Should High School Reading Lists Be Changed?

Learning how to read is 1 of the well-nigh important things a child will do before the age of 10. That's because everything from vocabulary growth to performance across all major subjects at school is linked to reading ability. The Phonics Method teaches children to pair sounds with letters and blend them together to main the skill of decoding.

The Whole-word Approach teaches kids to read by sight and relies upon memorization via repeat exposure to the written form of a word paired with an image and an sound. The goal of the Linguistic communication Feel Method is to teach children to read words that are meaningful to them. Vocabulary can then exist combined to create stories that the child relates to. Notwithstanding while at that place are diverse approaches to reading instruction, some work better than others for children who struggle with learning difficulties.

The most common kind of dyslexia, phonological dyslexia, causes individuals to have trouble hearing the sounds that brand up words. This makes it difficult for them to sound out words in reading and to spell correctly. Dyslexic learners may therefore benefit from a method that teaches whole-word reading and de-emphasizes the decoding process.

Orton Gillingham is a multi-sensory approach that has been particularly effective for dyslexic children. It combines visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile learning to teach a program of English phonics, allowing children to proceed at a pace that suits them and their ability.

No two students will learn to read in exactly the same way, thus remaining flexible in your approach is key. Information technology can be useful to combine methods, teach strategies and provide the right classroom accommodations, particularly for students who take specific learning differences. Call up that motivation is fundamental and endeavor to be patient and so as to avoid introducing any negative associations with school and learning.

Larn more about motivating children to read, different kinds of dyslexia, identifying dyslexia, the Orton-Gillingham approach to reading, and strategies to help children with dyslexia in these posts.

Pre-literacy skills

Children brainstorm acquiring the skills they need to master reading from the moment they are born. In fact, an infant as immature as six months old can already distinguish between the sounds of his or her mother tongue and a strange language and by the age of two has mastered enough native phonemes to regularly produce l+ words. Betwixt the ages of ii-iii many children acquire to recognize a scattering of messages.

They may bask singing the alphabet song and reciting plant nursery rhymes, which helps them develop an awareness of the dissimilar sounds that brand-upward English language words. As fine motor skills advance, and so does the ability to write, draw and copy shapes, which eventually can be combined to form messages.

There are plenty of ways parents can encourage pre-literacy skills in children, including pointing out messages, providing ample opportunities for playing with language, and fostering an involvement in books. It tin be helpful to inquire a kid about their day and talk through routines to assist with the evolution of narrative skills.

Visit your local library and bookstore every bit often as possible. The more kids read with their parents, teachers and caregivers, the more books go a familiar and favourite pastime. Young children should be encouraged to participate in reading by identifying the pictures they recognize and turning the pages.

Discover more about fostering pre-literacy skills.

The language experience method and the whole word approach

1. The Phonics Method

The smallest discussion-part that carries meaning is a phoneme. While nosotros typically retrieve of messages as the building blocks of language, phonemes are the basic units of spoken language. In an alphabetic language like English language, sounds are translated into messages and letter combinations in order to represent words on the page. Reading thus relies on an individual'south ability to decode words into a series of sounds. Encoding is the opposite process and is how we spell.

The Phonics Method is concerned with helping a child learn how to break words down into sounds, interpret sounds into letters and combine letters to form new words. Phonemes and their respective letters may be taught based on their frequency in English words. Overall there are 40 English language phonemes to principal and unlike programs take different approaches to pedagogy them. Some materials introduce word families with rhyming words grouped together. It's too possible to teach similarly shaped letters or similar sounding letters together.

The Phonics Method is one of the most popular and normally used methods. In the beginning progress may be tiresome and reading out loud halting, merely somewhen the cognitive processes involved in translating between letters and sounds are automatized and become more fluent. Still, English language is not always spelled the way it sounds. This ways some words tin can't exist sounded out and need to be learned through memorization.

2. The Whole-give-and-take Approach

This method teaches reading at the word level. Because it skips the decoding procedure, students are not sounding out words just rather learning to say the give-and-take by recognizing its written grade. Context is important and providing images tin can help. Familiar words may initially be presented on their own, and then in short sentences and eventually in longer sentences. As their vocabulary grows, children brainstorm to excerpt rules and patterns that they tin can utilise to read new words.

Reading via this method is an automatic procedure and is sometimes called sight-reading. After many exposures to a word children will sight-read the majority of the vocabulary they encounter, only sounding out unfamiliar terms.

Sight-reading is faster and facilitates reading comprehension because information technology frees up cognitive attention for processing new words. That'due south why it is oft recommended that children learn to read high frequency English language vocabulary in this way. The Dolch give-and-take list is a set of terms that brand-up fifty-75% of the vocabulary in English children'south books.

Learn more almost education sight-reading and the Dolch Listing.

3. The Language Experience Method

Learning to read nonsense words in a black-and-white activity book is not e'er the most constructive arroyo. The Language Experience Method of teaching reading is grounded in personalized learning where the words taught are different for every kid. The idea is that learning words that the child is already familiar with will be easier.

Teachers and parents can then create unique stories that use a child'due south preferred words in different configurations. Children can draw pictures that go with them and put them together in a binder to create a special reading book. Y'all can look for these words in regular children's fiction and employ them to guess at the meaning of unknown words met in a context – an of import comprehension strategy that will serve kids in later grades.

Pre-reading strategies

8 Tips for parents

No affair which method or methods you employ, continue these tips in mind:

Read as oftentimes as possible. Develop a routine where yous read a book together in the morning or in the evening. You may start past reading aloud simply take the child participate by running a finger along the text. Brand reading fun, include older children and reserve some family reading time where anybody sits together with their ain book to read for half an hour—adults included!
Begin with reading material that the kid is interested in. If he or she has a favourite subject, find a book full of related vocabulary to boost motivation.
Let the child cull his or her own book. When an individual has agency and can determine how the learning process goes, he or she is more probable to participate. Accept children to libraries or bookstores and encourage them to explore books and decide what they would like to read.
Consider graded readers. Every bit a kid develops his or her reading ability, you will want to increase the challenge of books moving from materials that present one word per page to longer and longer sentences, and eventually, paragraph level text. If you're not sure a volume is at the right level for your child, try counting how many unfamiliar words it contains per page. You can also accept the opposite approach and check to run into how many Dolch words are present.
Talk about what you see on the page. Employ books as a way to spur conversation around a topic and heave vocabulary by learning to read words that are pictured but not written. You can keep a special journal where you keep a tape of the new words. They will be easier to think because they are continued through the story.
Avoid comparisons with peers. Every child learns to read at his or her ain footstep. Reading is a personal and individual experience where a child makes significant and learns more than about how narrative works as he or she develops stronger skills.
Don't put also much pressure. Forcing a kid into reading when he or she is not ready can result in negative reactions and cause more harm than good.
Do speak with your child'due south teacher. If your kid doesn't enjoy reading and struggles with decoding and/or sight reading, it may be due to a specific learning difficulty. It's brash you outset hash out it with your child'south teacher who may recommend an assessment by a specialist.

When reading is difficult

Learning difficulties

If reading is particularly challenging and your child isn't making progress in that location could be a specific learning difficulty such as dyslexia or ADHD that is causing the problem. Atmospheric condition like dyslexia are hereditary and it's not unlikely that another family member will also have a hard time with reading. Visual processing, visual damage and hearing impairment tin as well crusade reading difficulties.

In the case of the latter, if y'all can't hear the words it'southward difficult to identify the sounds inside them and develop an understanding of phonics. Hearing harm based reading difficulties are a common issue in teaching children with Down syndrome to read.

Orton-Gillingham

Orton-Gillingham is an approach designed to help struggling readers. It's based on the work of Dr. Samuel Orton and Dr. Anna Gillingham and has been in utilise for the by fourscore+ years. Orton-Gillingham allows every child to go on at a pace that is right for him or her and introduces English phonics in a multi-sensory way.

For example, children may come across a letter combination, say it aloud and trace information technology in the air with their finger. Rich sensory experiences aid to enhance learning and can exist provided using different materials like drawing in sand, dirt, shaving foam or chocolate pudding. Children may form messages using their hands or move in a rhythmic way that mimics the syllables in a give-and-take. Singing, dancing, art activities and plenty of repetition develop reading skills.

Larn more in this post on taking a multi-sensory approach to reading.

Touch-typing and multi-sensory reading

TTRS is a touch-typing program that follows the Orton-Gillingham approach and teaches reading in a multi-sensory mode. Children see a word on the screen, hear information technology read aloud and blazon it. They utilise muscle retentiveness in the fingers to retrieve spelling – which is particularly important for children who have dyslexia-- and practice with high frequency words that build English phonics knowledge and decoding skills. Learning happens via bite-size modules that can be repeated every bit oft as is needed. Progress is shown through automatized feedback and event graphs build confidence and motivation.