How do you actually teach a child to read?

[septemberremember]

I know they do phonics at primary school but I don’t know how they go about this and translating it into reading - obviously cat and dog are phonetic but what about other words? I was taught by a look and say method which was the rage in the 80s. But I believe that isn’t favoured now.

I always thought I’d teach my children loads and I haven’t

*and be prepared for you dc to not get on with phonics, 1 in 6 don't seem too. So just do site reading as above.

It's quite easy.

Get the card interactive type books when they are tiny and help them enjoy them. Touch feel sounds, it's all very tactile.

I used to put my finger on the words as I read them so they get an understanding of how to navigate a book.

Then I bought the cardboard big yellow phonics book set and carried on with these.

All throughly enjoyed together each evening.

I think the only down side is they are often reading by three years and this sets them apart from their peers.

When they start school they are very ahead and that's not always such a good thing.

I taught DD to read using the Cat in a Hat book.

That's how I learned to read. Sitting on DM's lap or beside her, while she read the same few favourite stories to me, pointing at the words as she went. I distinctly remember realising one day that I could read them.

I was teaching in the 90s, and this definitely wasn't the case for many.

No, that's not what 'being school ready' is about. That is about being toilet trained; being able to put your coat on and take it off and hang it on a peg; understanding being part of a group; being able to eat your lunch without help.

in 1999 the expectation was for the child to write their name
has that changed?
It hasn't changed, as it was never an expectation. You might have been able to do it, but it wasn't 'expected' by schools.

Unless you pronounce all the words and letters completely wrong, I think you'll struggle to "mess them up"!!

I taught my DS to read at home by teaching him the alphabet and sounds of letters over time, reading to him loads and sounding out words and getting him to do more and more gradually. He could read before school, but their method of teaching was not the same, and the way I sounded letters out is not how it's done now. He was fine!

I just read lots of books to ours , I could read as soon as I could talk so I never understood it being difficult or indeed something to learn and I will admit I found it frustrating when mine were learning . Both could read a bit before they started school but definitely not fluently .

i learned to read by those red and yellow bible books, i looked at the pictures and slowly with help started to learn words, then at school it was the books eg rodger red hat

My daughter was doing this before she was 3. With respect, it isn’t reading, it’s memorising the story. You’d probably have found if the words weren’t there you could still say them as you knew the stores well.

At best, you might have learned to read those words in those books and recognised them in other books too. But what about all the other words which weren’t in those books? Could you have read them? What would have happened when you came upon a made up word - Gruffalo for example?

Dont get me wrong. What your mum did was fabulous and absolutely the right thing to do to encourage reading and definitely what every parent should do, but for most children this approach will not lead to consistent, fluent reading, without further teaching.

in 1999 the expectation was for the child to write their name
has that changed?
It hasn't changed, as it was never an expectation. You might have been able to do it, but it wasn't 'expected' by schools.no,

this is what the nursery were aiming for for my ds
nothing to do with me

My own DC learnt by the look and say method - learning to recognise whole words. I taught my GC using the Oxford Reading Tree books which is based on Phonetics. You often find the books in charity shops.

Look and say is a perfectly good way. It can blend with phonics.
Start with picture books with easy phonetic words in. Then add the idea of magic letters like e at the end of the word changing kit to kite. Or friendly letters like and h, s and h, c and h who go together to make new sounds.
That sort of thing.
Mainly just reading to a child helps a lot, if they are snuggled up and can see the book.

@theboffinsarecoming same, I also remember one day the strange squiggles made sense, there is a specific term for this type of reading.

I was very young when it happened and it was the same book repeated.

Phonics would have complicated reading for me and put me off, making it seem far more complicated than needed.

I have home educated my 6 children to be honest i just taught them the letters and then starting reading each day. We didnt do any special lessons. They all learned to read - even the one that was later diagnosed with dyslexia and dyspraxia. I think they have a normal reading age the youngest is 9 but the oldest is 20 and going to uni.

@modgepodge it's very much how I learned I was 3 or 4 and away by that stage. AT my awful primary school there wasn't much else I could do but by 8 I was noted as an ahead reader.

I didn't have any other teaching.
Micheal moropgo also said the words his mum read fell into place one day and that was it.

One of my dc should have learned by this method her reading was massively delayed because we and the school pushed phonics on her because it worked for her sister.
When we dropped it and went to sight reading her levels went from slow stuttering reader to fluent reader in 3 months and up 4 book levels.

Follow The Phonics Fairy on Instagram.

My dc were born in the 90s . One of the local schools really didnt want the children reading before school, same with my nephews in Dorset who were born late 80s.
My ds couldnt read before school but could write his name and letters. My dd new some phonics but could read fluently within months of stsrting school

Rightly or not, how I taught my children to read was using the 100 common words flashcards. I made them myself for DS1, by the time DS2 came along it was a downloadable and printable resource. We learnt a few at a time. DS2 also had the "Little A" etc books which teach the name and sound of each letter in little stories. I left the phonics stuff for school to teach later, so they weren't confused by words where phonics make no sense, " The " for example. My October born DS age 4, used to gather up the 2 yr olds at his Infant school nursery and read the story books to them. I was told this by his nursery teacher. It hasn't harmed him or stopped him from getting Greater Depth in all his SATS.

Just read to them. Point out the words as you go. Repeat the same books, they will at first remember the book by heart then will recognise the words. Make it fun by using funny voices etc.

Get some plain stickers and write words of objects around the house ‘book’ ‘chair’ ‘table’ etc. Stick them on the objects then every time they use that object they see the word.

When you’re out and about point out words you see on signs, cars, posters etc.

Lots of reading every day. Including the 2 alphabet books we have (Dr. Seuss and Sandra Boynton). Starting around 18 months pointing out letters on objects or in the books. Some of our toys have letters, magnet letters. If we’re drawing I’ll write names or the alphabet or label what I draw. At 2.5 both of my kids have known several letters - the youngest doesn’t want to talk about it so I don’t push him but when he’s in the mood he’ll show me some. We have an ancient letterland book we started when my oldest was 3, again just as stories, and by then I was sounding out some words as I read. Sounding out teaches phonics in a natural way. We already had early readers like Dick and Jane, Biscuit and a few elephant and piggie books. As soon as a few words were making sense he was obsessed with elephant and piggie so we got more and my newly 5yo is a grest reader. We keep more challenging books available so he’s always pushing himself. Some are comics, some fiction, some non fiction.

2.5 is really annoyed at being left behind.

I’ve read somewhere that the majority of children will read using basically any method. So if you’re a family who reads lots and your kids aren’t picking it up that’s when you might need a system.

Do you need to teach them? Are you home educating? If you are not doing home ed then I would just focus on love of reading and read lots to them.

We moved country when my eldest was almost 5. He would have started school that September but we moved in the summer holidays and so he went to a sort of nursery here in this country (different language) for two full years and then school, as was standard for children his age. He was one of the older children in the year but it wasn't unusual.

In his English nursery, as he was in the year before reception, they had gone through the basic phonetic sounds of the alphabet, and I knew (from mumsnet!) that it was no longer correct to say "cuh, muh, buh" as we did when I was at school, but "kkkkh, mmmmmm, b-" (see alphablocks if that makes no sense). So of course I encouraged him when he pointed out letters on road signs, packaging etc.

I can't remember now whether he had learnt basic blending (which is joining the letter sounds together so C-A-T = cat) at nursery or whether I showed him this at home, but he found it easy and intuitive. Because he wanted to continue and we weren't at English school, I bought a set of the Julia Donaldson Songbirds and we went through 1-2 of them a night. I also made some games to play with sets of words which are phonically decodable with those sounds. Then as we worked through the books, we added different sounds like e as in me, ou as in round, sh as in fish, etc. And pretty much it was intuitive for him - there was a period where he became resistant to it and didn't want to try but then he picked it up again and he could read fluently by the age of 6, which was late by English standards but early for this country - everyone was surprised he could already read when he started school. I didn't teach him to read in the second language but he picked it up himself.

My second child is totally different. He can tell you what sound a letter should make but blending completely flummoxed him and he would just guess. I was puzzled by this because I expected it to be easy like my first child. A friend had passed on some reading activity books which she had finished with so I was reading through the teacher notes and I found out that there are basically several pre-reading skills which need to be in place before blending is even possible. The pre-reading skills are things like phonemic awareness and being able to break words down into individual parts. So for example, you can point out the concept of rhyming and play games relating to rhyming. Or simply read a lot of books with rhyming aspects or sing songs with rhymes so that they get the sense of the sound. The other end of this is looking at the beginning sound of words. Again, my eldest found that very easy but my second finds it very difficult. He can just about do it if you give the word with the first sound elongated and separated e.g. ggggggg-reen, b-read and then offer two options. "B-read, does it start with B- or Ssss?"

We think that he is probably dyslexic but they won't check until he starts school here which will be when he is just seven. In the meantime, we read to him and we point out rhymes and we do the easier starting sound questions.

Another way to help them break down words is to mark syllables e.g. clap "El-e-phant" "Rab-bit" - he can do that part.

Anyway what this has taught me is that in any skill, there is an underlying skill which needs to be in place first. A lot of the time due to the age that they typically teach something, the underlying skill is already in place so no need to explicitly "teach" it. But if it is not for some reason, then it can help to work on that. And if you want to support them in some future skill but they aren't there yet, you can sometimes find out what the "supporting step" of something is by reading about it. It's amazing!

Children learn the sounds they need to know and learn to associate these with the letter or letters that are used to represent them. They learn these in a particular order. Slowly they learn to blend sounds together. Sometimes the same letters can make different sounds or vice versa so they learn groups of words that use the same rule. It's important to note that they don't learn the names of the alphabet letters. They learn the sounds made by the letters. Alongside this, there are many words that don't have a rule and make no sense. It's really important for children to be aware that these words have silly spellings because it is terribly confusing. They are called tricky words or exception words and have to be learned by sight. They can be learned in groups to make them easier. Word lists can be found on Twinkl.

The post above about the importance of phonological awareness is very true. Being able to hear what sound you are making and recognise the same sound in words that rhyme is an important skill.

You don't need to teach your child to read , leave it to the professionals. The best thing you can do is read to them lots, share books together and give your child all the pre reading skills by playing games such as memory games, jigsaws, letter recognition games, etc.
Most schools have meetings for parents in the first term to explain the system they use.

1. You learn the letter sounds and blend them to read decodable words like c-a-t.
2. You then learn "special friends" where 2 or 3 sounds make 1 noise. Like special friends "AI" make the sounds ai as in rain/pain/sail. Special friends "igh" make the sound "I" as light/might/right. Special friends "ng" give you the sound in ring/song/sing. Many of these .... sh/ch/th/ph etc.
3. You learn some words that cant be decoded by sight. You just need to learn them. These are "he, she, me, I, Mr, Mrs, goes, said" and many others

This alone lets them decode and read countless words. Using this alone would let a child read "The cat sings songs and dog jumps up high!" or "Mr Philip goes to the party".

Then they're off and reading!