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:
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