I talk with so many parents who are completely daunted by the prospect of sitting with their child and reading the books that come home from school. I always start off by saying we need to think about the words on the page as a code. Children must crack the alphabet code to become proficient readers.
Learning to read takes time, effort and repetition. There is more to learning to read than just reading books with your children. The time spent reading is magical and full of connection and teaching time can and will build on this.
We are not hardwired to read in the same way we are to speak.
In fact, Maryanne Wolf states in her brilliant book Proust and the Squid -reading is not a natural process- reading is a human invention.
“We were never born to read, human beings invented reading only a few thousand years ago. And with this invention, we rearranged the very organisation of our brain” Dr. Maryanne Wolf – pg 1
The ability to read is the ability to crack the code.
You might hear the terms phonics and phonemic awareness flying around and wonder what they are.
Phonics is the teaching of reading by associating the letters or letter strings on a page with speech sounds.
Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate sounds in words.
Pulling words apart and manipulating the sounds is crucial for long-term gains and proficient fluent reading.
Systematic explicit teaching of the sound to symbol correspondence is the only way for some students and all students benefit!
So let’s just take the initial sound /a/ ant... the letter name and symbol is also in words like alien, age, daisy and crayon.
The sound /ay/ can also be heard in the words eight, they, beige, ballet and break. Confusing for you, imagine what your little person thinks?! So reading instruction from the beginning should start with basic sounds moving through the alphabet code systematically.
To read fluently you have to know the words on the page and also comprehend them. Discussing words as you go builds comprehension, and as children decode more words and patterns, reading words becomes automatic. Great comprehension often follows as children now don’t have to think about what the words are, just what they mean.
“No amount of comprehension strategies can compensate for poor decoding skills” Anita Archer
Learning to read starts with decoding the symbols and matching these to the sounds we say
Learning to read is all about understanding the connection between what we say and how it is put down on the pages we read. All non-readers have to decode words efficiently by sound all the way through. As children segment words into individual sounds and blend the sounds back together to make words, they are connecting the sounds to the symbols and form what researchers call orthographic connections. This is making the connection between sounds and print and retaining this in their memory. We help children to make these connections by teaching them about the very sounds they say all day long in a systematic way. First talking about basic sounds A-Z and moving on to talk about more complex vowel and consonant sounds later.
Sound to symbol correspondence is key
Sometimes you might hear people say the letters make sounds, this can be rather confusing for little people, individual letters and letter strings – grapheme represent sounds – phonemes
It is people who make sounds, not the letters
The letters are pretty quiet beasts, really! Letters are representations of the sounds we say. There are approximately 44 sounds, give or take for accent in the English language, and the 26 letters of the alphabet are the visual symbols that make up every word in the sentences we speak or write.
Learning to read starts with the sounds
PHONEMIC AWARENESS
Phonemes are the sounds that make our language out loud. Everybody needs to develop phonemic awareness to manipulate individual sounds in words. Phonemes combine to make syllables and words. Research has shown that strong phonemic awareness skills are the strongest indicator for big reading success.
Phonemic awareness is not just about knowing how many sounds are in words, it is all about manipulating sounds and words. Exploring sounds and words through word building, rhyming and word play such as deleting sounds or adding sounds to words will train your little one to crack the alphabet code.
To advance to become a fluent reader all children need to pull words apart and be able to:
DELETE SOUNDS
Can you tell me what hat would say without the /h/ ?
What would band say without the /b/ ?
What would Sam say without /s/ ?
SUBSTITUTE SOUNDS
What would bat say if you changed /b/ to /h/ ?
What would chip say if you changed the /h/ to a /l/ ?
ADD SOUNDS
Add a /h/ to and what will it say ?
If I add a /m/ to cap what would it say ?
Play word games like these for 5 – 10 minutes a day with your children or students and their ability to manipulate sounds will flourish.
Games all about manipulating sounds and words are a brilliant way to consolidate and review learning.
Reading is not something that takes off after 30 or so lessons — for some it might, but for the vast majority, it takes time
Building words, rhyming words and making silly sentences are all fun activities that develop the skills needed to take off with reading.
First books should be transparent to the learner so they can build skill, enjoyment, and confidence. All children thrive with books that have letters and words they already know. There are now lots of decodable readers, just perfect for little learners to read all the way through.
Predictable readers – such as I can see a cat, I can see a dog are not the best kind of books. Most children get the pattern and don’t really gain anything from this type of book. This is not really reading, this is remembering the words. This is not the same as truly being able to read the words and use the knowledge of sounds and letters in large more complex words later on.
I am a huge believer in activities and games to aid repetition, not worksheets.
The basis of instruction in my clinic is on active learning. Check out the post here for games and activities to playfully build literacy skills.
For activities and resources for early years literacy please check out my store here