Helping Your Child Learn To Read

The responsibility of parents to develop a love and efficiency of reading in their children can be overwhelming.

Every child learns to read at their own individual pace and in a different way. It is easy to become competitive and want your child reading as early as possible, though children are not expected to read until they are at school. Schools have the main responsibility to teach children to read and write. However, there is a lot that parents can do to encourage the learning at home.

Before beginning school, the best thing is for children to form a love of reading. This can be achieved by giving children their own little books, and you reading aloud to them on a regular basis. Then comes time for the phonics. Children often learn to sing the alphabet, but must also learn what sound that letter makes and what it looks like. Parents could use the time before children go to school to read to them, teach them rhymes, play word games, point out letter-sound relationships, and practice the alphabet at home. This knowledge will give your child a head start on then decoding words. The worldwide Letterland program that features Annie Apple, Bouncy Ben, Clever Cat… is a fantastic way to develop children’s phonemic understanding coupled with art and craft and singing.

There has been a long ideological battle between two methods of teaching reading, the whole language approach and the phonics approach. The most effective way to teach children how to read is to link the letter to a sound and use this knowledge to ‘sound out’ a word and break the code of reading. However, this cannot be used in isolation as there are many words in the English language that cannot be ‘sounded out’. It is then that the whole language approach has to be introduced.

Once your children start school, parents can encourage and continue to help their children by listening to them as they read for themselves. As any parent who has gone through this stage will know, listening to your child learning to read involves great patience. If a child does not like to read traditional books, play word games, or look somewhere else for reading material. It will also help if you talk to your child’s teacher and understand how they are teaching reading.

English is particularly hard language to learn to read and write. Children spend their first years learning that the letter ‘c’ makes a ‘c’ sound in cake, but then they discover that it makes ‘sss’ in circle and ‘ch’ in chips. To avoid confusion, explain early on that letters sometimes change the sound they make in words.

The December 2005 inquiry into Teaching Literacy found that up to 20 percent of Australian adults have “very poor�? literacy skills. One in ten students in year 5 is failing to meet the minimum national benchmarks for reading. Being a fluent reader and writer helps your child in so many ways. Be sure that your child is assessed regularly at school and never be afraid to ask for help. If parents and schools work together, reading should be an enjoyable ride into the child’s favourite fantasy world, or their way of finding that special piece of information.

Happy reading!

Tina Tower
Reach Education Centre