Learn to read for children

How Most Children Learn to Read

By: Derry Koralek, Ray Collins

Between the ages of four and nine, your child will have to master some 100 phonics rules, learn to recognize 3,000 words with just a glance, and develop a comfortable reading speed approaching 100 words a minute. He must learn to combine words on the page with a half-dozen squiggles called punctuation into something – a voice or image in his mind that gives back meaning. (Paul Kropp, 1996)

Emerging literacy

Emerging literacy describes the gradual, ongoing process of learning to understand and use language that begins at birth and continues through the early childhood years (i.e., through age eight). During this period children first learn to use oral forms of language (listening and speaking) and then begin to explore and make sense of written forms (reading and writing).

Listening and speaking

Emerging literacy begins in infancy as a parent lifts a baby, looks into her eyes, and speaks softly to her. It's hard to believe that this casual, spontaneous activity is leading to the development of language skills. This pleasant interaction helps the baby learn about the give and take of conversation and the pleasures of communicating with other people.

Young children continue to develop listening and speaking skills as they communicate their needs and desires through sounds and gestures, babble to themselves and others, say their first words, and rapidly add new words to their spoken vocabularies. Most children who have been surrounded by language from birth are fluent speakers by age three, regardless of intelligence, and without conscious effort.

Each of the 6,000 languages in the world uses a different assortment of phonemes – the distinctive sounds used to form words. When adults hear another language, they may not notice the differences in phonemes not used in their own language. Babies are born with the ability to distinguish these differences. Their babbles include many more sounds than those used in their home language. At about 6 to 10 months, babies begin to ignore the phonemes not used in their home language. They babble only the sounds made by the people who talk with them most often.

During their first year, babies hear speech as a series of distinct, but meaningless words. By age 1, most children begin linking words to meaning. They understand the names used to label familiar objects, body parts, animals, and people. Children at this stage simplify the process of learning these labels by making three basic assumptions:

• Labels (words) refer to a whole object, not parts or qualities (Flopsy is a beloved toy, not its head or color).
• Labels refer to classes of things rather than individual items (Doggie is the word for all four-legged animals).
• Anything that has a name can only have one name (for now, Daddy is Daddy, and not a man or Jake).

As children develop their language skills, they give up these assumptions and learn new words and meanings. From this point on, children develop language skills rapidly. Here is a typical sequence:

• At about 18 months, children add new words to their vocabulary at the astounding rate of one every 2 hours.
• By age 2, most children have 1 to 2,000 words and combine two words to form simple sentences such as: "Go out." "All gone."
• Between 24 to 30 months, children speak in longer sentences.
• From 30 to 36 months, children begin following the rules for expressing tense and number and use words such as some, would, and who.

Reading and writing

At the same time as they are gaining listening and speaking skills, young children are learning about reading and writing.

At home and in child care, Head Start, or school, they listen to favorite stories and retell them on their own, play with alphabet blocks, point out the logo on a sign for a favorite restaurant, draw pictures, scribble and write letters and words, and watch as adults read and write for pleasure and to get jobs done.

Young children make numerous language discoveries as they play, explore, and interact with others. Language skills are primary avenues for cognitive development because they allow children to talk about their experiences and discoveries. Children learn the words used to describe concepts such as up and down, and words that let them talk about past and future events.

Many play experiences support children's emerging literacy skills. Sorting, matching, classifying, and sequencing materials such as beads, a box of buttons, or a set of colored cubes, contribute to children's emerging literacy skills. Rolling playdough and doing fingerplays help children strengthen and improve the coordination of the small muscles in their hands and fingers. They use these muscles to control writing tools such as crayons, markers, and brushes.

As their language skills grow, young children tell stories, identify printed words such as their names, write their names on paintings and creations, and incorporate writing in their make-believe play. After listening to a story, they talk about the people, feelings, places, things, and events in the book and compare them to their own experiences.

Reading and writing skills develop together. Children learn about writing by seeing how the print in their homes, classrooms, and communities provides information. They watch and learn as adults write – to make a list, correspond with a friend, or do a crossword puzzle. They also learn from doing their own writing.

The chart below offers examples of activities preschool and kindergarten children engage in, and describes how they are related to reading and writing.

What children might do	How it relates to reading and writing
Make a pattern with objects such as buttons, beads, small colored cubes.	By putting things in a certain order, children gain an understanding of sequence. This will help them discover that the letters in words must go in a certain order.
Listen to a story, then talk with their families, teachers, or tutors and each other about the plot, characters, what might happen next, and what they liked about the book.	Children enjoy read-aloud sessions. They learn that books can introduce people, places, and ideas and describe familiar experiences. Listening and talking helps children build their vocabularies. They have fun while learning basic literacy concepts such as: print is spoken words that are written down, print carries meaning, and we read from left to right, from the top to the bottom of a page, and from the front to the back of a book.
Play a matching game such as concentration or picture bingo.	Seeing that some things are exactly the same leads children to the understanding that the letters in words must be written in the same order every time to carry meaning.
Move to music while following directions such as, put your hands up, down, in front, in back, to the left, to the right. Now wiggle all over.	Children gain an understanding of concepts such as up/down, front/back, and left/right, and add these words to their vocabularies. Understanding these concepts leads to knowledge of how words are read and written on a page.
Recite rhyming poems introduced by a parent, teacher, or tutor, and make up new rhymes on their own.	Children become aware of phonemes – the smallest units of sounds that make up words. This awareness leads to reading and writing success.
Make signs for a pretend grocery store.	Children practice using print to provide information – in this case, the price of different foods.
Retell a favorite story to another child or a stuffed animal.	Children gain confidence in their ability to learn to read. They practice telling the story in the order it was read to them – from the beginning to the middle to the end.
Use invented spelling to write a grocery list at the same time as a parent is writing his or her own list.	Children use writing to share information with others. By watching an adult write, they are introduced to the conventions of writing. Using invented spelling encourages phonemic awareness.
Sign their names (with a scribble, a drawing, some of the letters, or "correctly") on an attendance chart, painting, or letter.	Children are learning that their names represent them and that other words represent objects, emotions, actions, and so on. They see that writing serves a purpose to let their teacher know they have arrived, to show others their art work, or to tell someone who sent a letter.

Becoming readers and writers

By the time most children leave the preschool years and enter kindergarten, they have learned a lot about language. For five years, they have watched, listened to, and interacted with adults and other children. They have played, explored, and made discoveries at home and in child development settings such as Head Start and child care.

Kindergarten

Beginning or during kindergarten, most children have naturally developed language skills and knowledge. They…

Know print carries meaning by:

• Turning pages in a storybook to find out what happens next
• "writing" (scribbling or using invented spelling) to communicate a message
• Using the language and voice of stories when narrating their stories
• Dictating stories

Know what written language looks like by:

• Recognizing that words are combinations of letters
• Identifying specific letters in unfamiliar words
• Writing with "mock" letters or writing that includes features of real letters

Can identify and name letters of the alphabet by:

• Saying the alphabet
• Pointing out letters of the alphabet in their own names and in written texts

Know that letters are associated with sounds by:

• Finger pointing while reading or being read to
• Spelling words phonetically, relating letters to the sounds they hear in the word

Know the sounds that letters make by:

• Naming all the objects in a room that begin with the same letter
• Pointing to words in a text that begin with the same letter
• Picking out words that rhyme
• Trying to sound out new or unfamiliar words while reading out loud
• Representing words in writing by their first sound (e. g., writing d to represent the word dog)

Know using words can serve various purposes by:

• Pointing to signs for specific places, such as a play area, a restaurant, or a store
• Writing for different purposes, such as writing a (pretend) grocery list, writing a thank-you letter, or writing a menu for play

Know how books work by:

• Holding the book right side up
• Turning pages one at a time
• Reading from left to right and top to bottom
• Beginning reading at the front and moving sequentially to the back

Because children have been learning language since birth, most are ready to move to the next step – mastering conventional reading and writing. To become effective readers and writers children need to:

• Recognize the written symbols letters and words used in reading and writing
• Write letters and form words by following conventional rules
• Use routine skills and thinking and reasoning abilities to create meaning while reading and writing

The written symbols we use to read and write are the 26 upper and lower case letters of the alphabet. The conventional rules governing how to write letters and form words include writing letters so they face in the correct direction, using upper and lower case versions, spelling words correctly, and putting spaces between words.

Routine skills refer to the things readers do automatically, without stopping to think about what to do. We pause when we see a comma or period, recognize high-frequency sight words, and use what we already know to understand what we read. One of the critical routine skills is phonemic awareness – the ability to associate specific sounds with specific letters and letter combinations.

Research has shown that phonemic awareness is the best predictor of early reading skills. Phonemes, the smallest units of sounds, form syllables, and words are made up of syllables. Children who understand that spoken language is made up of discrete sounds – phonemes and syllables – find it easier to learn to read.

Many children develop phonemic awareness naturally, over time. Simple activities such as frequent readings of familiar and favorite stories, poems, and rhymes can help children develop phonemic awareness. Other children may need to take part in activities designed to build this basic skill.

Thinking and reasoning abilities help children figure out how to read and write unfamiliar words. A child might use the meaning of a previous word or phrase, look at a familiar prefix or suffix, or recall how to pronounce a letter combination that appeared in another word.

First and second grades

By the time most children have completed the first and second grades, they have naturally developed the following language skills and knowledge. They…

Improve their comprehension while reading a variety of simple texts by:

• Thinking about what they already know
• Creating and changing mental pictures
• Making, confirming, and revising predictions
• Rereading when confused

Apply word-analysis skills while reading by:

• Using phonics and simple context clues to figure out unknown words
• Using word parts (e. g., root words, prefixes, suffixes, similar words) to figure out unfamiliar words

Understand elements of literature (e.g., author, main character, setting) by:

• Coming to a conclusion about events, characters, and settings in stories
• Comparing settings, characters, and events in different stories
• Explaining reasons for characters acting the way they do in stories

Understand the characteristics of various simple genres (e.g., fables, realistic fiction, folk tales, poetry, and humorous stories) by:

• Explaining the differences among simple genres
• Writing stories that contain the characteristics of a selected genre

Use correct and appropriate conventions of language when responding to written text by:

• Spelling common high-frequency words correctly
• Using capital letters, commas, and end punctuation correctly
• Writing legibly in print and/or cursive
• Using appropriate and varied word choice
• Using complete sentences

The chart below offers examples of activities children engage in and describes how they are related to reading and writing.

What children might do	How it relates to reading and writing
Discuss the rules for an upcoming field trip, watch their teacher write them on a large sheet of paper, and join in when she reads the rules aloud.	Children experience first-hand how different forms of language – listening, speaking, reading, and writing – are connected. They see language used for a purpose, in this case to prepare for their field trip. They see their words written down and hear them read aloud.
Look in a book to find the answer to a question.	Children know that print provides information. They use books as a resource to learn about the world.
Read and reread a book independently for several days after the teacher reads it aloud to the class.	Children read and reread the book because it's fun and rewarding. They can recall some of the words the teacher reads aloud and figure out others because they remember the sequence and meaning of the story.
Read some words easily without stopping to decode them.	Children gradually build a sight vocabulary that includes a majority of the words used most often in the English language. They can read these words automatically.
Read words they have never seen before.	Children use what they already know about letter combinations, root words, prefixes, suffixes, and clues in the pictures or story to figure out new words.
Use new words while talking and writing.	Children build their vocabularies by reading and talking, sharing ideas, discussing a question, listening to others talk, and exploring their interests. Using new words helps them fully understand the meaning of the words.
Recognize their own spelling mistakes and ask for help to make corrections.	Children understand that spelling is not just matching sounds with letters. They are learning the basic rules that govern spelling and the exceptions to the rules.
Ask questions about what they read.	Children understand that there is more to reading than pronouncing words correctly. They may ask questions to clarify what they have read or to learn more about the topic.
Choose to read during free time at home, at school, and in out-of-school programs.	Children learn to enjoy reading independently, particularly when they can read books of their own choosing. The more children read, the better readers they become.

Key points about development

• Children develop in four, interrelated areas – cognitive and language, physical, social, and emotional.
• Most children follow the same sequence and pattern for development, but do so at their own pace.
• Language skills are closely tied to and affected by cognitive, social, and emotional development.
• Children first learn to listen and speak, then use these and other skills to learn to read and write.
• Children's experiences and interactions in the early years are critical to their brain development and overall learning.
• Emerging literacy is the gradual, ongoing process of learning to understand and use language.
• Children make numerous language discoveries as they play, explore, and interact with others.
• Children build on their language discoveries to become conventional readers and writers.
• Effective readers and writers recognize letters and words, follow writing rules, and create meaning from text.
• Successful programs to promote children's reading and literacy development should be based on an understanding of child development, recent research on brain development, and the natural ongoing process through which most young children acquire language skills and become readers and writers.

Teaching children to read isn’t easy.

Teaching kids to read isn’t easy; educators often feel strongly about what they think is the “right” way to teach this essential skill. Though teachers’ approaches may differ, the research is pretty clear on how best to help kids learn to read. Here’s what parents should look for in their children’s classroom.

How do kids actually learn how to read?

Research shows kids learn to read when they are able to identify letters or combinations of letters and connect those letters to sounds. There’s more to it, of course, like attaching meaning to words and phrases, but phonemic awareness (understanding sounds in spoken words) and an understanding of phonics (knowing that letters in print correspond to sounds) are the most basic first steps to becoming a reader.

If children can’t master phonics, they are more likely to struggle to read. That’s why researchers say explicit, systematic instruction in phonics is important: Teachers must lead students step by step through a specific sequence of letters and sounds. Kids who learn how to decode words can then apply that skill to more challenging words and ultimately read with fluency. Some kids may not need much help with phonics, especially as they get older, but experts say phonics instruction can be essential for young children and struggling readers “We don’t know how much phonics each kid needs,” said Anders Rasmussen, principal of Wood Road Elementary School in Ballston Spa, New York, who recently led the transformation of his schools’ reading program to a research-based, structured approach. “But we know no kid is hurt by getting too much of it.”

How should your child’s school teach reading?

Timothy Shanahan, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago and an expert on reading instruction, said phonics are important in kindergarten through second grade and phonemic awareness should be explicitly taught in kindergarten and first grade. This view has been underscored by experts in recent years as the debate over reading instruction has intensified. But teaching kids how to read should include more than phonics, said Shanahan. They should also be exposed to oral reading, reading comprehension and writing.

The wars over how to teach reading are back. Here’s the four things you need to know.

Wiley Blevins, an author and expert on phonics, said a good test parents can use to determine whether a child is receiving research-based reading instruction is to ask their child’s teacher how reading is taught. “They should be able to tell you something more than ‘by reading lots of books’ and ‘developing a love of reading.’ ” Blevins said. Along with time dedicated to teaching phonics, Blevins said children should participate in read-alouds with their teacher to build vocabulary and content knowledge. “These read-alouds must involve interactive conversations to engage students in thinking about the content and using the vocabulary,” he said. “Too often, when time is limited, the daily read-alouds are the first thing left out of the reading time. We undervalue its impact on reading growth and must change that.”

Rasmussen’s school uses a structured approach: Children receive lessons in phonemic awareness, phonics, pre-writing and writing, vocabulary and repeated readings. Research shows this type of “systematic and intensive” approach in several aspects of literacy can turn children who struggle to read into average or above-average readers.

What should schools avoid when teaching reading?

Educators and experts say kids should be encouraged to sound out words, instead of guessing. “We really want to make sure that no kid is guessing,” Rasmussen said. “You really want … your own kid sounding out words and blending words from the earliest level on.” That means children are not told to guess an unfamiliar word by looking at a picture in the book, for example. As children encounter more challenging texts in later grades, avoiding reliance on visual cues also supports fluent reading. “When they get to ninth grade and they have to read “Of Mice and Men,” there are no picture cues,” Rasmussen said.

Related: Teacher Voice: We need phonics, along with other supports, for reading

Blevins and Shanahan caution against organizing books by different reading levels and keeping students at one level until they read with enough fluency to move up to the next level. Although many people may think keeping students at one level will help prevent them from getting frustrated and discouraged by difficult texts, research shows that students actually learn more when they are challenged by reading materials.

Blevins said reliance on “leveled books” can contribute to “a bad habit in readers.” Because students can’t sound out many of the words, they rely on memorizing repeated words and sentence patterns, or on using picture clues to guess words. Rasmussen said making kids stick with one reading level — and, especially, consistently giving some kids texts that are below grade level, rather than giving them supports to bring them to grade level — can also lead to larger gaps in reading ability.

How do I know if a reading curriculum is effective?

Some reading curricula cover more aspects of literacy than others. While almost all programs have some research-based components, the structure of a program can make a big difference, said Rasmussen. Watching children read is the best way to tell if they are receiving proper instruction — explicit, systematic instruction in phonics to establish a foundation for reading, coupled with the use of grade-level texts, offered to all kids.

Parents who are curious about what’s included in the curriculum in their child’s classroom can find sources online, like a chart included in an article by Readingrockets.org which summarizes the various aspects of literacy, including phonics, writing and comprehension strategies, in some of the most popular reading curricula.

Blevins also suggested some questions parents can ask their child’s teacher:

• What is your phonics scope and sequence?

“If research-based, the curriculum must have a clearly defined phonics scope and sequence that serves as the spine of the instruction. ” Blevins said.

• Do you have decodable readers (short books with words composed of the letters and sounds students are learning) to practice phonics?

“If no decodable or phonics readers are used, students are unlikely to get the amount of practice and application to get to mastery so they can then transfer these skills to all reading and writing experiences,” Blevins said. “If teachers say they are using leveled books, ask how many words can students sound out based on the phonics skills (teachers) have taught … Can these words be fully sounded out based on the phonics skills you taught or are children only using pieces of the word? They should be fully sounding out the words — not using just the first or first and last letters and guessing at the rest.”

• What are you doing to build students’ vocabulary and background knowledge? How frequent is this instruction? How much time is spent each day doing this?

“It should be a lot,” Blevins said, “and much of it happens during read-alouds, especially informational texts, and science and social studies lessons. ”

• Is the research used to support your reading curriculum just about the actual materials, or does it draw from a larger body of research on how children learn to read? How does it connect to the science of reading?

Teachers should be able to answer these questions, said Blevins.

What should I do if my child isn’t progressing in reading?

When a child isn’t progressing, Blevins said, the key is to find out why. “Is it a learning challenge or is your child a curriculum casualty? This is a tough one.” Blevins suggested that parents of kindergarteners and first graders ask their child’s school to test the child’s phonemic awareness, phonics and fluency.

Parents of older children should ask for a test of vocabulary. “These tests will locate some underlying issues as to why your child is struggling reading and understanding what they read,” Blevins said. “Once underlying issues are found, they can be systematically addressed. ”

“We don’t know how much phonics each kid needs. But we know no kid is hurt by getting too much of it.”

Anders Rasmussen, principal of Wood Road Elementary School in Ballston Spa, New York

Rasmussen recommended parents work with their school if they are concerned about their children’s progress. By sitting and reading with their children, parents can see the kind of literacy instruction the kids are receiving. If children are trying to guess based on pictures, parents can talk to teachers about increasing phonics instruction.

“Teachers aren’t there doing necessarily bad things or disadvantaging kids purposefully or willfully,” Rasmussen said. “You have many great reading teachers using some effective strategies and some ineffective strategies.”

What can parents do at home to help their children learn to read?

Parents want to help their kids learn how to read but don’t want to push them to the point where they hate reading. “Parents at home can fall into the trap of thinking this is about drilling their kid,” said Cindy Jiban, a former educator and current principal academic lead at NWEA, a research-based non-profit focused on assessments and professional learning opportunities. “This is unfortunate,” Jiban said. “It sets up a parent-child interaction that makes it, ‘Ugh, there’s this thing that’s not fun.’” Instead, Jiban advises making decoding playful. Here are some ideas:

• Challenge kids to find everything in the house that starts with a specific sound.
• Stretch out one word in a sentence. Ask your child to “pass the salt” but say the individual sounds in the word “salt” instead of the word itself.
• Ask your child to figure out what every family member’s name would be if it started with a “b” sound.
• Sing that annoying “Banana fana fo fanna song.” Jiban said that kind of playful activity can actually help a kid think about the sounds that correspond with letters even if they’re not looking at a letter right in front of them.
• Read your child’s favorite book over and over again. For books that children know well, Jiban suggests that children use their finger to follow along as each word is read. Parents can do the same, or come up with another strategy to help kids follow which words they’re reading on a page.

Giving a child diverse experiences that seem to have nothing to do with reading can also help a child’s reading ability. By having a variety of experiences, Rasmussen said, children will be able to apply their own knowledge to better comprehend texts about various topics.

This story about teaching children to read was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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How to teach a child to read: important rules and effective methods

October 26LikbezEducation

Teaching a preschooler to read without losing interest in books is real. Lifehacker has selected the best ways for responsible parents.

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How to understand that it's time to teach your child to read

There are several signs of psychological readiness.

1. The child speaks fluently in sentences and understands the meaning of what is said.
2. The child understands directions: left-right, up-down. For learning to read, it is important that the baby can follow the text from left to right and from top to bottom.
3. The child distinguishes sounds (what speech therapists call developed phonemic hearing). Simply put, the baby will easily understand by ear where the house and the bow are, and where the tom and the hatch are.
4. Your child pronounces all the sounds and has no speech problems.

Natalya Zharikova

Speech therapist with 33 years of experience

A child with speech therapy problems does not hear and does not distinguish similar sounds. From here come errors with speech, and subsequently with reading, and even more often with writing. It is very difficult for a parent to identify violations on their own, so usually a teacher or a speech therapist can point this out to them.

How to teach your child to read

Be patient and follow these simple guidelines.

Set an example

In a family where there is a culture and tradition of reading, children themselves will reach for books. Read not because it is necessary and useful, but because it is a pleasure for you.

Read together and discuss

Read aloud to the child and then look at the pictures together, encouraging them to interact with the book: “Who is this? Can you show me the cat's ears? And who is that standing next to her?” Older children can be asked more difficult questions: “Why did he do this? What do you think will happen next?"

Don't learn the letters as they are called in the alphabet

Instead, help your child remember the sound the letter makes. For example, you show the letter "m" and say: "This is the letter m (not em )". If a child remembers the alphabetic names of letters ( em , es, ef and so on), it will be quite difficult for him to learn to read. Then, when he sees the word ra-ma in the book, he will try to pronounce er-a-um-ah .

Go from simple to complex

Once the child has memorized a few letters (from 2 to 5) and the sounds they represent, move on to syllables. Let the words consisting of repeated syllables be the first: mum, daddy, uncle, nanny . In this case, it is not necessary to break the syllable into separate sounds. Do not say: "These are the letters m and a , and together they read ma ". Immediately learn that the syllable is pronounced like ma , otherwise the baby may start to read letter by letter. After mastering simple combinations, move on to more complex ones: ko-t, zhu-k, do-m .

Help to understand the meaning of what they read

Do this when the child begins to slowly but surely reproduce words and whole sentences in syllables. For example, the kid read: "Mom washed the frame." Stop and ask: “What did you just read about?”. If he finds it difficult to answer, let him read the sentence again. And you ask more specific questions: “Who washed the frame? What did mom wash?

Show that letters are everywhere

Play a game. Let the child find the letters that surround him on the street and at home. These are the names of stores, and memos on information stands, and advertising on billboards, and even traffic light messages: it happens that the inscription “Go” lights up on green, and “Wait so many seconds” on red.

Play

And play again. Stack blocks with letters and syllables, make up words, ask your child to read you some kind of sign or inscription on the packaging in the store.

Natalia Zharikova

There are many exercises for memorizing letters. For example, circle the desired letter among a number of others, circle the correctly written among the incorrect ones, color or shade. You can also ask the child to tell what the letter looks like.

Use every opportunity to practice

Whether you are waiting in line at the clinic or driving somewhere, take out a book with pictures and short stories to accompany them and invite your child to read together.

Build on your success

Repeat familiar texts, look for familiar characters in new stories. Runaway Bunny is found both in "Teremka" and "Kolobok".

Do not force

This is perhaps the most important thing. Don't take away a child's childhood. Learning should not go through violence and tears.

What techniques to use to teach your child to read

Here are six popular, affordable and effective techniques. Choose one or try several and choose the one that interests your child the most.

1. ABCs and primers

Traditional, but the longest way. The difference between these books is that the alphabet fixes each letter with a mnemonic picture: a drum will be drawn on the page with B , and a spinning wheel next to Yu . The alphabet helps to remember letters and often interesting rhymes, but will not teach you how to read.

The primer consistently teaches the child to combine sounds into syllables, and syllables into words. This process is not easy and requires perseverance.

There are quite a lot of author's primers now. According to the books of Nadezhda Betenkova, Vseslav Goretsky, Dmitry Fonin, Natalya Pavlova, children can study both with their parents before school and in the first grade.

Parents agree that one of the most understandable methods for teaching preschoolers is Nadezhda Zhukova's primer. The author simply explains the most difficult thing for a child: how to turn letters into syllables, how to read ma-ma , and not start naming individual letters me-a-me-a .

2. Zaitsev's Cubes

If a child consistently learns letters and syllables while learning from an ABC book, then in 52 Zaitsev's Cubes he is given access to everything at once: a single letter or combinations of consonant and vowel, consonant and hard or soft sign.

The child effortlessly learns the differences between unvoiced and voiced sounds, because the cubes with voiceless consonants are filled with wood, and the cubes with voiced consonants are filled with metal.

The cubes also differ in size. The large ones depict hard warehouses, the small ones - soft ones. The author of the technique explains this by the fact that when we pronounce to (hard warehouse), the mouth opens wide, or (soft warehouse) - lips in a half smile.

The set includes tables with warehouses that the parent sings (yes, he doesn’t speak, but sings).

The child quickly masters warehouse reading with the help of cubes. But there are also disadvantages: he may begin to swallow endings and face difficulties already at school when parsing a word by composition.

3.

In "Skladushki" Vyacheslav Voskobovich reworked Zaitsev's idea: 21 cards show all the warehouses of the Russian language with nice thematic pictures. Included is a CD with songs, the texts of which go under each picture.

Folders are great for kids who like looking at pictures. Each of them is an occasion to discuss with the child where the kitten is, what the puppy is doing, where the beetle flew.

It is possible to teach a child with these cards from the age of three. At the same time, it should be noted that the author of the methodology himself does not consider it necessary to force early development.

"Teremki" by Voskobovich consist of 12 wooden cubes with consonants and 12 cardboard cubes with vowels. First, the child gets acquainted with the alphabet and tries with the help of parents to come up with words that begin with each of the letters.

Then it's time to study the syllables. In the tower with the letter M is embedded A - and the first syllable is ma . From several towers you can lay out words. Learning is based on play. So, when replacing the vowel , the house will turn into smoke .

You can start playing tower blocks from the age of two. At the same time, parents will not be left alone with the cubes: the kit includes a manual with a detailed description of the methodology and game options.

4. Chaplygin's dynamic cubes

Evgeny Chaplygin's manual includes 10 cubes and 10 movable blocks. Each dynamic block consists of a pair - a consonant and a vowel. The task of the child is to twist the cubes and find a pair.

At the initial stage, as with any other method of learning to read in warehouses, the child makes the simplest words from repeating syllables: ma-ma, pa-pa, ba-ba . The involved motor skills help to quickly remember the shape of the letters, and the search for already familiar syllables turns into an exciting game. The cubes are accompanied by a manual describing the methodology and words that can be composed.

The optimal age for classes is 4-5 years. You can start earlier, but only in the game format.

5. Doman's cards

American doctor Glenn Doman suggests teaching children not individual letters or even syllables, but whole words. Parents name and show the child the words on the cards for 1-2 seconds. In this case, the baby is not required to repeat what he heard.

Classes start with 15 cards with the simplest concepts like females and males . Gradually, the number of words increases, those already learned leave the set, and the child begins to study phrases: for example, color + object, size + object.

How can one understand that a child has understood and memorized the visual image of a word, if the author of the methodology recommends starting classes from birth? Glenn Doman in "The Harmonious Development of the Child" strongly emphasizes that it is not necessary to arrange tests and checks for the child: kids do not like this and lose interest in classes.

It's better to remember 50 cards out of 100 than 10 out of 10.

Glenn Doman

But given that parents can't help but check, he advises the child to play the game if they want and are ready. For example, you can put a few cards and ask to bring one or point to it.

Today, psychologists, neurophysiologists and pediatricians agree that the Doman method is aimed not at teaching reading, but at mechanical memorization of visual images of words. The child turns out to be an object of learning and is almost deprived of the opportunity to learn something on his own.

It is also worth adding: in order to proceed to the stage of reading according to Doman, parents need to prepare cards with all (!) Words that are found in a particular book.

6. Montessori method

Montessori reading comes from the opposite: first we write and only then we read. Letters are the same pictures, so you first need to learn how to draw them and only then engage in pronunciation and reading. Children begin by tracing and shading the letters, and through this, they memorize their outline. When several vowels and consonants have been studied, they move on to the first simple words.

Much attention is paid to the tactile component, so children can literally touch the alphabet cut out of rough or velvety paper.

The value of the methodology lies in learning through play. So, you can put a rough letter and a plate of semolina in front of the child and offer to first circle the sign with your finger, and then repeat this on the semolina.

The difficulty for parents is to purchase or prepare a significant amount of handouts. But you can try to make cards with your own hands from cardboard and sandpaper.

What's the result

On the Internet and on posters advertising "educators", you will be offered ultra-modern methods of teaching your child to read at three, two or even from birth. But let's be realistic: a happy mother is needed a year, not developmental activities.

The authors of the methods as one insist that the most natural learning process for a child is through play, and not through classes in which the parent plays the role of a strict controller. Your main assistant in learning is the curiosity of the child himself.

Some children will study for six months and start reading at three, others have to wait a couple of years to learn in just a month. Focus on the interests of the child. If he likes books and pictures, then primers and Folders will come to the rescue. If he is a fidget, then cubes and the Montessori system are better suited.

In learning to read, everything is simple and complex at the same time. If your child often sees you with a book, you have a tradition of reading before bed, your chances of getting your baby interested in reading will increase significantly.

See also 🧐

• How to teach a child to keep promises
• How to teach a child to say the letter "r"
• How to teach a child to ride a bicycle
• How to teach a child to swim
• How to teach a child to write

How to teach a child to read: techniques from an experienced teacher

At what age should you start teaching a child to read

Speech therapist Naya Speranskaya believes that the optimal age at which you can gradually start learning to read is 5. 5 years.

“But still, the starting point for the first steps in this matter should not be a specific age, but the child himself. There are children who are ready to master the skill as early as 3-4 years old, and there are those who "mature" closer to grade 1. Once I worked with a boy who could not read at 6.5 years old. He knew letters, individual syllables, but he could not read. As soon as we began to study, it became clear that he was absolutely ready for reading, in two months he began to read perfectly in syllables, ”said Speranskaya.

How to teach your child to read quickly and correctly

The first thing you need to teach your baby is the ability to correlate letters and sounds. “In no case should a child be taught the names of letters, as in the alphabet: “em”, “be”, “ve”. Otherwise, training is doomed to failure. The preschooler will try to apply new knowledge in practice. Instead of reading [mom], he will read [me-a-me-a]. You are tormented by retraining, ”the speech therapist warned.

Therefore, it is important to immediately give the child not the names of the letters, but the sounds they represent. Not [be], but [b], not [em], but [m]. If the consonant is softened by a vowel, then this should be reflected in the pronunciation: [t '], [m'], [v '], etc.

To help your child remember the graphic symbols of letters, make a letter with him from plasticine, lay it out using buttons, draw with your finger on a saucer with flour or semolina. Color the letters with pencils, draw with water markers on the side of the bathroom.

“At first it will seem to the child that all the letters are similar to each other. These actions will help you learn to distinguish between them faster, ”said the speech therapist.

As soon as the baby remembers the letters and sounds, you can move on to memorizing syllables.

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How to teach your child to join letters into syllables

“Connecting letters into syllables is like learning the multiplication table. You just need to remember these combinations of letters, ”the speech therapist explained.

Naya Speranskaya noted that most of the manuals offer to teach children to read exactly by syllables. When choosing, two nuances should be taken into account:

1. Books should have little text and a lot of pictures.

2. Words in them should not be divided into syllables using large spaces, hyphens, long vertical lines.

“All this creates visual difficulties in reading. It is difficult for a child to perceive such a word as something whole, it is difficult to “collect” it from different pieces. It is best if there are no extra spaces or other separating characters in the word, and syllables are highlighted with arcs directly below the word, ”the speech therapist explained.

According to Speranskaya, cubes with letters are also suitable for studying syllables - playing with them, the child will quickly remember the combinations.

Another way to gently help your child learn letters and syllables is to print them in large print on paper and hang them all over the apartment.

“Hang them on the refrigerator, on the board in the nursery, on the wall in the bathroom. When such leaflets are hung throughout the apartment, you can inadvertently return to them many times a day. Do you wash your hands? Read what is written next to the sink. Is the child waiting for you to give him lunch? Ask him to name which syllables are hanging on the refrigerator. Do a little, but as often as possible. Step by step, the child will learn the syllables, and then slowly begin to read,” the specialist said.

Speranskaya is sure that in this way the child will learn to read much faster than after daily classes, when parents seat the child at the table with the words: "Now we will study reading ..."

“If it is really difficult for you to give up such activities, then pay attention that the nervous system of preschoolers is not yet ripe for long and monotonous lessons. Children spend enormous efforts on the analysis of graphic symbols. Learning to read for them is like learning a very complex cipher. Therefore, it is necessary to observe clear timing in such classes. At 5.5 years old, children are able to hold attention for no more than 10 minutes, at 6.5 years old - 15 minutes. That's how long one lesson should last. And there should be no more than one such “lessons” a day, unless, of course, you want the child to lose motivation for learning even before school,” the speech therapist explained.

How to explain to a child how to divide words into syllables

When teaching a child to divide words into syllables, use a pencil. Mark syllables with a pencil using arcs.

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“Take the word dinosaur. It can be divided into three syllables: "di", "but", "zavr". The child will read the first syllables without difficulty, but it will be difficult for him to master the third. The kid cannot look at three or four letters at once. Therefore, I propose to teach to read not entirely by syllables, but by the so-called syllables. This is when we learn to read combinations of consonants and vowels, and we read the consonants separately. For example, we will read the word "dinosaur" like this: "di" "but" "for" "in" "p" The last two letters are read separately from "for". If you immediately teach a child to read by syllables, he will quickly master complex words and move on to fluent reading, ”the speech therapist is sure.

In a text, syllables can be denoted in much the same way as syllables. Vowel + consonant with the help of an arc, and a separate consonant with the help of a dot.

Naya Speranskaya gave parents a recommendation to memorize syllables/syllable fusions for as long as possible, and move on to texts only when the child suggests it himself.

“If a preschooler is not eager to read, then there is no need to put pressure on him. Automate syllables. Take your time. Learning should take place gradually, from simple to complex. The reading technique develops over time, ”added Speranskaya.

Another important clarification from the speech therapist: when the child begins to read words and then sentences, parents need to clarify the meaning of what they read.

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