TEACHING READING

 

 

 

In order to become good readers beginning readers must master a number of

skills. Chief among these are phonological awareness, phonemic awareness

and phonics. In this article I will cover these three areas and discuss the skills

necessary to build each.

 

Phonological awareness shows beginning readers how to divide language

orally into smaller units.  Phonological awareness is developed through:

 

                                                       Rhyming

Remember those nursery rhymes you learnt as a child. They weren't just for

fun they were teaching you phonological awareness. You learnt that words

could have the same ending sound and have rhythm.

 

The learning of rhymes is one of the core skills of phonological awareness and

should be taught to every beginning reader. So go ahead and "Hickory dickory

dock"

                                        Sentence Segmentation

This is where children learn that a sentence is made up of different words.

 

                                                  Syllabication

Here children are taught that one word can have several parts. Each part contains a vowel.

                                                               bet/ter

 

Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to recognize and manipulate

phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word. Here are some

ways to develop phonemic awareness:

 

                                         Phonemic Segmentation

 

     Children learn to identify the amount of phonemes in a word.

                                                   /b/   /a/    /t/

 

                                                      Blending

 

    Children learn to blend single phonemes (sounds) together

                                  

                                              bbbb-aaaaa-ttttt        bat

 

                                     Phonemic Substitution

 

Children learn to substitute different sounds in words for example. They

learn to change bug to rug.

 

Once phonemic awareness is in place its time to begin phonics instruction.

Children are now going to learn how to connect the sounds they hear with the

written symbols.

 

Consonants should be taught first along with short vowel sounds.  Children

should be given lots of activities that allow them to translate what they hear to

the written word. These  activities should involve tracing and writing  the

letters.

 

Next children are taught to blend consonants and  vowels. Then three

letter words.

 

Children can then be introduced to sight words from the Dolch word list.

 

Long vowels are taught next. Then digraphs such as ch, sh.

 

Next the R controlled vowels such as:

 car or  dirt are introduced followed by vowel digraphs (rain hay). Vowel

digraphs occur when two vowel come together and make one long vowel sound.

 

Finally  vowel diphthongs are taught. Diphthongs occur when two vowels come

together and make two sounds (saw, pause).

 

In order for phonics instruction to be effective children must have a variety of

activities to do. If done right phonological awareness, phonemic awareness and

phonics instruction can be enjoyable for children. Most older children and

adults who can’t read have none or few of the skills mentioned in this article.

Phonological awareness, phonemic awareness and phonics are not the only

skills beginning readers must be taught but they are certainly the most I

important foundation skills.

 

 

         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                            

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