How do you teach a child to read?

[rsa001]

I have been reading a few threads on mumsnet about teaching children to read. Aside from the debate about whether or not a parent should teach a child to read before starting school; how do teachers teach children to read?
Is it a matter of using phonics to make sure they understand the various sounds and then move onto being able to sound out words like 'in' 'at' 'cat' etc, and then progressing onto larger and larger words?

I was looking at ORT level 6 books, wondering how a child could go from not knowing how to reading to being able to read 4 - 5 word sentences in 1 - 2 years

Jolly phonics teach the sounds in a certain order. Some schools might teach one a week for the first term, then two a week subsequently. Some might teach a sound a day and revise.
Then once the children have learned a couple of sounds blending can begin . The first JP sounds are satipn which give lots of options.
Alongside that or slightly later tricky words are introduced - ones the children can't read by breaking them down - the , are etc.

And that's how it starts. I'm not an infant teacher but have some experience helping in infant classes. Obviously every school/class/ teacher does not do things exactly like that!

slightly later tricky words are introduced - ones the children can't read by breaking them down - the , are etc.

They are read by breaking them down - all words can be read using phonics, and the NC states that this is should be the only strategy used to decode.

Choosing one scheme is a good idea though - try Dandelion Launchers or Floppy's Phonics.

At my boys school they start with a book with no words so they can learn how a book works, they make up what's happening, then they get books with words that are meant to relate to sounds they are learning at school. The sounds are taught in phases and then the books are meant to relate to the phase they are on. At the start they painfully sound out each sound but gradually get better at blending those sounds together.

Yes, mostly.

The sounds are normally taught in an order that means a lot of small words can be blended very early on. So rather than teaching all sounds first, then blending, you practise blending alongside introducing new sounds.

At first it might be heavily scaffolded by the teacher, but nearly all children will manage blending simple words by the end of the first term.

Once they can do that then you can introduce longer words with 4 or 5 sounds é.g. Tent, stamp.

They'll also be introduced to all the different ways that a sound can be spelt and reading and writing words with more than one syllable at some point.

The exact order of these skills can vary depending on the scheme used though.

Not to be pernickity ( I know, I'm about to be pernickity!!) but if children break down "are" for example they'll read "ar-eh" . Which is not right. They read it as "ar". Fair enough "the" can be broken down as "th-eh" but the "the" sound comes quite late in the sequence so they'll probably have learned to sight reading it first. Many can be broken down - "is, it, us, up" etc but what about "though, although, they"??

And "we" "be" "she" etc are pronounced with an "eee" at the end but the sound the children learn for the letter " e" is "eh" , the short vowel sound.

So these tricky words (also organised into a Dolch list) are words that should be recognised on sight, not broken down.

The iPad app Sounds-Write shows you how to begin. I found it very useful. It links quite nicely with the Dandelion books.

I also got some "English Alphabetic Code" charts for free from Phonics International. That helped me when the code was more complex, I hadn't ever really thought about all the ways we write different sounds. The Phonics International website has a free scheme for getting started in reading too, I think maybe that one matches Floppys Phonics books best?

I'd say if you use the above any school would be happy with the work you've done. I wish I'd done the above before DD started school.

Mine all more or less worked out reading for themselves with plenty of exposure to books, word games and stories from siblings. I never taught them but they could all read quite well before starting school. They did a little reading and writing and nursery - just their names and writing their news.

I used jolly phonics with both DS's before they started school. This is a good book to start with.

Not according to any scheme published in the U.K. Since you are referring to the Dolch list are you in the US?

The way that it should be taught is to point out the sound/spelling correspondence that hasn't yet been taught and then blend the word in the same way as any other. Since they are high frequency words, children will usually move from needing to sound them out to reading them without sounding pretty quickly.

1)start early, motivate by encouraging a love of stories and books, buy books, go to the library.

2. develop good spoken language skills , a good vocabulary, an interest in words, talk to your child, listen to your child.

3. encourage good aural skills, rhyming words, rhythm, words that sound the same,begin with the same sound.

4. make sure they understand that reading is deciphering written or printed text, point to words when reading stories, encourage child to make writing "marks " and "read "them back. It takes some children a while to associate the printed/written word with reading!

may not sound like teaching to read, but good skills in these areas will all help with distinguishing sounds, recognising letters and making reading something the child wants to do.

Oh yes, let your child see you read, nothing like wanting to copy what an adult is doing and seeing reading as a good skill to achieve.

We used phonics. Ds' school used Rwi and at home he played teach your monster to read. At the very beginning I used phonics cards to show him blending.
Some words we used flash cards at the beginning and still use them occasionally if there is a PITA word.

Depends how they're taught, Bluerose - is just another way of spelling /ar/. As for 'though', that's two sounds /th/ and
which is an alternative spelling for /oa/.

So these tricky words (also organised into a Dolch list) are words that should be recognised on sight, not broken down.

That's very outdated advice - even Letters and Sounds, which is now 12 years old, advised teachers to break the word down and draw children's attention to the sounds they know, alongside a tricky 'bit'.

We aim for children to blend and segment words from the very first phonics lesson. We start from the word rather than teaching sounds in isolation beginning with cvc (consonant vowel consonant ) words containing a limited number of sounds, more sounds are introduced until they've all been taught. Gradually more complex word structure is introduced until children are reading polysyllabic words. "Tricky" words are taught in the same way as any other word, as Feenie says, blending through the word.

"Not to be pernickity ( I know, I'm about to be pernickity!!) but if children break down "are" for example they'll read "ar-eh"" only if they've been taught badly.

Intrigued Feenie, I didn't know all words could be broken down! When I say "is" it sounds to me like it has a "z" sound at the end so I assumed it was a tricky word you had to sight read. Have I misunderstood? Genuinely intrigued!

I had to go to speech therapy at school for a slight lisp so it might be that!

"And "we" "be" "she" etc are pronounced with an "eee" at the end but the sound the children learn for the letter " e" is "eh" , the short vowel sound. ". Children are taught that the spelling can be the sound /e/ in met or the sound /ee/ in me. Later they will learn the other ways to spell the sound /ee/.
There is absolutely no reason to teach words as wholes (Dolch words aren't used in England)

"When I say "is" it sounds to me like it has a "z" sound at the end" is an alternative way to spell the sound /z/ is, as, his, has, was, busy, music, laser, nasal, Susan, casual, legs, eggs, beans etc.

You are such a fountain of knowledge Mrz! Thank you! It's always a bit of a mystery how they teach it at school, I like to try and get my head around it so I can back it up at home!

You're right, I'm not in the UK. Hence the Dolch!

So are children in the UK taught all the possible sounds for each letter from the start? Eg "e" can be "eh" for egg or "e" as at the end of we, or silent as in "are" etc etc?

There still seems to be such a massive misunderstanding that "tricky" = "must be read by sight" when in fact "tricky" = "tricky to decode". They may be tricky to decode because they contain less common grapheme/phoneme correspondences (remember that the same sound can be written different ways, and the same written letter can represent more than one sound) or they may be tricky because they contain a more common phoneme, but one which is not taught until later in the scheme of phonics teaching. The latter applies especially to certain so called "high frequency words" - these are words which children are going to encounter very often, but contain more advanced sounds. Thus it is important that children are able to read them early on if they are to be able to read stories which make sense.

As others have said though, good practice is not to terach children to simply "read by sight" (which amounts to learning by rote) but to encourage them to sound out what they know and to supply the missing piece of the jigsaw. It is true that children may simply come to remember these words, but it is helpful that they make the connection that they can be sounded out.

"So are children in the UK taught all the possible sounds for each letter from the start? Eg "e" can be "eh" for egg or "e" as at the end of we,". They are taught what they need to know in order to read common high frequency words like he, she, me, we, be from the onset "or silent as in "are" etc etc?" they would be taught that are is a trigraph and represents the sound /ar/ (we don't talk about silent letters as all letters are silent )

Not all of them right from the start. But they will be familiar with the idea that the same sound can be written in different ways and the same spelling can be pronounced in different ways quite early on.

The spellings c, k and ck, for example, are often introduced in the first few weeks.

So it shouldn't be a massive surprise to them if you introduce a few new words and point out that one sound in them is written in a different way than they have already learnt.

It happens at other times as well é.g. if a child is trying to read a word they see around them that they don't yet know all the phonics for. You can just provide the bits they don't know and then they can use the bits they do know to blend the whole word.

So how would you go about explaining a tricky/ high frequency word to a child who is in the early stages of phonics? With "he" for example? Would you tell them that the "e" at the end is sometimes sounded out as "ee" or would that be confusing? Nursery have sent my little one home with her first books, I don't want to confuse her! We came across "he" today in a songbird phonics book and "said"?!? I don't get how "said" works I have to say!

That's exactly how you'd do it. If possible I'd introduce he with me, we and be at the same time.

In 'said'. The /s/ and /d/ are straightforward. The 'ai' is a rare spelling for the sound /e/.

Although tbh at nursery level I'd probably just sound those out for him.,