Most parents, at one point or another, frets over the education and the
development of their children. Many concerned parents research and seek
information on the topic of teaching children to read and write. I for one, am
glad to see so many parents wanting to get an early start for their children
in reading and writing, because studies have shown that developing these
abilities early on before entering school provides numerous benefits and
advantages later on as the child progresses through school.
More worrisome should be the fact that over one third, 38% to be exact, of all
grade 4 students cannot even achieve a basic level of reading ability
according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This is
an alarming statistic. Will your child become one of the 38% who cannot reach
basic reading achievement by grade 4? For most children, this poor ability to
read can be easily prevented with early phonemic awareness teaching.
Reading must begin early in the life of a child, whether it is just an
alphabet letter, a word, a sentence, a paragraph, or a story. Teaching
children how to read must begin early on, and children should be exposed to
books, stories, rhymes, and be read to on a daily basis. Children as young as
2 years old can learn to read if you teach them to read with the proper
instructions. Please watch the video below of a 2 year 11 months old reading
randomly constructed sentences.
As Lida Williams said, almost 100 years ago:
Phonics is not a method of teaching reading, but it is a necessary part of
every good, modern method. It is the key to word mastery, and word mastery is
one of the first essentials in learning to read. A knowledge of the sounds of
letters, and of the effect of the position of the letter upon its sound, is an
essential means of mastering the mechanics of reading, and of enabling
children to become independent readers.
100 years later, this still holds true. There has been a great debate on what
method of teaching is best to teach children how to read: whether phonics or
the whole language method is better. The whole language learning to read
method is more of a "word memorization" plan, where a young child is supposed
to memorize the "shape" of the word, and say it.
It is important to distinguish the difference between phonological awareness
and phonemic awareness. Phonological awareness is very broad, and includes
phonemic awareness as a sub category. Phonemic awareness is very narrow, and
it is only focused on the phonemes, which are the individual sounds of
letters. There are no shortage of studies which have repeatedly found and
concluded that teaching phonemic awareness to young children produces
exceptional reading and spelling abilities. You can read more about research
on phonemic awareness here.
The whole language method simply expects a child to "read" when presented
reading material, and by memorizing sight words. The phonics method is a
bottom up approach where you teach children to read in a logical and
sequential order. You first teach children the alphabet letters and the sounds
they represent; then you teach children to combine (or blend) various letter
sounds together to form words; which is then followed by reading sentences and
simple stories. This is a logical progression for children learning to read,
where they develop accuracy in decoding words and pronouncing words. This
method of teaching also helps the child to spell correctly.
There's no doubt that phonics and phonemic awareness instruction is the
superior method to teach children how to read. We have successfully used
phonemic awareness instructions to teach our children at age 2 to read words,
sentences, paragraphs, and simple story books. If you would like to learn
about our simple, step-by-step method to teach your children to read and
write, please click below:
SEE ALSO:
Teaching a Child to Read at an Early Age
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