Teaching Kids to READ

HOW TO TEACH A KID TO READ

4 SIMPLE STEPS

MULTIMEDIA - ENGLISH
June 17, 2022

Among the key skills that adults want to develop in their children is reading. But how to teach a child to read? If earlier children were taught to read at school, now it is necessary to do it at preschool age as school programs have become significantly more complicated over the years. Less and less time is devoted to learning the alphabet, and often kids do not have time to navigate in a new environment, resulting in a loss of interest in learning.

As a rule, parents begin to teach their child to read when they become interested in books, enthusiastically listen to fairy tales, memorize poems, and pay attention to signs in stores. Parents can find out intuitively when it’s time. You can pick the book your toddler likes and teach them to distinguish different letters. Try to interest your child with a fascinating topic like dinosaurs, history, or space. For example, you can learn more facts about the west region online and discuss them with a kid.

Experts recommend starting reading if:

1. The kid speaks not only phrases but also sentences.
2. The child has well-developed phonemic skills, can divide words into syllables and hear particular sounds in them, and can easily determine which sound the word begins with and which sound is at the end.
3. The kid shows interest in books and pretends to “read”;
4. The kid has almost no speech defects and reproduces all the sounds;
5. The child perfectly distinguishes where is right and left.

From letters to text: how to teach a kid to read?

The most well-known and widespread method of teaching reading is the traditional method:

1) Learn sounds and letters
Toddlers are explained that language consists of words that are pronounced with the help of sounds. First, they learn to recognize sounds in words, dividing them into vowels and consonants. Then comes the turn of letters. The child remembers that they denote the sounds in writing: we hear and pronounce the sounds, see and write the letters. Everything happens in the following sequence: first, the parents introduce the child to the letter, then he/she tries to find it in a certain word, and only then, a kid will be able to recognize and name it. A significant point – the letters should be called simply without using their alphabetical pronunciation.

2) Connect the letters into syllables
This is the most important moment in the whole process of learning to read. It is enough to just explain the merging of two vowels to the kid, but the secret of combining vowels and consonants is much harder to understand. Adults need to show great patience and imagination and look for clues in the primers. The child needs to repeatedly read closed syllables (vowel and consonant), open (consonant and vowel), and gradually move to read syllables with a combination of consonants and simple words.

3) Read the words
It is vital to remember meaningful reading, which is achieved by the kid at school. They may encounter a repetition of the first syllables of the word: in this way, the child tries to remember what was read first. To make it easier to read the words, you can ask a kid to close with a finger what has already been read.

4) Read sentences and texts
Such an achievement as the child’s reading of the first sentence should be noted. And also draw the child’s attention to the fact that the sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a dot. To achieve meaningful reading, the child can repeat the first words of the sentence to understand the essence of what is read. Don’t rush it. The young student will be interested in reading sentences and texts in which individual words are replaced by pictures.

You can also try alternative methods such as Glenn Doman’s method. According to it, children memorize whole words placed on special cards. The words are written in a specific font on cards of a certain size, the cards are shown to the child a limited number of times. It is ideal for the English language. Whatever method of reading adults choose, it is crucial to remember – the kid should be interested in reading. Alternatively, you will only demotivate him/her.

This post was sponsored by Storyboardthat.

Adapted from: https://multimedia-english.com/blog/how-to-teach-a-kid-to-read-4-simple-steps-109. Accessed on August 8, 2022. © 2008-2022 Angel Castaño - Salamanca / Poole-free videos to learn real English online. All rights reserved.