reading, it is natural for the child to get easily frustrated with the process. Sometimes, this frustration in turn leads to discouragement and unwillingness to learn, which can have lasting consequences for the child. However, this can be prevented and remedied by using the phonics system to teach a child to read and spell. Learning to read with phonics gives a child easy access to all sorts of queries related to phonics. As the child understands more about the phonics system, he/she learns to read better and more fluently.

The use of the phonics system is universally acknowledged as the best method of teaching a child how to read. This method teaches the reading process over a period of few weeks or months, depending on the ability of the child. As opposed  to the ‘sight reading’ method where the meaning of entire words are grasped one at a time, the phonics system allows the child to learn and understand the sounds that make up a word, and then quickly decode written words.

Learning to read with phonics teaches a child to connect the various sounds in a spoken language with individual letters or a certain group of letters and then incorporate those sounds to form a pronunciation of new words. For example, the sound produced by ‘k’ can be obtained by writing ‘c’, ‘k’, and ‘ck’  under different circumstances.

Of course, while teaching a certain pronunciation, it is important not to confuse the child by introducing different pronunciations of the same alphabet. As per example, the alphabet ‘c’ has a hard sound as in the word ‘cat’ or a soft sound such as ‘celery’. Introduce one sound at a time, let the child to get adjusted to it, and then proceed to the next sound.

The phonics method of teaching to spell and read is widely prevalent and has been in use for hundreds of years. The phonics system is usually introduced to children just as they are learning to spell, which is around the age of five to six years.

Teaching English reading using the phonics system means that the students have to know about the various connections between the letter patterns and the different sounds that they represent. While imparting phonics instructions, the teacher must provide the students with a body of core information regarding the rules of phonics and language patterns.

The concept of learning using the phonics method is considered to be a more analytical approach in teaching students to spell. This provides students with the advantage of being able to decode sounds from within their vocabulary.

Learning to read with phonics is mainly aimed at children in the primary grades. It raises phonemic awareness among students and helps them understand the principles that relate alphabets to sounds while speaking. To make the reading sessions more fun and interesting, teachers or parents can use different types of phonics games, phonics flashcards, and phonics worksheets, or use online activities like the ones that teach kids long vowel sounds and short vowel sounds, etc.

In other words, generate interest in the children so that they look forward to reading with phonics.

Click here for a simple, effective reading program that will teach your child to read in 12 weeks or less.

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Very Young Children Can Learn to Read

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Indeed, very young children can learn to read, and read fluently. Children as young as two can learn to read, and by reading, I mean real reading, not some silly memorization exercise where a child simply memorizes the shape and configuration of certain words, but would have absolutely no idea on how to decode and read new words they’ve never encountered before. That is NOT the kind of “reading” you want to teach a child. For small kids to really learn to read, they must develop phonemic awareness; they must understand the relationship between letters and sounds; and they must have a commanding grasp of blending.

These skills can be taught to young children, and in fact, we have taught our own children to read at just 2 years old. Below is a video of our 3 year old daughter reading children’s books. It contains a few clips of her reading 3 different books.

These are 3 books from the Step Into Reading children’s books. The first book she read is “Oh My Pumpkin Pie”, a step 2 book. The second book is titled “The Dragon’s Scales”, which is a step 3 book, and the third book she read is “A Dollar for Penny”, which is a step 2 book. To put things in perspective, step 2 books of Step Into Reading are targeted for children between preschool and grade 1, and step 3 books are suitable for children from grade 1 to grade 3.

As you can see, our 3 year old daughter has no problem reading these books, which are far beyond what’s expected of her for her age. However, with her superb reading abilities, she is able to read by herself for herself, entertain herself with her favorite children’s books, and she is no longer dependent on us to read to her. Reading is now one of her favorite activities, and before heading off to bed every night, she spends close to an hour reading several of her favorite children’s books.

It’s not difficult to teach young children to read. All that’s required is the appropriate knowledge of how to teach a child to read, a well laid out step-by-step plan, and lots of patience.

Click here to learn more about the program we used to teach our children to read.

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Read More, Learn More, and Know More

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It’s no surprise that the more you read, the better you become at reading – you are able to read faster, more fluently, and have better reading comprehension. Research has found that a person’s cumulative print exposure (or how much they have read in aggregate) is a great predictor for that individual’s educational achievement. Large amounts of reading will significantly improve your reading skills; however, researchers Stanovich and Cunningham performed a series of studies to determine whether reading volume can be linked to any cognitive consequences.

The studies done by Stanovich and Cunningham showed that a person’s volume of reading is a powerful predictor of their verbal skills and world knowledge. In other words, the more you read, the better you become at reading, the greater your verbal skills, and the more knowledge you will have. More interestingly, their studies found that reading confers similar benefits for adults and children alike.

In a study lasting 10 years, Stanovich and Cunningham looked at the relationship between early reading skills and grade 11 print exposure. They looked at a range of grade one measures, and found that a student’s reading fluency in grade one is the greatest predictor of grade 11 reading and print exposure. The grade 1 measures included tests of word recognition, decoding skills, and also reading comprehension abilities.

A span of a decade is a long time, and it’s surprising to see that reading proficiency levels in grade one directly predicted reading skills in grade 11. What this tells us is that an early start in learning to read will provide massive benefits to learning new skills later on. On the other hand, a poor or slow start in learning to read will pose difficulties in learning and reading later on, and the older a child becomes, the more difficult it becomes to catch up. Generally, a child that remains behind by grade 4 will never be able to catch up.

Children who are poor reader almost never choose to read independently, and they tend to shy away from reading. For these children, reading becomes difficult, and becomes discouraging, and it becomes a vicious cycle where they never get a chance to catch up. Children who develop great foundational reading skills early on learn to read quickly, fluently, with great reading comprehension abilities. This leads to an upward spiral of positive feedback and reinforcement where the more they read, the better they become at reading, and the more they want to read.

So what should you do as a parent? Start teaching your child reading early on. How early? My suggestions is generally around 2 years or later when your child has learned to talk. However, you can begin language skills development from the day they are born – simply by talking often to your child and reading to your child. But to start learning to read, your child should be able to speak first. We taught our children to read before they turned 3, and it has always been a fun and extremely rewarding journey teaching our young children to read. By age 3, they were reading children’s books independently, sometimes for over an hour by themselves. Other times, they will read their favorite bedtime stories to us. Your child has the world to gain by learning to read early. Don’t delay…

Click here to see how we taught our children to read at just 2 years old.

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Can Learning to Read Early Make Children Smarter?

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We all know that the first few years of life are the most important for the development of children. It is during these first few years of life where the brain develops the most, and studies have in fact shown that learning to read early stimulates brain development and helps make a child smarter. This is also why you see so many “learn to read” programs for babies and young children on the market capitalizing on the desire of parents to make their baby smarter, and to teach their child to read.

When it comes to young readers, often times, there’s the proverbial question of does the chicken come before the egg or does the egg come before the chicken – as in: does reading produce smart children, or do smart children simply read more? Some prefer to use the “smart kids are better able to read” excuse to explain the reading and intellectual divergences of children who excel in general compared to children who do not. To me, that’s simply shameful scapegoating, finding lame excuses to explain the poor performance of children who simply were not offered the wonderful opportunity of learning to read at an early age.

In a study done at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Toronto, the study stated that reading may well make people smarter – in the sense that “smarter means having a larger vocabulary and more world knowledge in addition to the abstract reasoning skills encompassed within the concept of intelligence, as it does in most laymen’s definitions of intelligence.” Their study data demonstrated that print exposure is highly associated with better vocabulary, general knowledge, and verbal skills. [1]

Learning to read early has a distinct advantage where the young reader goes to to read volumes more than another person who is not given this opportunity. In fact, research has indicated that two days of reading volume of children in the 90th percentile is equivalent to a one year reading volume of children in the bottom 10th percentile. This is a gigantic difference. The volume of reading also has significant cognitive consequences where increase volume of reading directly leads to increased verbal skills and increased world knowledge.

Has it ever crossed your mind to teach your child to read? Stop hesitating and take action. Start teaching your child to read. They have the world to gain and nothing to lose. They will be grateful one day that they were able to read at an early age.

Click here to discover a super simple, effective program to teach your child to read.

 

 

[1] Adv Child Dev Behav. 1993;24:133-80.Does reading make you smarter? Literacy and the development of verbal intelligence.
Stanovich KE.
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto, Canada.

 

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When Can Children Learn to Read?

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Well… I had just finished listening to my 3 year old daughter read her favorite books to me. Yes, indeed, it was SHE who read to me, and not me who was reading to her. Instead of fixating on the television, she prefers to read children’s books. Learning to read early has opened up an entirely new dimension for our children. When can you begin giving reading instructions to children?

Parents can begin pre-reading activities with their children as soon as their baby is born. A baby learns a language by being spoken to, and by being read to. The more time you spend talking to and reading to your baby, the more language capabilities they will develop. Once your child learns to talk, they are then ready to learn that symbols can represent sounds, and printed text convey meaning.

Talk to your child, talk, talk, and then talk some more. Don’t worry if your baby may not understand what you are saying. The more you talk to your child, the more exposure they get to the sounds of our language, and the better they develop their language abilities. Read children’s books and rhymes to your child. Read slowly, and point to where you are reading. By two years old, children who are often talked and read to will begin to develop language skills. They will start mimicking some simple sounds that they are able to make. For example, at one and half , our little boy was able to use simple sounds to tell us what he wanted:

“Meh meh, meh meh” – He wants his milk.
“Boon, boon, boon…” – He wants a spoon.
“Tsh, tsh, tsh…” – He wants his toothbrush.
“Nah nah, nah nah…” He says this when his milk bottle is empty, as in saying “no more, no more”.

I can go on with dozens more examples, but I think the point is clear here, that young children are able to quickly develop language abilities with A LOT of exposure early on. Now back to our 3.5 years old daughter. We began teaching her to read when she was a little over two and a half. Spending a few minutes with her learning to read each day, she was able to develop a superb reading ability after about 12 weeks, and by the time she was 3 years old, she was reading various children’s books. This is not a fluke, nor do I think that we have a genius child. Instead, I like to think that a simple, instructive, and systematic approach to teaching reading was what helped us teach our children to read early on.

Some very important aspects of teaching young children are: frequency, consistency, patience, and lots of it. Young children have short attention span, so you need to keep it short when teaching them to read. However, frequency is very important. Repeated exposure to the spoken language and printed text are key to teaching children to read. Finally, you have to be patient, and never lose your cool when teaching young children. Always offer plenty of encouragement and praise.

>> Click here to start teaching your child how to read today

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