Effective strategies for teaching children to read
- trishgan2804
- Mar 14, 2023
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 28, 2023
There are many effective strategies for teaching children to read, and the best approach will depend on the child's age, learning style, and needs. Some strategies that teachers and parents can use are given below starting with fundamentals to developmental skills.
Step 1
The most essential literacy skill is letter recognition and letter-sound knowledge. For a good foundation, you must start with these building blocks of reading, which are the letters of the alphabet. Letter sound knowledge is a key requirement for reading and the foundation on which everything else is built.
Step 2
The second step in building strong reading skills is distinguishing between vowels and consonants both by sight and sound. When students have mastered all alphabet sounds, they must now learn to differentiate between vowels and consonants. They must do so with precision because this is the second critical skill on which the house of reading will be built.
Step 3
The third step in teaching children well-built reading skills is to place a strong emphasis on the vowels and their sounds. There must be a very strong emphasis on this at this stage. Understanding vowels is one of the strongest foundations for reading and writing the English language.
Step 4
The fourth step is to focus on blending. The blend that is being referred to is the combination of a short vowel sound with a consonant. The primary goal of this process is to accomplish the smooth blending of the short vowels with the consonants.
Step 5
When students have mastered the short vowels and consonant sounds, meaning that they read them smoothly and without hesitation, you can help them to expand the consonant-vowel blends that they have been practicing to include consonant-vowel-consonant [CVC] combinations.
Step 6
After mastering the steps already explained, it is time to introduce simple sentences. The sentences should be short and should consist of CVC words that are being introduced. When students begin to read these sentences, they will encounter sight words and punctuation marks. Use these teachable moments to introduce sight words and punctuation marks to students as they are encountered in sentences.
Step 7
In this step, students will learn that vowels have more than one sound. They will learn the long vowel sounds and they will begin to distinguish between the short sounds and the long sounds.
Step 8
In this step children must learn to differentiate between words that make short vowel sounds and words that make long vowel sounds The big question is how to know when to say the long vowel sounds and not a short sounds, when reading. No need to worry as there are existing rules that you can use to guide you in assisting your students through this phase.
Step 9
When your students have mastered both the short and long vowel sounds, it is time to introduce them to consonant blends, which are also referred to as consonant clusters. These letters are blended or smoothly joined together in clusters of 2 or 3 at a time. Teach children to pronounce consonant blends with both long and short vowel sounds.
Step 10
The word diphthong comes from the Greek and means two voices or two sounds. In phonetics a diphthong is a vowel in which there is a noticeable sound change within the same syllable. The process of moving from one vowel sound to another is called gliding, which is why another name for a diphthong is a gliding vowel but they are also known as compound vowels, complex vowels, or moving vowels. Children must learn the vowel combinations that create diphthongs, they should also know how these combinations are pronounced. This step is important in order to avoid confusion with long vowel sounds and diphthongs
If you need a step by step guide with in-depth information, strategies and activities to assist you while you assist your child with reading click on the links below:
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