The Best Methods For Teaching Children To Read

Learning to read is one of the most important things children learn before they turn 10 years old. Everything in a child’s pedagogical development, from the expansion of the vocabulary to achievements in the main subjects, can be linked to the ability to read.

No two children learn to read in the same way. Therefore, there are several methods. The key to teaching children to read is usually to choose a method and stick to it.

But for teachers, it is a good idea to combine different methods and strategies so that they can adapt them to the children’s needs in the classroom. This is especially important for students who have specific learning needs.

It is important to remember that motivation is the key to success. One must be patient not to create negative connections with school and learning in general.

Skills that form the basis for reading

Children begin to acquire the skills they need to master reading from the moment they are born. In fact, a child who is only six months old can already distinguish between the sound of his mother tongue and the sound of a foreign language.

At the age of two, he or she already knows enough of domestic phonemes to be able to put together more than 50 words. Between the ages of 2-3, many children learn to recognize several letters.

As fine motor skills develop, the ability to write, draw and copy shapes also grows. We can combine this to help them start writing letters.

There are many ways in which parents can promote their children’s knowledge before learning to read. Pointing at letters when reading a fairy tale is one way. It can also be helpful to ask your children about their day and talk to them every day to improve their word comprehension.

It is important to take your children to bookstores and libraries and also read with them. The more children who read with their parents, teachers and caregivers, the more we lay the foundation for reading to become a natural activity for the family.

Teach children to read using the phonetic method

A phoneme is the smallest phonological unit, the shortest articulation of a vowel and a consonant sound. Phonemes are the basic units of spoken language.

In an alphabetical language, sounds are translated into letters and combinations of letters to represent words. Therefore, reading depends on the individual’s ability to decode words in a series of sounds. Coding is the opposite process to reading and that is how we learn to spell.

The phonetic method (also called sounding or  the synthetic method ) helps to teach children by reading some letters and sounds that make up syllables, words and phrases.

It is a method that takes us from the simplest to the more complex. The easier part is to go from recognizing the first letter to reading syllables. The most difficult part is to read the words first and then move on, a little at a time, towards the goal of reading whole sentences.

This is one of the most popular methods for teaching children to read, and is also one of the most widely used. First, progress can be slow and there are many pauses during reading. But little by little, the cognitive processes become involved in the “translation” between letters and sounds automatic and more fluid.

The whole word method or the analysis method

This method teaches word-level reading. Children skip the decoding process and do not sound the words with letters and syllables. Instead, they learn to read by recognizing the written form of the words.

The context is important and providing images can help. More familiar words can be presented to themselves at first, then in short sentences and finally in longer sentences. As the child’s vocabulary grows, he or she begins to draw conclusions about rules and patterns from himself or herself, and these help the child to read new words.

The reading eventually becomes automatic. After coming into contact with several different words, the child begins to read most of what they see at first glance.

The method for linguistic awareness (including the Bornholm model)

Linguistic awareness is the basis of this method and teaching reading is based on personal learning. The words that children learn differ from child to child. The idea is that it is much easier to learn words that a child knows.

Teachers and parents who use this method can create stories where the child’s favorite words are used in different contexts. For example, children can make drawings for these words and put them together in a folder to create a special reading book.

One can look for these words in children’s literature and storybooks and use them to help the child guess the meaning of words they do not recognize, and when they appear in different contexts. This is a good strategy to improve reading comprehension.

In short, when teaching children to read, it is important to take into account each child’s needs and interests. You have to pay attention to how they develop and always think about their specific needs.