How to teach your kids to read

Filed in archive Education on December 11, 2005

As previously discussed by Ai Liam Li and I, a child's reading skill should be honed as this could later dictate his/her performance in school. This has brought on several questions from 2 of our readers whose children have still yet to read.

Fiona Walters and gina asked, "When should childrent start learning how to read? How should I start teaching my child?"Basically, kids can start learning when they are very young. Here are a few resources which could help the improvement of your child's reading skills:

Succeed to Read's Teach a Child to Read is authored by Peggy Wilber. It is a complete manual offering auditory training techniques, phonic worksheets, and cartoon stories that help children improve in reading skills. It's a very thorough guideline and would definitely make a valuable resource.

The Starfall learn-to-read website is a very effective -- as seen from my son's performance -- way to inspire a love of reading and writing. From introduction to ABCs to Advance Reading for kids. There are lots of materials which you can use -- whether for online or offline lessons.

BBC's CBeebies is basically a website for kids with fun and games. However, the activities featured also encourages kids to learn and enjoy reading... and singing.

Of course, setting a good example would be the most effective way of encouraging your kids to read.

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Response from: Liz (12/17/05 12:55am)

The best program for teaching your child to read at home is "How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons".

One source is here:

http://www.startreading.com/

As the reading expert Dr. Patrick Groff writes, "All beginning readers need direct and systematic teaching that develops their conscious awareness of the speech sounds in spoken words (their phonemic or phonological awareness), and how letters are distinctive one from another. They need to be taught in an explicit fashion how the alphabet represents speech sounds (phonics information), and how to apply this knowledge to decode written words (to convert their letters into speech sounds)."

There's an online test to screen your child for reading-readiness:

http://www.getreadytoread.org/partners2.php

Some children will have difficulty learning to read (will have a degree of dyslexia). There are two UK tests that seem reliable for children older than 48 months:

screening tests for dyslexia: the Dyslexia Early Screening Test (DEST) and the Cognitive Profiling System (CoPS 1), both normed and designed to be administered by teachers to children four years and older.

Reading Rockets is another excellent source of information on teaching reading.

http://www.readingrockets.org/index.php