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Steps to teaching reading


9 Fun and Easy Tips

With the abundance of information out there, it can seem like there is no clear answer about how to teach a child to read. As a busy parent, you may not have time to wade through all of the conflicting opinions.

That’s why we’re here to help! There are some key elements when it comes to teaching kids to read, so we’ve rounded up nine effective tips to help you boost your child’s reading skills and confidence.

These tips are simple, fit into your lifestyle, and help build foundational reading skills while having fun!

Tips For How To Teach A Child To Read

1) Focus On Letter Sounds Over Letter Names

We used to learn that “b” stands for “ball.” But when you say the word ball, it sounds different than saying the letter B on its own. That can be a strange concept for a young child to wrap their head around!

Instead of focusing on letter names, we recommend teaching them the sounds associated with each letter of the alphabet. For example, you could explain that B makes the /b/ sound (pronounced just like it sounds when you say the word ball aloud).

Once they firmly establish a link between a handful of letters and their sounds, children can begin to sound out short words. Knowing the sounds for B, T, and A allows a child to sound out both bat and tab.

As the number of links between letters and sounds grows, so will the number of words your child can sound out!

Now, does this mean that if your child already began learning by matching formal alphabet letter names with words, they won’t learn to match sounds and letters or learn how to read? Of course not!

We simply recommend this process as a learning method that can help some kids with the jump from letter sounds to words.

2) Begin With Uppercase Letters

Practicing how to make letters is way easier when they all look unique! This is why we teach uppercase letters to children who aren’t in formal schooling yet.

Even though lowercase letters are the most common format for letters (if you open a book at any page, the majority of the letters will be lowercase), uppercase letters are easier to distinguish from one another and, therefore, easier to identify.

Think about it –– “b” and “d” look an awful lot alike! But “B” and “D” are much easier to distinguish. Starting with uppercase letters, then, will help your child to grasp the basics of letter identification and, subsequently, reading.

To help your child learn uppercase letters, we find that engaging their sense of physical touch can be especially useful. If you want to try this, you might consider buying textured paper, like sandpaper, and cutting out the shapes of uppercase letters.

Ask your child to put their hands behind their back, and then place the letter in their hands. They can use their sense of touch to guess what letter they’re holding! You can play the same game with magnetic letters.

3) Incorporate Phonics

Research has demonstrated that kids with a strong background in phonics (the relationship between sounds and symbols) tend to become stronger readers in the long-run.

A phonetic approach to reading shows a child how to go letter by letter — sound by sound — blending the sounds as you go in order to read words that the child (or adult) has not yet memorized.

Once kids develop a level of automatization, they can sound out words almost instantly and only need to employ decoding with longer words. Phonics is best taught explicitly, sequentially, and systematically — which is the method HOMER uses.

If you’re looking for support helping your child learn phonics, our HOMER Learn & Grow app might be exactly what you need! With a proven reading pathway for your child, HOMER makes learning fun!

4) Balance Phonics And Sight Words

Sight words are also an important part of teaching your child how to read. These are common words that are usually not spelled the way they sound and can’t be decoded (sounded out).

Because we don’t want to undo the work your child has done to learn phonics, sight words should be memorized. But keep in mind that learning sight words can be challenging for many young children.

So, if you want to give your child a good start on their reading journey, it’s best to spend the majority of your time developing and reinforcing the information and skills needed to sound out words.

5) Talk A Lot

Even though talking is usually thought of as a speech-only skill, that’s not true. Your child is like a sponge. They’re absorbing everything, all the time, including the words you say (and the ones you wish they hadn’t heard)!

Talking with your child frequently and engaging their listening and storytelling skills can increase their vocabulary.

It can also help them form sentences, become familiar with new words and how they are used, as well as learn how to use context clues when someone is speaking about something they may not know a lot about.

All of these skills are extremely helpful for your child on their reading journey, and talking gives you both an opportunity to share and create moments you’ll treasure forever!



6) Keep It Light

Reading is about having fun and exploring the world (real and imaginary) through text, pictures, and illustrations. When it comes to reading, it’s better for your child to be relaxed and focused on what they’re learning than squeezing in a stressful session after a long day.

We’re about halfway through the list and want to give a gentle reminder that your child shouldn’t feel any pressure when it comes to reading — and neither should you!

Although consistency is always helpful, we recommend focusing on quality over quantity. Fifteen minutes might sound like a short amount of time, but studies have shown that 15 minutes a day of HOMER’s reading pathway can increase early reading scores by 74%!

It may also take some time to find out exactly what will keep your child interested and engaged in learning. That’s OK! If it’s not fun, lighthearted, and enjoyable for you and your child, then shake it off and try something new.

7) Practice Shared Reading

While you read with your child, consider asking them to repeat words or sentences back to you every now and then while you follow along with your finger.

There’s no need to stop your reading time completely if your child struggles with a particular word. An encouraging reminder of what the word means or how it’s pronounced is plenty!

Another option is to split reading aloud time with your child. For emerging readers, you can read one line and then ask them to read the next. For older children, reading one page and letting them read the next page is beneficial.

Doing this helps your child feel capable and confident, which is important for encouraging them to read well and consistently!

This technique also gets your child more acquainted with the natural flow of reading. While they look at the pictures and listen happily to the story, they’ll begin to focus on the words they are reading and engage more with the book in front of them.

Rereading books can also be helpful. It allows children to develop a deeper understanding of the words in a text, make familiar words into “known” words that are then incorporated into their vocabulary, and form a connection with the story.

We wholeheartedly recommend rereading!

8) Play Word Games

Getting your child involved in reading doesn’t have to be about just books. Word games can be a great way to engage your child’s skills without reading a whole story at once.

One of our favorite reading games only requires a stack of Post-It notes and a bunched-up sock. For this activity, write sight words or words your child can sound out onto separate Post-It notes. Then stick the notes to the wall.

Your child can then stand in front of the Post-Its with the bunched-up sock in their hands. You say one of the words and your child throws the sock-ball at the Post-It note that matches!

9) Read With Unconventional Materials

In the same way that word games can help your child learn how to read, so can encouraging your child to read without actually using books!

If you’re interested in doing this, consider using PlayDoh, clay, paint, or indoor-safe sand to form and shape letters or words.

Another option is to fill a large pot with magnetic letters. For emerging learners, suggest that they pull a letter from the pot and try to name the sound it makes. For slightly older learners, see if they can name a word that begins with the same sound, or grab a collection of letters that come together to form a word.

As your child becomes more proficient, you can scale these activities to make them a little more advanced. And remember to have fun with it!

Reading Comes With Time And Practice

Overall, we want to leave you with this: there is no single answer to how to teach a child to read. What works for your neighbor’s child may not work for yours –– and that’s perfectly OK!

Patience, practicing a little every day, and emphasizing activities that let your child enjoy reading are the things we encourage most. Reading is about fun, exploration, and learning!

And if you ever need a bit of support, we’re here for you! At HOMER, we’re your learning partner. Start your child’s reading journey with confidence with our personalized program plus expert tips and learning resources.

Author

The 7 Main Steps To Teach Reading, From Beginning To Reading Comprehension

There are seven main steps to teaching reading to a child from the beginning to reading comprehension. They are as follows:

Step 1: Teach the sounds of individual letters:

Students need to learn the individual sounds in words and that words are made up of small parts of sound and phonemes. Recognizing individual sounds and understanding the relationship between letters and spoken sounds (phonics) create phonemic awareness.

Be sure to emphasize ending sounds as well as the more obvious beginning sounds. Listening for ending sounds is sometimes overlooked, yet it is very important.

Step 2: Teach sound blends:

Sound blends such as st, fl, dr, sh, etc should be emphasized as well as digraphs such as ch, ck, ph. These letters together form distinct sounds or phonemes.

Step 3: Teach whole words:

Whole-word recognition or word identification is made up of being able to use sound-symbol relationships. This is an important skill that deserves the time students spend to master. Word families- bat, cat, pat, sat, etc. are important in this stage. Vowels should require special attention in this stage, especially when distancing between short /i/ and short /e/ (As in /pit/ and /pet/) throughout the whole-word reading process.

We learn some sight words incidentally or in the course of everyday life. Certain words are just recognized by their appearance and EFL students can recognize and appear to “read” signs and advertisements, such as Brand Names such as NIKE, Pepsi, etc.

Here are some materials you can use to promote the developing EFL students’ identification of sight words:

  • Word games such as matching and word search games.
  • Flashcards or reader books with plenty of sight words.
  • Picture dictionaries.
  • Rhymes and entertaining poetry.

Step 4: Present meanings:

Be sure that students know the meaning of each word they read. You can use a lot of techniques to present the meanings such as drawings, pictures, miming, etc. Don’t forget to check the understanding of the meanings frequently. Be sure that students can discriminate the variations in meaning as well as go over words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings.

Step 5: Teach word parts:

It is important to teach word parts: prefixes, root words, suffixes, and derivations of words. When students know these parts, they will be able to understand more words. For example, when an elementary school student knows the meaning of “bed” and the meaning “room”, they will understand easily the meaning of “bedroom”.

Step 6: Put words in contexts:

Encouraging students to put each word in context is a powerful strategy. The student who can use words in sentences can demonstrate a mastery of reading and language usage as well.

Step 7: Teach reading comprehension:

Teaching reading comprehension is essential to achieve the enjoyment of reading or reading for pleasure and for understanding the informational text. Several important techniques to check reading comprehension can be used. You can ask students to:

  • retell, summarize, or paraphrase what you’ve read.
  • make inferences or draw conclusions.
  • sequence events.
  • compare and contrast, etc.

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How easy it is to teach a child 4-6 years old 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 the 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 mistakes 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

Free course for modern moms and dads from Ekaterina Murashova. Sign up and participate in the drawing of 8 lessons

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 the 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 regularly read aloud 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.

  2. 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 Alexandrovich Zaitsev.

Zaitsev suggests not focusing on the study of 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, vowel and consonant sounds, 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 and 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. 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 at the end of the word: chair, March, etc.

In this way, children simultaneously prepare for more complex syllables at each stage and reinforce what they have learned earlier.

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 the child can read short words, ask him to form a word from the letters on his own.

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

Another good exercise is to fill in the missing letter in a word. Children perform such tasks in the lessons in the Skysmart online school.

For more colorful and fun reading activities, check out the Skysmart Ready for School course. Attentive teachers will help the child learn to read, count and express themselves through creativity. Classes are held online at a convenient time for the child and parents. Try it for free with an introductory lesson!

First steps towards learning to read. | Speech therapy consultation (Grade 1) on the topic:

The first steps to learning to read.

The mastery of syllabic reading by first-graders depends on the formation of skills and abilities laid down in the preparatory period of learning to read.

Therefore, at the first stage of the preparatory (letterless) period, it is necessary to develop the following skills:

  • Dividing a word into syllables, correlating them with the number of vowels;
  • Stress definition and stressed syllable designation;
  • Recognition of vowels and consonants in words;
  • Recognition of different structures of syllables (G, SG, SGS, etc. )

    • When developing the skills to isolate from the speech stream and "write down" sentences in my classes, I use typesetting canvas and individual schemes - models (strips of paper).

    For example, we write down the sentence: "The bird sings merrily." The student is talking. There are three words in this sentence. The first is a bird, the second is fun, the third is singing. The first word in a sentence is capitalized. I designate it with a strip with an additional dash. We know that words are written separately from each other, so I skip the distance and mark the second word with a stripe, then the third.

    When developing the ability to divide words into syllables, I shift the emphasis of work to the word. Children are already familiar with the structure of the sentence, the presence of a complete thought in it, the way it is indicated in writing. Here we are working on the formation of a clear differentiation of words and sentences. For example, “write down” the word fox. We denote the word with a straight line (we clarify that this is a word, not a sentence. We see in the diagram that there is no indication of the beginning of the sentence, i.e. a capital letter, and there is no dot, i.e. its end is not indicated). The child pronounces the word slowly, dividing it into parts (syllables). We denote this by the diagram below (an additional vertical line is used) We conclude that this word has two syllables. We pronounce, i.e. we call the first syllable, then the second. Here we select words for the proposed scheme (first with the help of the proposed pictures, then on our own).

    Work on determining stress is based on the ability of students to carry out syllabic analysis of words. Children's attention is drawn to the fact that one of the syllables is pronounced with greater force, more extended. Such a syllable is called stressed. I will give a fragment of the lesson:

    - "Guess who it is:" In winter - white, in summer - gray, jumps deftly, loves carrots.

    Learn more