Teaching Children How to Read

Once a child has developed the ability to distinguish between letter sounds (auditory discrimination) and the ability to visually discriminate letters (visual discrimination), he may be ready to read.  First we teach the letter sounds. Teaching letter names is not necessary for a child to learn to read, and is more often than not a hindrance in the early stages of reading.
Children who have learned to focus on letter names will have a hard time re-learning that the letter "C" does not say "see" and the letter "G" does not say "j". 

Once a child has learned all of the letter sounds, we begin to put the sounds together. We start with these ladders. The children use their fingers to climb up and down the ladders, reading the sounds as they go. Learning these beginning chunks helps the children become smooth readers. Rather than sounding out each individual sound in "sss... aaa... ttt...", the child can sound the word out in two chunks "sa" and "t".  

Synthesizing is the skill required for your child to put the sounds together. We play lots of games practicing synthesizing, so that it is natural and easy when your child begins reading. I may show a child a set of pictures and ask, "Can you point to the ba...t?" 

In the beginning, the children play lots of games finding pictures that begin with the word chunks that they are learning to read. 

When the children have become proficient at their beginning ladders, we start to build words by adding ending sounds. 

Reading is not just the act of putting sounds together. It is important to make sure that the children are comprehending the words they are reading. 


A child may read: Ca...t. Cat!
I ask: What is that?
Child: A cat. It chases mice!

We keep practicing the same thing over and over again until the child has mastered the concept. 

If we move on before a child has mastered a concept he will have even greater trouble with the next concept. A small hole in a child's learning will compound itself with each new concept until it becomes a huge gap. For example, if a child has 75% mastery of the "short a" words and we move on the the "short e" words, the child will likely only gain 70% mastery of the "short e" words. Since 70% is usually considered a passing grade, we could move on to the "short i" words and lessen the child's understanding even further. This child would certainly begin to experience confusion and frustration.

I have very high expectations for my students, but studies link teachers with high expectations to high performance from students. (Studies also, unfortunately, link the reverse. Teachers with low expectations yield low performance results from students.)

Some teachers may argue that it's best not to stop a child to correct him while he is reading. I disagree. "Had" and "has" are very closely spelled, but they are different verb tenses and that difference is important. 

A child who is truly gaining proficiency in reading should be able to read new words, and even nonsense words, by following the phonics rules he has learned.