How to teach reading skill


Teaching Reading: Strategies & Methods

Various studies show that promoting reading can have a major impact on children and their future. In this article, we’ll look at strategies and methods to support the teaching of reading and comprehension in early elementary school and beyond.

There’s more than one way to teach children to read. So, it’s important to have a range of different strategies and methods to encourage learning in different students.

Teaching reading: strategies & methods

  1. Read aloud to students
  2. Provide opportunities for students to read, write and talk about texts
  3. Read texts repeatedly to support fluency
  4. Teach children the tools to figure out words they don’t know
  5. Provide time for studying spoken language, including vocabulary and spelling
  6. Use prior knowledge to make connections
  7. Predict
  8. Visualize
  9. Summarize
  10. Teach critical thinking skills

The early years: strategies for teaching reading

Literacy teaching and learning are core responsibilities of teachers and schools. Yet teaching reading and writing is a complex and highly skilled professional activity. Many young learners start school with little knowledge about how to read and write. Teachers are tasked with helping children to bridge the significant gap between linking their written and spoken language. Learning to read is critical, with research showing that reading for pleasure can:

  • Promote improved health and wellbeing
  • Help build social connections and relationships
  • Increase the chances of social mobility.

Literacy development is an evolving and non-linear process that encompasses foundational skills (phonemic awareness), word recognition, reading fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension (Simms & Marzano, 2018).

For a student’s ultimate success, teachers must:

  • Understand how students learn these skills, and
  • Implement best practices when teaching these skills.

Learning to read should include exposure to a wide variety of exciting books from different genres. Students should also experience reading through different mediums, such as interactive apps and web content.

Here are 10 strategies you can use to support your students in developing their reading skills and boosting comprehension.

1. Read aloud to students

Read-aloud regularly in the classroom and encourage parents to do the same at home. Reading aloud has many benefits for students, including improving comprehension, building listening skills, and broadening their vocabulary development.

2. Provide opportunities for students to read, write, and talk about texts

Regularly giving students time to read, write, and talk about texts can enhance their skill development across multiple areas. For instance, reading more helps you become a better writer. By talking about texts and hearing the perspectives of classmates, young children also have the opportunity to deepen their comprehension. Encourage parents to further engage young readers by asking them to help their child attack difficult words and ask questions about the text that will promote discussions.

3. Read texts repeatedly to support fluency

Allow students to read the same texts multiple times. By doing this, they not only build fluency but also build confidence. The more confident they become in their reading skills, the more likely they will enjoy reading.

4. Teach children the tools to figure out words they don’t know

Teaching students to read for the ultimate goal of producing independent readers begins by explicitly teaching the code we use to decode words. That starts with teaching phonemic awareness.

Here are some other strategies that support phonics instruction:

  • For beginning readers, target words that are decodable. These are regular spellings with regular sounds. (Ex. such – /s/ /u/ /ch/ not gone)
  • Sound out each phoneme and blend as you go by going back to the first sound everytime a sound is added. Hold the sound (sing) then add the next sound. Ex. /g/, /r/, gr—, /ow/, grow.

Note: Students may want to look at pictures for context, but this does not help them decode words. As we encourage students to read more difficult texts, they won’t have pictures to rely on, so encourage them not to use the pictures to decode difficult words.

This might involve combining strategies, such as:

  • Sounding out a word using phonics knowledge
  • Looking at the pictures
  • Skipping the word and coming back to it after reading the rest of the sentence
  • Thinking about what would make sense.

As an elementary teacher, you can support the families of your young students by sharing phonics resources. By providing parents with practical resources, you are setting them up for a productive and positive reading experience with their child.

5. Provide time for studying spoken language, including vocabulary and spelling

A comprehensive approach to teaching reading also includes providing time to develop complementary skills, such as:

  • Spoken language, including through conversation or oral presentations
  • Vocabulary, such as building class lists while reading texts
  • Spelling
  • Grammar, such as through bite-sized video content like the Grammar Miniclips series.
6. Use prior knowledge to make connections

Each student brings unique prior knowledge to their reading education. This knowledge is the sum of all experiences they bring to the reading or viewing of a text. This could include personal experiences, cultural or religious experiences and concept knowledge. Prior knowledge helps young readers infer meaning from text, a skill recognized as a predictor of reading comprehension at various developmental stages and one of the drivers of sophisticated reading ability. An early reader can activate prior knowledge and make connections at each stage.

  • Before reading, they could ask ‘What do I already know about this topic?’
  • During reading, they could reflect ‘This part of the text is just like…’
  • After reading, they could offer ‘I know more about this topic now.’
7. Predict

Prediction is about anticipation and working out the actions and ideas coming next. An early reader can use prediction at each stage of reading.

  • Before reading, they could suggest ‘From the cover, I think this book will be about…’
  • During reading, they could predict which word comes next in a sentence.
  • After reading, they could comment on whether their predictions were correct.
8. Visualize

Visualizing combines using your senses and activating prior knowledge to create a mental picture. Ask students to create a “mind movie.” Young readers, especially with a teacher or parent prompting, can draw on their senses to imagine smells, sounds, tastes, and images that go with the story they are reading – like a show or movie in their mind.

9. Summarize

Teaching students to recall the main points or ideas of a story is not easy. First, they need to be able to put the story in order, then put it in their own words before they can articulate a ‘summing up’ of the author’s main ideas. To start to learn to summarize, young students can practice:

  • Selecting the key words from a paragraph
  • Locating the topic sentence (often found at the start or end of a paragraph)
  • Responding to general questions about a story
  • Talking through the story in their own words
10.
Teach critical thinking skills

Critical thinking gets readers to think about why an author creates a text in a particular way (author’s purpose). You can encourage young readers to ask some of the following questions to get them thinking critically about what they are reading:

  • Why did the author write this story?
  • What did the author leave out of the story?
  • How do I feel about this story?

Reading comprehension strategies

Opportunities for teaching reading comprehension occur at all levels throughout the curriculum. Good comprehension draws from both linguistic knowledge and knowledge of the world we live in. Students develop skills in comprehension though high-quality discussion with teachers, and from regularly reading and discussing a range of texts across genres. Therefore, the reading strategies discussed earlier in the article should be practiced, consolidated and expanded on as a student progresses through school.

Growing readers must learn to read on the lines, between the lines, and beyond the lines. Reading will involve literal, interpretive, and inferential comprehension as it deepens in complexity. As students get more advanced, they’ll learn concepts such as transferring knowledge to new contexts and understanding an author’s viewpoint, purpose, and intended audience. And when they acquire those skills, they’ll be able to critically analyze messages and information in a range of literacy modes for various purposes.

Recommendations for teachers to support the progression of reading comprehension:

  • Make sure your students spend significant amounts of time reading engaging texts.
  • Select texts for students which support authentic learning. These could include topic-based or interest-based texts.
  • Give students access to a range of texts in various genres (multimodal, print-based, images, animations, graphic representations, video, audio, diagrams/charts, newspapers/magazines, fiction, non-fiction).
  • Identify and discuss vocabulary from rich texts with your students.
  • Give your students time to talk to each other about the texts they have read and listened to.
  • Give students time to write and reflect on their reading.

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Seven Strategies to Teach Students Text Comprehension

1. Monitoring comprehension

Students who are good at monitoring their comprehension know when they understand what they read and when they do not. They have strategies to "fix" problems in their understanding as the problems arise. Research shows that instruction, even in the early grades, can help students become better at monitoring their comprehension.

Comprehension monitoring instruction teaches students to:

  • Be aware of what they do understand
  • Identify what they do not understand
  • Use appropriate strategies to resolve problems in comprehension

2.

Metacognition

Metacognition can be defined as "thinking about thinking." Good readers use metacognitive strategies to think about and have control over their reading. Before reading, they might clarify their purpose for reading and preview the text. During reading, they might monitor their understanding, adjusting their reading speed to fit the difficulty of the text and "fixing" any comprehension problems they have. After reading, they check their understanding of what they read.

Students may use several comprehension monitoring strategies:

  • Identify where the difficulty occurs

    "I don't understand the second paragraph on page 76."

  • Identify what the difficulty is

    "I don't get what the author means when she says, 'Arriving in America was a milestone in my grandmother's life.'"

  • Restate the difficult sentence or passage in their own words

    "Oh, so the author means that coming to America was a very important event in her grandmother's life. "

  • Look back through the text

    "The author talked about Mr. McBride in Chapter 2, but I don't remember much about him. Maybe if I reread that chapter, I can figure out why he's acting this way now."

  • Look forward in the text for information that might help them to resolve the difficulty

    "The text says, 'The groundwater may form a stream or pond or create a wetland. People can also bring groundwater to the surface.' Hmm, I don't understand how people can do that… Oh, the next section is called 'Wells.' I'll read this section to see if it tells how they do it."

3. Graphic and semantic organizers

Graphic organizers illustrate concepts and relationships between concepts in a text or using diagrams. Graphic organizers are known by different names, such as maps, webs, graphs, charts, frames, or clusters.

Regardless of the label, graphic organizers can help readers focus on concepts and how they are related to other concepts. Graphic organizers help students read and understand textbooks and picture books.

Graphic organizers can:

  • Help students focus on text structure differences between fiction and nonfiction as they read
  • Provide students with tools they can use to examine and show relationships in a text
  • Help students write well-organized summaries of a text

Here are some examples of graphic organizers:

4. Answering questions

Questions can be effective because they:

  • Give students a purpose for reading
  • Focus students' attention on what they are to learn
  • Help students to think actively as they read
  • Encourage students to monitor their comprehension
  • Help students to review content and relate what they have learned to what they already know

The Question-Answer Relationship strategy (QAR) encourages students to learn how to answer questions better. Students are asked to indicate whether the information they used to answer questions about the text was textually explicit information (information that was directly stated in the text), textually implicit information (information that was implied in the text), or information entirely from the student's own background knowledge.

There are four different types of questions:

  • "Right There"

    Questions found right in the text that ask students to find the one right answer located in one place as a word or a sentence in the passage.

    Example: Who is Frog's friend? Answer: Toad

  • "Think and Search"

    Questions based on the recall of facts that can be found directly in the text. Answers are typically found in more than one place, thus requiring students to "think" and "search" through the passage to find the answer.

    Example: Why was Frog sad? Answer: His friend was leaving.

  • "Author and You"

    Questions require students to use what they already know, with what they have learned from reading the text. Students must understand the text and relate it to their prior knowledge before answering the question.

    Example: How do think Frog felt when he found Toad? Answer: I think that Frog felt happy because he had not seen Toad in a long time. I feel happy when I get to see my friend who lives far away.

  • "On Your Own"

    Questions are answered based on a student's prior knowledge and experiences. Reading the text may not be helpful to them when answering this type of question.

    Example: How would you feel if your best friend moved away? Answer: I would feel very sad if my best friend moved away because I would miss her.

5. Generating questions

By generating questions, students become aware of whether they can answer the questions and if they understand what they are reading. Students learn to ask themselves questions that require them to combine information from different segments of text. For example, students can be taught to ask main idea questions that relate to important information in a text.

6. Recognizing story structure

In story structure instruction, students learn to identify the categories of content (characters, setting, events, problem, resolution). Often, students learn to recognize story structure through the use of story maps. Instruction in story structure improves students' comprehension.

7. Summarizing

Summarizing requires students to determine what is important in what they are reading and to put it into their own words. Instruction in summarizing helps students:

  • Identify or generate main ideas
  • Connect the main or central ideas
  • Eliminate unnecessary information
  • Remember what they read

Effective comprehension strategy instruction is explicit

Research shows that explicit teaching techniques are particularly effective for comprehension strategy instruction. In explicit instruction, teachers tell readers why and when they should use strategies, what strategies to use, and how to apply them. The steps of explicit instruction typically include direct explanation, teacher modeling ("thinking aloud"), guided practice, and application.

  • Direct explanation

    The teacher explains to students why the strategy helps comprehension and when to apply the strategy.

  • Modeling

    The teacher models, or demonstrates, how to apply the strategy, usually by "thinking aloud" while reading the text that the students are using.

  • Guided practice

    The teacher guides and assists students as they learn how and when to apply the strategy.

  • Application

    The teacher helps students practice the strategy until they can apply it independently.

Effective comprehension strategy instruction can be accomplished through cooperative learning, which involves students working together as partners or in small groups on clearly defined tasks. Cooperative learning instruction has been used successfully to teach comprehension strategies. Students work together to understand texts, helping each other learn and apply comprehension strategies. Teachers help students learn to work in groups. Teachers also provide modeling of the comprehension strategies.

 

How to teach a child to read with passion

Summer is the time to teach a child to read. And for those kids who have already mastered the letter, try to consolidate their skills. What is the right way to do this, not to beat off the desire for the printed word, but to cultivate a wonderful habit of reading? Olga Azova, Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Speech Therapy of the Moscow Psychological and Social Institute, author of the workbooks "Reading with passion" tells.

Olga Azova, Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor, Department of Speech Therapy, Moscow Psychological and Social Institute

— Parents usually start by looking for a primer. Having taught a child to read, they try to accustom them to the very skill of reading - they instill love. Let's also go the parental way to immediately answer numerous questions.
We had a decent reading system in our country until 1982. Then they carried out a school reform and a new primer of Goretsky appeared, in which the frequency order of the letters. When using this primer, children stumble over a serious difficulty - they are taught very early to work with sounds.
There used to be an old blue primer of Arkhangelskaya, where letters were studied from simple to complex in terms of sound value. This is probably the best primer I have ever seen. Everything is thought out there. The sound work was not difficult, because they started with simple consonants and vowels (from iotized only I): everything was pronounced as well as read, it was possible to draw consonants and vowels: MMMaaLLL - “small”.

What should parents do?
- First, we conduct a sound analysis (attention!) only in oral speech. Many games are built on this: name cities with the final sound, who will come up with more words in [U] or [TA], etc. Try not to give children unnecessary designations. Then the alphabet - acquaintance with letters. Make sure she is the prettiest. Then a primer. I repeat that I like the Soviet model. Now it can be downloaded on the Internet, but you can also write words and light texts yourself. In order for knowledge to be consolidated, one should not rush, the skill must be honed gradually, without violence.

How to teach reading?
You can teach a child to read in a playful way, for example, using the Reading with Passion notebook, which is published by the Sphere Creative Center publishing house. The set includes four notebooks according to the level of complexity. The first contains tasks for studying letters, syllables, reading the first words. For example, children will draw a wavy line from a letter to an image whose names begin with it. For example, from the letter "G" preschoolers will run to the word peas, gnome, and from the letter "M" to ice cream and carrots.

The second notebook includes game tasks for reading words of different syllabic structures, enriching vocabulary, and improving reading technique. In the third notebook, the child will read the words of different forms in combination with prepositions. Tasks of this type will serve as a kind of prevention of dyslexia. And in the fourth, the child will easily master the text of Leo Tolstoy "The Monkey and the Pea" and color the picture to the fragment.

How to make children read with passion:
1. Invite the children to read a little, but several times a day—portioned reading.

2. Reward your child for reading with things he loves. Here and now, don't delay.

3. Go to the store or library together, let the child choose the books that interest him.

4. The child can read sentences or dialogues that are simpler in structure, and the parents can read reasoning, descriptions of nature, etc.

5. Form a tradition of family reading. The choice of a book is important here - it should be interesting to all family members. Dialogues can be read by roles and even organize a mini-performance.

6. Read at night to be the last event of the day. Continue to read aloud even to adult children.

7. Read short and concise texts. For example, to filmstrips. There is both content and an illustration, and when the frame is switched, the child gets a short rest.

8. Encourage reading everything that surrounds us and where there are letters: signs, headlines in books, newspapers.

9. If the child likes to draw, you can sketch what you read.

10. An adult reads the text in advance and writes out difficult words, the child reads them several times. When difficult words meet in the text, you won’t “stumble” on them.

12. Conventions will help you read with expression, with correct intonation. Adults make notes in the text in advance with a pencil.

13. Try to stop the child at the climax of the plot (at the initial stage) - this will prompt him to find out "what will happen next."

14. Read more for yourself. Imitation is the best tool to get kids interested in something.

See also:

Secrets of Lukomorye: Reading Pushkin

How to discourage a child from reading. 5 mistakes moms and dads

How beautiful is it to read aloud? 7 tips and exercises from the speaker

development

How to easily teach a child of 4-6 years to read - the best methods and exercises

How to understand that it's time

To the question "When is it time for a child to be able to read?" there is no ready-made answer, but we want to immediately warn against two misconceptions:

  1. “It is not necessary to teach a child to read at home, they will teach you at school anyway.” Yes, they will. But remember: the first year at school is the most intense in all 11 years of study. For some 4-5 months in the 1st grade, the child goes through the alphabet "from" and "to", learns to read, write, and the rest of the time he studies the basics of the Russian language. Therefore, it will be great if he has a reading skill before school. This will reduce the burden on the child.

  2. "There is no time to waste - the sooner the baby begins to read, the better." All children are different and develop at their own pace. Therefore, you should not impose teaching reading to a preschooler as soon as he is 4-5 years old, if the student himself does not yet show interest in this activity. Instead, you can begin to develop an interest in reading through bright and engaging books. A good option would also be games that involve letters.

The indicator to be guided by is not the age of a preschooler, but his speech skills.

It's time to learn to read if…

If the speech development of a preschooler proceeds without gross violations. Let's figure out what criteria will help you find out if a child is ready to learn to read:

  1. Understanding addressed speech. The kid must understand sentences, phrases, individual words that others around him turn to.

  2. Vocabulary. The more words a child knows, the better he will understand what he read. It will also help him communicate with adults and other children.

  3. Grammar. The ability to correctly build sentences, select and change words is important for children who are learning to read.

  4. Pronunciation. For learning to be effective, the child must know how to pronounce words without gross errors.

Remember: at preschool age, a child may have minor flaws in grammar and pronunciation - this is normal. Over time, these violations will be corrected, and they should not be considered an obstacle to reading. But if the baby is not yet very confident in speaking, do not rush him to read - this will not help develop speech, but only demotivate.

Practicing child psychologist Ekaterina Murashova

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How to make learning to read easier for preschoolers

  1. Praise more and never scold

    It's hard for us adults to imagine how difficult it really is for a baby to learn from scratch such a complex skill as reading. After all, being able to read means being able to correlate a sound with a letter or a combination of letters, connect sounds, understand the meanings of the words read and the meaning behind the text.

    If parents take the child's progress for granted and express dissatisfaction when the child does not understand something, this will not push the future student to development, but will only complicate the process. Therefore, it is important to praise for small victories: I learned the letter that was passed last time - great, I coped without my father's help with the word as much as two syllables - clever.

    Do not take failures as a consequence of the negligence of a little student. When a child does not understand the first time, this is an occasion to look for another explanation or give more time to practice. If you feel tired and irritated, you should stop the activity and return to it in a good mood.

  2. Exercise little but regularly

    Do not expect perseverance and a desire to spend hours figuring out unfamiliar letters from your baby. It is difficult for preschoolers to keep their attention in a lesson for more than 25 minutes, and even such small classes should be interrupted with physical education minutes and games so that the child does not get bored. This is exactly how Skysmart prepares for school: 25-minute classes with breaks for outdoor games.

    But regular practice is important - much more important than the duration of the session. And it doesn’t have to be just lessons: you can look for familiar letters on signs during a walk, on a door plate in a children’s clinic, on a package of your favorite corn flakes.

  3. Read books aloud

    In a series of studies conducted by Dr. Victoria Purcell-Gates among five-year-olds who could not yet read, those children to whom their parents read aloud regularly for two years, expressed their thoughts in more literary language, built longer phrases and used more complex syntax.

    In addition, reading aloud with adults contributed to the expansion of the children's vocabulary, as parents explained the meanings of new words that children did not encounter in everyday life.

Expert Opinion

According to neuroscientist Marianne Wolfe, book evenings with parents help develop a love of reading because the child establishes a connection between reading aloud and feelings of love and warmth.

  1. Discuss read

    The role of communication in teaching literacy cannot be overestimated. At first, it is important to ask if the future student is interested, if he is tired, what was remembered from the lesson. When a preschooler learns to read coherent texts, be sure to ask questions about their content.

    It's great if the child reads on his own and without the prompting of the parents, but even in this case, do not deprive him of the opportunity to discuss what he has read with you. For example, you can ask:

    • Which of the characters do you like?

    • Do you think this character is like you? Would you like to be like her?

    • What would you do if you were a hero?

    • Why did the described event happen? How are these two events related?

    • How did what you read make you feel?

    • What do you remember most from what you read?

    • What do you think the author wanted to teach? Why did he write this? Do you agree with the author?

  2. It is important to select questions individually, based on the age of the child. With younger children, discuss everything together, ask simple questions, direct their attention to some facts. The complexity of the questions should increase in proportion to the age of the child. The older he is, the more difficult the tasks should be, and the questions can already affect the "reflection" of their feelings and experiences.

  3. Go from simple to complex

    From the correspondence between sounds and letters to syllables, from short words to longer and more complex words. It would seem that this is obvious, but no: sometimes parents are so happy with the success of the child at first that they push him to study more complex topics than he is ready to accept. Of course, the program should adapt to the future student, but you should not skip steps, even if the child is making progress.

    There are methods that offer to teach a child to read by memorizing whole words. Alas, experiments show that such techniques generally work worse. For example, a group of scientists from the United States came up with an artificial alphabet and offered subjects to learn it, and then read the words written using this alphabet. At the same time, some subjects were immediately explained the principles of correspondence between sounds and letters, while others had to derive reading rules on their own based on whole words. It turned out that the first group copes with reading new, previously unfamiliar words better than the second.

    Therefore, we advise you to choose those teaching methods that involve clear instructions about the relationship between sound and letter - and this is especially important for those children who have difficulty reading. Below we have compiled a few of these techniques that you can use to teach your preschooler at home.

Methods of teaching preschoolers to read

Warehouse reading

The way to teach a child to read through warehouses was actually used in Rus', but for modern parents this technique is associated with the name of the philologist Nikolai Aleksandrovich Zaitsev.

Zaitsev suggests not focusing on studying individual letters, as it can be difficult for students to understand how letters can merge into syllables and words. Teaching a child to read by syllables is also not always easy: one syllable can be quite long ( shine, ruble ), and the boundaries of syllables are not obvious ( Lun-tik or Lu-ntik ?). Therefore, in Zaitsev's methodology, a warehouse is used as the main unit.

Warehouse can be a combination of a consonant and a vowel (pa-pa, ma-ma), a single consonant or vowel (de- d , i-s -li, A -le-sha), as well as a combination of a consonant with a hard or soft sign (ma- l -chi-k, po- d -yem).

In order for a preschooler to understand the differences between the recording of voiced and soft, vowels and consonants, different types of warehouses have their own cube size, color and content, thanks to which the cubes sound when they are shaken. Cubes affect several channels of perception at once, and warehouses should not just be pronounced, but sung - this way, according to the author of the methodology, learning is more interesting and effective.

One of the advantages of the technique is that children willingly play with blocks themselves, and the process of learning to read becomes active, mobile.

Syllabic reading

This technique, according to some sources, was developed by the Romans. Later, Nadezhda Sergeevna Zhukova, a Soviet and Russian speech therapist, created a primer based on it. In it, she built her own system in which sounds and letters are sequentially introduced into speech.

Due to the fact that the concept of a syllable is introduced at an early stage, it is faster and easier to teach a child to read syllables together. By the way, as in Zaitsev's technique, it is proposed to sing syllables, and not just pronounce them.

Based on the syllabic method, Zhukova developed a set of teaching aids - copybooks, copybooks and a book for reading. Benefits will help teach children to read correctly 6 and 7 years old at home.

Both techniques for teaching preschoolers to read are used in the Skysmart Ready for School course. The course consists of two stages: first, children get acquainted with letters and warehouses, which allows them to quickly start reading simple words, and then they learn what a syllable is. Gradually, we introduce more complex syllabic constructions, move on to reading phrases and sentences.

Sound analytical-synthetic teaching method

This method originated in the USSR and is still considered the main one in Russian schools and kindergartens. It was developed by the Soviet teacher and Russian language methodologist Voskresenskaya Alexandra Ilyinichna.

Same as N.S. Zhukova, Voskresenskaya proposed her own order in which children should learn letters and sounds. The principle of this sequence was that the child first learned the letters that can be combined into simple syllables, and then moved forward in the level of complexity. As a result, children learn syllables in this order:

  1. Two-letter syllables (including one consonant): am, ma, ra, etc. and simple words from them: ra-ma, ma-sha, Pa-sha, etc.

  2. Three-letter syllables with a central vowel: poppy, lat, etc.

  3. The combination of the first two stages into words: sa-lat, earth-la, etc.

  4. Words of three syllables and six letters: az-bu-ka, ve-se-lo, etc.

  5. Words of two syllables and six letters: question-ros, tea-nick, etc.

  6. Words with a combination of vowels at the beginning and end of a word: chair, March, etc.

This is how children simultaneously prepare for more complex syllables at each stage and reinforce what they have learned earlier.

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Exercises for learning to read

Learning to read, as a rule, takes place in several stages. First, the child listens to the sound, visually remembers the letters. Different games will help with this, where you need to look for letters, invent words, etc. When this stage is over, you can move on to syllables and games to work them out. And only after that it will be possible to proceed to words, and then to sentences and texts.

Letter memory exercises

The first step is to teach your child to recognize letters. To do this, you can use pictures with hidden letters. We use such exercises in the preparation for school lessons in Skysmart.

Ask your child to identify what letter a word begins with, or name as many words as possible that begin with a certain letter.

Next, we train to distinguish correctly written letters from incorrect ones. This is also important for learning to write: preschoolers often mirror letters or distort individual elements.

Exercises for vowels and consonants

To learn how to distinguish between vowels and consonants, tasks will help you determine the sound with which a word begins.

It will also help to remember the difference between vowels and consonants and search for an extra letter.

Word building exercises

When your child can read short words, ask him to make a word out of letters on his own.

Composing words from syllables is convenient if you have cubes at hand, but you can also try on paper.


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