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| Illustrated image from pinterest,com |
Teaching children to read by
teaching phonics activities is a lot like doing math, where you have to know
what the numbers are, how to count, and you need to learn to add and subtract
before learning to multiply and divide. Teaching phonics to children is no
different where you follow a step by step approach by first teaching the child
the alphabet letters and phonics sounds, and then teaching them the combination
of different letters to create different words, and using words to form
sentences. It is a very logical and sequential buildup of phonics knowledge and
reading ability.
Before a child can learn to read, he
or she must first learn the alphabet letters, and know the sounds represented
by the letters. It's usually easier to teach some consonants and short vowels
first before moving on to more complicated things such as consonant digraphs (2
consonants formed to produce one sound, such as "ch" or
"ph") and long vowels. As you can see, teaching children to read by
the phonics method helps them develop phonemic awareness, and it is also a very
logical and straight forward approach.
Start off by teaching your child the
phonics sounds. You can choose to teach your child in alphabetic order going
from A to Z, or you can teach several commonly used consonant sounds and
vowels, and go from there. For example, you may start teaching your child /a/,
/c/, and /t/ (slashes denote sound of the letters). Once your child has learn
to quickly recognize these letters and properly sound out their sounds, you can
then teach them to blend /c/, /a/, /t/ to make the words "cat", or
"tac", or "at".
As you introduce more letters and
phonics sounds in your lesson plans, you can generate more words, and slowly
introduce short, simple sentences to your reading lessons. Depending on the age
of your child, I would suggest keeping the phonics lessons relatively short -
around 5 to 10 minutes. Sometimes, just 3 to 5 minutes for a short lesson is
plenty, and you can easily teach these short phonics lessons 2 or 3 times each
day for a total of 10 to 15 minutes. Young children tend to be forgetful, so
repetition is very important.
You don't want to make the lessons
too long and boring, that the child begins to feel like doing a
"chore" when learning to read. So keep it short, fun, and
interesting. By keeping the phonics lessons short, you also avoid overwhelming
the child with too much information, and always remember to make sure your
child has mastered one lesson before moving on to new material. Confusion and
uncertainty will only make their learning effort difficult and frustrating - so
review often, move on to new material only after they've mastered the current
lessons.
So when can you start teaching
phonics sounds and lessons to children? Not everyone will agree with me on
this, but I believe that if your child can speak, then your child can learn to
read. Of course, every child is different and unique, and some children will be
more receptive to learning reading than others. One thing for certain, is that
the earlier a child learns to read, the better.
We have taught our 2 year old
daughter to read through teaching phonics sounds and lessons, and helping her
develop phonemic awareness. If you watched the video above, that is our
daughter reading randomly created sentences. We simply started teaching phonics
sounds to her by spending 5 to 10 minutes each day, spread between 2 to 3
separate lessons, and slowly introduced new letters and reading material.
If you would like to learn more
about the simple, effective, step-by-step method of teaching phonics and
phonemic awareness, please click below.
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