Quick Summary

(find details in Long Summary)

* All children have different strengths and weaknesses (neurodevelopmental differences) that they bring to ‘learning to read’. Some will learn to read well regardless of instructional methods used in school and with or without parental ‘teaching’. But which children will those be? Some of the specific ideas below seem to be ‘best practices’ to make sure even at-risk children — whoever they may turn out to be — will have had the best possible foundation laid for learning to read and write.

* Pay attention to energy and interest levels and avoid making reading un-fun in any way for a young child.

* All instruction/learning should be meaningful to the child. Games, stories, conversations, interests…

* Work on sound (phonemic) awareness (3+ years old), through games, with correct (adult) understanding and pronunciation of the sounds (e.g. don’t say “buh” for the letter b; say /b/). Here is a good tutorial for parents/teachers for identification of the phonemes in American English.

* No letter names for a long, long time. They can interfere with reading and spelling. Focus on recognition and writing of letters in conjunction with sounds (4+ years old).

* Couple ‘reading’ and ‘writing’ as much as possible.

* Emphasize recognizing/writing lower case letters…upper case isn’t necessary for learning to ‘decode’ and most reading is of lower-case letters.

* Until they’re mastered, work only with ’short vowel’ sounds and a limited set of spellings. (Letters a-e-i-o-u = sounds cat – met – sit – hot – cup.) When the child understands that this (oversimplified) system is reliable and consistent, and when she uses it automatically, she can focus attention on further complexity.

* Practice reading: Use controlled sets of words that fit the above vowel scheme and the basic consonant-vowel-consonant pattern until the child uses them automatically. Read irregularly spelled words for her; trying to sound out such words before she understands and trusts the basic alphabetic principal might make her distrust the whole system and become discouraged.

* Continue to read much more complex and interesting materials during parent reading time.

* Avoid using anything like rules to teach spelling and reading to a young child.

* Use specific sequences of teaching the letters-sound correspondences. (e.g. Gould starts with: m – f – l – a – t – s – c – n – i …).

* Once the child can begin reading for him/herself, make sure practice reading materials are at an appropriate level and work together to build reading fluency (e.g. “To-With-By” technique described by Wilbur).

*Be leery of expecting memorization of too many sight-words at the beginning of learning to read. Teaching too much ’sight-word recognition’ too early might pre-empt the crucial lesson that decoding is how we figure out words on our own.

What Happens During Reading?

The ultimate goal of reading is understanding what is read. But the activity of reading is complex, built upon logical abilities and various subskills that practiced readers don’t pay attention to anymore…they’re automatic. There are several aspects of successful reading which are all part of reading instruction (merely decoding words is not sufficient). And several neurodevelopmental systems come into play during reading.

Subskills – Reading requires a number of sub-skills and reasoning abilities that we adults are not usually aware of in our own reading…

Logic – Certain logical reasoning abilities must develop before a child can perform and comprehend reading activities…

Neurodevelopmental Systems involved with Reading

* Memory – Long-term: used for pairing, recall, recognition, automatization; Active working memory: used for combining sounds (sounding out words); combining parts of an idea in a sentence, a paragraph or a story (comprehension)

* Language – Phonological awareness (ability to distinguish different sounds); Phonemic awareness (insight that words consist of individual sounds; sound-segmenting, -blending and -manipulating abilities); Morphology (smaller chunks of meaning within words); Semantics (meanings of words); Syntax (meaning gained from sentence structure: problematic when grammatical intuition or strong grasp of rules is absent)

* Vision – Deficient analysis or recognition of visual patterns

Aspects of reading (“Five key areas of reading instruction” set forth by the US Partnership for Reading, copied here from The Between the Lions Book for Parents)

* Phonemic awareness – “The ability to [hear and] focus on the individual speech sounds in words and to break words into their sounds [segmenting], play with the sounds [manipulating], and blend them back together again [blending].” Note: there’s no mention of ‘letters’ here.

* Phonics – [Alphabetic Principle] “The study and use of letter-sound relationships to help identify written words.”

* Fluency – “The ability to read in a smooth, flowing, connected way. Reading fluently makes it possible to link words together into meaningful phrases.”

* Vocabulary – “Knowledge of word meanings, in both spoken and written language. A large vocabulary makes it easier to understand what you read, both because you know the meanings of more of the words and because the known words provide clues to the unknown ones.”

* Comprehension – “Understanding of text, both its individual words and its whole meaning.”

Each Child’s Mind

* Each person’s mind is uniquely wired from birth and some of those neurodevelopmental differences (whether they be strengths or weaknesses) will potentially affect language development, and subsequently, reading and writing development. (Eight neurodevelopmental systems of the mind are thoroughly described in A Mind at a Time by Levine) When parents — who know their children better than anyone — understand the elements involved in learning to read, they are in the best position to provide input and support if a problem develops.

* Some children seem to learn to read by themselves (‘natural readers’ as described by Gould) and almost any method in school works well enough for them. However, …

* Learning to read doesn’t stop after children learn to decode (associate sounds with letters), so parents of children who have learned very easily at school, or who have taught themselves to read, should remain attentive. Some of these early success stories may have learned or taught themselves some reading strategies that will fail the child when faced with increasingly challenging reading materials and tasks (usually increasing from 3rd grade onward).

Also, new neurodevelopmental systems come into play for reading/writing success as more demands for comprehension and higher-level thinking skills are required for working with text in the upper grades. Some children who are perfectly “wired” for figuring out how to decode may have memory, planning, language and/or other neurodevelopmental weaknesses that result in later difficulties in reading and writing. (Levine)

* For children with some kinds of neurodevelopmental weaknesses — e.g. in auditory processing — there are approaches to teaching reading that are most likely to be effective. Other approaches to teaching reading are more likely to confuse and interfere with such a child’s ability to learn to read.

Building the Foundation

* Spoken language is the basis for reading. The ‘written word’ was invented to record (to encode) spoken language. The most active part of the brain during reading (this based on brain scan studies) are auditory processing regions, not visual.

* Providing a language-rich, human-interactive environment from birth onward is the most important way to help a child build a foundation for reading that same language later. So, talk with and read to your child as much as possible. A large vocabulary, a sense of how stories work, exposure to the differences between conversational language and literary language, familiarity with different ways of using language … all develop from spoken (including read-aloud) language. And all are necessary for successful reading.

* Language develops in children through engaged, personal listening and speaking with real human beings, not by passively watching television or listening to recorded music or stories. Research bears this out (McGuinness, Growing a Reader).

Timing for Teaching

*Traditionally, age 6 (first grade in the US, CP in France) is the normal starting age for learning to read. Apparently, that has been pushed back to kindergarten (age 5) in many US school districts, with children expected or desired to enter first grade already reading (decoding). I wonder if that is because of the widespread testing and test-score-dependant funding formulas now in place in US school districts? Or is that because research suggests that kindergarten (age 5) is a better time to start? Or because worries about rates of functional illiteracy have inspired policy-makers to push for an earlier start? Or is it because of pressure from parents who think this is the best way to make sure their kids receive the best possible education for best possible future success? Is it because kids are ’smarter’ nowadays, so we should teach them to read earlier?

With a rise in homeschooling, concerns about functional illiteracy and the quality of reading instruction in schools, people in bilingual situations such as mine, and a proliferation of books and discussion about reading instruction and remediation, many parents are becoming more active in teaching their children to read, often earlier than the school-based norm. Follows is information that makes sense to me to keep in mind:

* Reading sub-skills and logical abilities are developmental…they cannot be forced to appear in a child’s repertoire if the child’s mind (and body) hasn’t yet developed the capacity. Developmental norms help provide a guideline of what is appropriate to expect and/or try to teach at a given age, keeping in mind that each child is unique.

* Young children (baby at least through age 5+) are working on many critical, non-academic learning tasks through spontaneous and organized play and interactions with objects and other people. Direct sensorial experiences are probably the most important for a child of this age, providing a broad mental framework upon which future academic learning can be built. There are strong arguments (Elkind, Miseducation) for respecting and nurturing the work that children of this age are doing without the addition of the academic work of learning to read (i.e. decoding skills).

(Elkind argues in Miseducation that the benefits of pushing academics too early are nil — research shows that fast beginners don’t show an advantage later and they sometimes exhibit greater problems, social as well as academic. He warns of the potential of emotional damage when children are pushed to do academic (and other) work without consideration for their developmental age and individual needs. However, he published this in 1987…I’d like to find data that either refutes or supports his concern about emotional damage (good luck!). Elkind asks parents to honestly evaluate their own motives for wanting a child to do something earlier than it’s normally done and he describes numerous (dysfunctional) parental justifications in Miseducation.

* There are also some arguments (Gould) for beginning instruction through developmentally-appropriate games for children as young as 3-4 years old. Particularly, if a child might have some learning difficulties (e.g. memory, auditory processing, other language issues), working in a playful way at an early age can provide the considerable extra time necessary for a child to work on difficult-to-develop skills. This before the child reaches 1st grade and finds herself in a crowd where she (and other kids, and possibly adults) can too easily decide that she’s not very bright, in comparison with children who learn the material more rapidly.

* Sub-skills for reading (not letter-sound associations) can be taught/learned from age 3 onward. These skills are a part of most pre-school programs and a lot of pre-school level workbooks easily found in stores though such workbooks are NOT all equally useful (be very choosy). In Get Ready to Read, Gould describes numerous games (many of which are active, involving the whole body) to help develop these sub-skills.

* Meaningful learning of ‘the alphabetic code’ requires certain logical development, on average in place at about 4 years old. Thus Gould recommends age 4 as the earliest to begin teaching sound-letter associations. (Before that age, rote memorization could be used for sound-letter association but without an understanding or ability to use this information to read.) I agree with Gould’s opinion that understanding and meaning is a critical part of a satisfactory learning experience. Teaching such that the child understands and figures out things on her own develops a particular attitude (confidence, trust) about the learning process.

What to Teach

* No letter names until 3rd grade. I like Gould’s response to a kid who insists on the names: ‘letters have two names: their first names (the sounds) and their last names (the names); we usually call people by their first names so we’ll do that with the letters’.

* Exposure to lower case letters as much as possible. Like letter names and the sequence of the alphabet, upper case isn’t necessary at all for learning to read and can be taught later, once decoding is grasped.

* Work on sound awareness very early on: play games identifying initial sounds in words (then end sounds, then middle sounds) and play rhyming games. Make sure my pronunciation of the sounds is correct (without adding extra sounds). Focusing on sounds does not require naming of letters or even awareness of letters, yet phonological awareness is a key subskill for learning to read. And if parents start working on this early, they’re more likely to identify auditory problems early…this is a typical weakness for some kids.

Long Summary

* Pay attention to energy and interest levels and avoid making reading un-fun in any way for a young child.

* Work on sound (phonemic) awareness very early on (3-4 years old, depending on child’s interest). Play games identifying initial sounds in words (then end sounds, then middle sounds) and play rhyming games. Make sure teacher’s pronunciation of the sounds is correct (without adding extra sounds, e.g. don’t say “buh” for the letter b; say /b/). Use a reliable list as a reference. Be alert for problems with phonemic awareness in older children (5+).

* No letter names (start that after the sound-letter relationships are established, i.e. the ‘code’ has been broken by the child). I like Gould’s response to a kid who insists on using names: letters have two names: their first names (the sounds) and their last names (the names); we usually call people by their first names and we’ll do that with the letters, too.

* Exposure to lower case letters as much as possible (given the prevalence of capital letters in most alphabet books and learning materials). Like letter names and the sequence of the alphabet, upper case isn’t necessary at all for learning to read and usage rules can be taught later, once decoding is grasped.

* Couple ‘reading’ and ‘writing’ as much as possible: learn to say a particular sound in response to seeing that a letter, and write that letter while saying the sound.

* All this instruction/learning should be in a meaningful context. Letters-sounds in isolation aren’t meaningful. Words are meaningful when related to objects, word-games or concrete topics of conversation.

* Sound-letter correspondences: Initially, work only with ’short vowel’ sounds and a limited set of spellings. (Letters a-e-i-o-u = sounds cat – met – sit – hot – cup.) Make sure these are fully learned and automatic — child always pronounces vowels this way when reading — before moving on to other vowel sounds and/or spellings.

* Practice reading: Use controlled sets of words that fit the above vowel scheme and the basic consonant-vowel-consonant pattern until the child has learned them. Continue to read much more complex and interesting materials during parent reading time.

* Avoid using anything like rules to teach spelling and reading to a young child. Forget about ‘rules & their exceptions’ which are too frequent. And kids don’t develop the necessary logic to understand them until about age 9. And even then, they don’t tend to use them while reading!

The vowels in English are problematic, with multiple sounds that we map to each of the letters a-e-i-o-u. Make sure that all work with vowels (including practice reading, i.e. ’sounding out a word’ while mommy reads) is practiced ONLY with the ’short-vowel’ sounds first (e.g. cat – met – sit – hot – cup). Avoid sounding out other vowel sounds and spellings during the initial learning…it undermines the lesson. Once all this is ‘automatic’ for the child, move on to the ‘exceptions’.

Use suggested sequences of teaching the letters-sound correspondences. Such lists try to remove potential confusion by using sounds that are easy to differentiate. (e.g. Gould starts with: m – f – l – a – t – s – c – n – i …).

*Be leery of expecting memorization of too many sight-words at the beginning of learning to read. Some words are necessary early on AND have ‘impossible’ pronunciation for a new reader, so they’re worth teaching as sight words. However, decoding is the skill necessary to unlock new words without an adult around to explain the meaning. A lot of practice reading (of high-interest materials) will eventually create the automatic recognition (memorization) necessary to become a fluent reader. I believe that the memorization comes along after the child has learned both the skill of decoding AND the alphabetic principle of English. Teaching too much ’sight-word recognition’ too early — especially when some of those words are perfectly decodable — might pre-empt the message that decoding is how we can all figure out words on our own.