Teaching Children To Read

Teaching children to read is a very complex and difficult process especially for new teachers and those working with especially young children. Though most children go through a series of predictable steps when learning how to read there are plenty of things that can throw them off course and make the literary world a lot more difficult and intimidating for them. Things like not having enough exposure to reading materials at home, having a learning disability, or being left out in a classroom can make a big difference when it comes to how easily a young child is taught to read. There are a few important steps when it comes to reading along with a few obstacles that can make things a lot more complex, all of which this article will go over in order to provide you with the best resource possible for teaching your child how to read. There are a lot of things to be taught like print awareness, phonics, fluency, writing, spelling, vocabulary, and overall text comprehension -just to name a few, so don’t get overwhelmed and remember to take things slow and be patient with your child.

The first thing children learn is print awareness which is the understanding that print on a page isn’t just a bunch of squiggly lines and silly shapes - it’s a language that has value and meaning and allows those who know how to read to take information away from it. It’s also the ability of the child to understand that text is read from left to right, top to bottom and that it can convey many different things. Giving students or children various questions and prompts to answer can make a big difference in their awareness of print and help further them down the path to becoming competent readers. Asking things like what an author or illustrator does, how a book is held, which direction we read from, and so forth can help a child being to understand the ways in which print works. Very similar to this is Phonemic awareness which is the basic understanding that sounds that are spoken work together to form meaning and have a relationship to various letters of the language. This is a very important concept for children to be aware of because children that cannot grasp the meanings of certain sounds will have a very difficult time relating them to words on a page. Playing games like saying certain sounds aloud and having children identify the corresponding letter or word can be very useful in uniting the spoken and written word for them.

The next thing that is very important for a child to be used to is to the various sounds of speech and how they relate to text. Most children that are raised in english speaking homes wont have any trouble with this but if they were raised in a home that speaks a different language or suffered some kind of auditory trauma it can be difficult for them to perceive the subtle differences in the sounds of various words. If this is the case it’s wise to get them with a speech therapist that can help them learn to articulate and phonetically render certain sounds correctly. It’s also a good idea to play little games with them to help them learn new words and sounds and to repeat back to them anything they say that is incorrect so that they can quickly learn where they made an error and how to correct it.

Phonics, though similar to phonemic awareness is not quite the same thing. Phonics is the ability to understand the there are certain relationships and systems to the way written and spoken words sound and the patterns that are used within them. Once children learn to identify various components of words and then the sounds they make it is much easier for them to understand the language of written words. There are lots of easy exercises that can help children learn these concepts. Playing games like asking children to think of words that begin or end in similar ways, finding words that rhyme, and using riddles to encourage children to think of words that have specific components are all good ways to encourage them to become familiar with phonics. It’s also a good idea to teach them the families of certain words that all begin with the same prefix or end with the same suffix to explain how certain parts of words give them certain meanings.

Throughout the reading and learning processes you should take some time to do some basic assessments of the child to see that they are progressing in their reading skills in the best way possible and to identify any troubles or issues they may be having that require more attention. You can conduct little assessments like these by simply watching the child read, and being aware of effective processes as well as watching for signs of spelling and speech errors that can indicate the need for extra help.

Fluency comes when students no longer have to focus on deciphering text, they are fluent so they can simply pay attention to what the text means instead of trying to recognize and comprehend words. This allows them to make background connections to prior lessons as well as recognize and understand words at the same time. If a reader is less than fluent they have to spend their time focusing on figuring out what the words are and then trying to understand the text. There is another part to fluency that is very important as well which is vocabulary. It’s much easier for children to learn to read when they have a larger vocabulary. Students are accustomed to sounding out words to be sure that they know what they are and when they come across an unfamiliar word but sound it out only to realize that they have already learned to speak this word - just not to read it, it’s much easier for them to learn that word and then move on. It’s necessary for beginning readers to make senses of words they hear out loud before they attempt to understand them in print.

When it comes to spelling children have an easier time grasping the way words are spelled if they are taught not only a large combination of individual words to remember but also some basic rules (and the exceptions to those rules) to practice with as well. As long as children are taught the basic patterns, principles and general rules and methods behind spelling it’s really not that difficult for them to become quite good at it. Spelling is also a big component in the overall ability of the child to read. The easier it is for a child to spell a word, the easier of a time they’ll have using and reading that same word. Poor spellers are prone to restricting the words they use to those that they already know how to spell and this can lead to a deficiency in their writing skills as well as their overall comprehension because the struggle with a misspelled word can cause them to lose their train of thought.

Writing is a natural extension of the process of learning to read and many opportunities to write should be presented to children, even if that only means having a box of crayons or pencils nearby for them to scribble with as these rudimentary attempts are often indicators of a much more advanced wish to write and communicate with the written word. Gradually as students learn to read more they will adopt the vocabulary, spelling, and grammar they learn in their books into their writing which will benefit them in more ways than one. With children who struggle with writing encourage them to read it out loud and let them get some of the ideas out of their head and into the physical so that they don’t struggle quite as much with the conception of it all.

Once they have begun to master the ability to read begin to test your young reader for comprehension. Comprehension is paramount to the ability to read because even if your child can sound words out if they aren’t getting anything out of the text they aren’t really reading. Ask them to explain stories and concepts to you from what they’ve read and make sure they are really understanding what’s going on in the material they’re reading. Once they’re able to do that they’ll be the best kind of reader which is both purposeful and active. They read not only for pleasure and fun but also to learn and grown and improve their writing. Being able to comprehend what they read easily and quickly is a skill that will continue to pay off for the rest of their life and specifically with their academic career.

Teaching young children to read certainly doesn't have to be difficult nor does it have to be a painful process. By following the simple principles above your child will be well on their way to becoming an excellent reader and with some practice should do just fine as they continue to learn.