Chronicles: How To Teach Them To Read

The obvious benefit of teaching your children at home is the ability to tailor your methods to their needs. In a classroom where there are 20 - 30 other children in a room, teachers don't have the opportunity to fit instruction to each child's specific instructional needs. That said, we also have to keep in mind that there are components to children learning to read and that it is a hierarchical skill, meaning we learn to read in levels of mastery.

The Elements of Solid Reading Instruction

Print Awareness

In our daily reading block it's important to include several elements of literacy development. For younger children print awareness is huge. This means they need to know what letters are, what words are, how to find a sentence, count the words of a sentence, recognize titles, author and illustrator names, and know how to hold / handle books. Whether you teach this directly or not depends on the child's ability to pick it up. Usually, explicit instruction is necessary, however some children watch you read aloud and somehow understand, although that is very rare.

Phonological Awareness

Next children need to have phonological awareness. This refers to the preparing reader concentrating on the distribution of sounds in our language. They should be able to hear the phonemes (individual sounds) and morphemes (smallest parts of sounds that have meaning, like the ing in walking, or for that matter, the walk). This is why read-alouds can be very powerful. Also, using nursery rhymes, songs, and poems at this level can be very instrumental in helping children develop phonological skills to build on in successive levels. Try Elkonin boxes to really emphasize the sounds in words. The example below shows a can and three boxes for the sounds
 /c/ - /a/ - /n/. You don't use letters, but small squares for the child to push into each box as they say the sounds. Your focus is not the letters, or symbol of the sounds, but the sounds themselves. Repeating this activity is not only fun for your child, but really good practice. I like to use actual objects, like their toys or items around the house to increase interest.

Alongside phonological awareness, phonemic awareness is the building block that a beginning reader must rest on. This is when the reader begins to attach sound to letters, or symbols. There are many different curricula that address phonics instruction, but in our family we use Spalding. The truth is, my oldest son who is now 8 and working on mostly 3rd grade material had to be retaught using Spalding since when he was in public school they did not use this program and he was really confused by the one they did. On the other hand, my other son had always been taught at home with Spalding and we've seen a tremendous amount of success. It's a very strong program that teaches the sounds and spellings of our language in logical sequence with great drill and explanation and it helps the preparing reader to take their attainment of the language into their own hands. It has been great for us to remediate our oldest and to teach our younger school-age child.

Fluency

As your child becomes a good decoder of the words and gets familar with syntax (sentence arrangement) it is important to begin focusing on building fluency. This can be done a number of ways. Believe it or not, having them read that favorite book over and over again is not a bad idea. In fact, it's golden. This is the best way for them to learn to let their reading flow. You can use magazine articles that they like, inserts from new toys that have lots of words, or passages from fluency products. Your local teaching supply store will probably have sets of passages in workbooks. Be careful of content. Since teaching supply stores can carry secular content there may be some passages that are not appropriate for your child, such as passages about Halloween if your family doesn't participate, or about going to school. This can be awkward. So, just use your wisdom and judgement in what you allow. Songs, poems, recitations of familiar book passages are all ways to develop fluency.

Comprehension

Once these components are solidifying you want to add some deeper level comprehension. The whole time that you are integrating the above mentioned skills, you should be asking questions about what you read aloud, as well as what your children are beginning to read. Even if they are reading simple pre-primers with two or three sentences, you still want to ask questions like who are the characters, what did they do, was there a problem, how did they solve it. Once they take off and begin growing in their skill level, you'll want to include higher level questioning that requires them to make inferences or draw conclusions from the text. You'll also want to have them analyze and evaluate what the author is trying to convey by writing what they wrote.

Vocabulary

Last, but certainly not least, vocabulary instruction is huge. In fact, this may be such an overwhelmingly important component that it should also be included all along. Vocabulary instruction is essential to readers taking off and becoming independent learners. Now, you may be thinking of lists of big words that they look up definitions to and write sentences about. This could be a way to pursue this component of instruction, but it can also be somewhat artificial. I would say knowing how to use a dictionary properly is an important skill. But, consider using words that are embedded in the stories you read aloud or the ones they read and teaching them strategies in the usage of context to understand the word. Increase their understanding of those words by giving them activities that heighten their sensitivity to them. For example, they can draw a picture that represents the meaning of the word, act the word out, give examples of times when the word is being played out in real life, create hand or body gestures to connect the meaning to their long term memory, or use the word in sentences showing meaning. These are all authentic ways to ensure that your child is really grasping the meaning of the vocabulary, but also that they know how to get the meaning if they don't know a word. When they start using the word themselves you know they've really got it.

Learning to read is no piece of cake. With 44 phonemes and 71 different ways to write them, it's no wonder literacy gets difficult. Still, it's easier to remember that than the 300,000 words in our language...and we keep adding them. It's tantamount for kids to use phonics to at least get a firm foundation in the skill of reading. Having said that, it's not easy to learn those phonemes either. But, with a little faith and great determination it will come. The beauty of it is it can come on your child's own time, at their own pace.