Click on the link  below to view this short but informative video.

Keep this First Law of Learning in mind when teaching your child. It doesn’t matter how often you review something until your child learns. The important issue is they learn because you are patient.  They learn they don’t have to get it the first time.

There is a life lesson for both of you here.  

The First Law of Learning

I stress it is the lucky child who is read to on a daily basis, practically from birth, who will most probably value reading and learn to read easily. These children handle books, know how to turn pages, discuss the illustrations with a loving parent, see words over and over again. More importantly they develop listening skills and a wide vocabulary.

 It is true there are children who learn to read before going to school. Why? Because books have been part of every day life and they have heard thousands of stories.
Mem Fox, whose book ‘Reading Magic’ is a book I recommend,  puts phonics in the right perspective.
“…in the light of recent movements and arguments in the teaching of reading, it is important to understand the intricacies and meaning of phonics which is basically the ability to sound to break words up into smaller pieces and sound them out, as in : c-a-t says cat.”
I too believe that reading success is set up well before a child enters school. The parents who value books and reading and read to their child are the first teachers.

Children with this background usually value reading and find learning to read easy.
I have also experienced lack of phonics knowledge causes a person to struggle with reading.
An interesting article is ‘The Folly of Jolly Old Phonics – A phonics tale of three children (with morals for teachers of reading).
To view Mem Fox’s book ‘Reading Magic’click here.  

I hope you experience the joy of reading with your child in the knowledge that you are giving them a priceless gift.

Before clicking through to the article which tells you more about each book read through the list and see how many you have read.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll.

Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi.

Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kastner.                        

Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome.

Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken.

The Owl Service by Alan Garner.

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.

Moomin Summer Madness by Tove Jansson.

A Hundred Million Francs by Paul Berna.

The Castafiore Emerald by Hergé.   A Tintin story       

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Just William books by Richmal Crompton.

The Elephant’s Child From The Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling.

Treasure Island by R.L. Stevenson

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.

The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono.

The Singing Tree by Kate Seredy

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson-Burnett.

Finn Family Moomintroll (and the other Moomin books) by Tove Jansson.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney.                                      

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein.

Carry On, Jeeves by PG Wodehouse When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr.

Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

How to be Topp by Geoffrey Willams and Ronald Searle.    

Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz.

The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier.

Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer.

Animal Farm by George Orwell.

Greek myths by Geraldine McCaughrean.

People Might Hear You by Robin Klein

Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman.                              

Beano Annual

Click here for more information about each book.

Children with dyslexia, she says, process information differently. Their brain records, stores and retrieves information differently from the norm. Dyslexia is not a mental illness.

To view a video , ‘Dyslexia, so what is it all about’  click ‘About Dyslexia’ below

About Dyslexia

For a child to be a successful learner there are a number of factors that need to be in place.
They include a

• stable environment at home and at school
• normal sight and hearing and integration of senses.

Learning difficulties, such as dyslexia, are quite common because children are individuals and learn at different rates. They also respond emotionally according to their inherent make up.

A learning difficulty does not necessarily mean a child is mentally deficient. In fact there are many cases of truly successful people, such as Richard Branson, with dyslexia.
The issues with mental and nevous development are usually detected in the early months since birth.

Specific learning difficulties related to academic subjects such as reading,writing, spelling and maths are not detected until a child begins school.

It is estimated that one child in 5 has some specific learning difficulty.
Schools are often unable to deal with these issues.

The learning difficulty known as dyslexia is related to a child’s struggle with reading, writing and spelling. It is found in a child who has normal vision but is unable to interpret written and printed language.

Language disorders can run in families. More boys than girls tend to have the condition.

I have been fortunate to speak with Diana Vogel who is doing outstanding work with children with learning difficulties.

You can listen to our discussion here.

DIANA VOGEL DISCUSSES DYSLEXIA

Diana’s website is also worth checking out especially if you have concerns about your child.

SPELD Victoria also provides information about dyslexia and specific learning difficulties.

Facts about dyslexia

Fifteen to twenty percent of the population has a reading disability.
70% to 80% of students with specific learning disabilities have deficits in reading.
Dyslexia is the most common cause of reading, writing and spelling difficulties.
Phonological training in kindergarten and first grade helps children with dyslexia. It is important a child gets this training as early as possible.
Most children who struggle with reading in the third grade do not improve as they go through school.
Dyslexia can be inherited.
Males and females in different ethnic groups can also suffer with dyslexia.

.Does your child suffer any of the following?
Talked later than children his age.
Has difficulty pronouncing words.
He doesn’t learn new words readily.
Often fails to find the right word to say while conversing.
Has difficulty ryhming words
Hasn’t learnt the alphabet or to spell his or her name,
Finds it difficult relating to other children
Finds it difficult to follow multi-step directions
Fine motor skills are under developed
Finds it difficult to retell a story in the correct sequence
Finds it difficult to sound out and decode words
Reverses words and letters
Confuses small words
Memory issues – doesn’t remember facts
Has difficulty learning new skills
Is impulsive and accident prone
Poor pencil grip
Finds it difficult to learn how to tell the time

If you think your child is dyslexic you should have them tested by a qualified psychologist.

For a FREE eBook on How the English Alphabet System Works and to hear from us now and then please click here 

Check out Reading Kingdom

Reading is the most important skill a child will ever learn. But government figures show that only 35% of children are reading at a proficient level while a staggering 35% are failing. Until now, educators relied almost exclusively on phonics and whole language to teach reading – both of which have significant problems that make failure inevitable for many children. Reading Kingdom, on the other hand, offers a new 6 skill model of reading instruction that incorporates the best parts of phonics and whole language while teaching additional skills that make reading and writing success inevitable for every child!

Phonetics - the study and classification of speech sounds.

Phonemic Awareness and Teaching Kids to Read – Stage On

This is the first in a number of articles that outlines the process of learning to read. This will help you to monitor your child’s reading development.

TEACHING KIDS HOW TO READ STAGE ONE

The sounds of English and the letters that represent them are explained in  a video Lesson. Click on the link  ENGLISH SOUND CHART and listen before reading any further.

PHONEMIC AWARENESS

Background knowledge:                                 

• One of the most valuable if not the most valuable invention is that of the Alphabet.
• The Alphabet enables us to grow intellectually because we have access to ideas and words that are written down and not used every day.
• We think using words. The fewer words we know the poorer our thinking.

It is believed a Phoenician realized that speech is made up of a collection of finite sounds. Words are a combination of some of the 44 sounds humans make with their speaking apparatus (tongue, teeth, breath and larynx for example.)
Over time the Alphabet (symbols) were invented to represent the sounds in words. These sounds are called phonemes.

What is reading then?

Reading is the ability to translate written words back into their spoken form.

The alphabet provides us with a constant set of sound symbols that enable us to do this.

Teaching Kids to Read –  Stage One is primarily about  ensuring your child has sound or phonemic awareness.

You can  develop your child’s phonemic awareness using simple playful activities.

Phonemic Awareness is the understanding that words are made up of sounds. It is also the ability to pick out and reorder the sounds in words.
It is not the same thing as phonics.
Phonics is about the relationship between letters and sounds. Phonics is associated with the printed word.
Reading Researchers indicate there are five types of phonemic awareness tasks.
1. The ability to hear rhymes and alliteration (closely connected words that have the same sound or letter at the start
2. The ability to choose the sounds in the beginning of words and notice whether words have the same beginning sound or not.
3. The ability to orally blend sounds together and split syllables
4. The ability to separate words into their single sounds
5. The ability to take a sound from a word replace it with another sound and blend and articulate the new word.
Tasks one to four should be mastered before beginning school and task five at the middle or end of first grade.
The children who have consistent exposure to being read to, singing songs and nursery rhymes develop these skills before school without stress. Most phonemic awareness activities are oral.
The principle a child needs to understand then is that words are made up of a series of individual sounds. The next step – phonics training- relies on this knowledge.
It is estimated that approximately one child in five lacks phonemic awareness. This is not a small number.
Without phonemic awareness a child will find learning to read and write difficult.
There is some good news however. Early intervention is possible.
If your child is struggling with reading check out his or her level of phonemic awareness.
Without early preventative measures, many children who lack sound awareness are often labeled as
dyslexic or learning disabled.
Phonemic awareness is not related to print and most phonemic awareness activities are oral. For phonemic awareness activities click here.
For more information please download a free copy of my ebook,
How the English Alphabetic System Works
Your information will be respected and not shared with anyone.

CHECK YOUR PHONICS KNOWLEDGE USING THE CHECK LIST BELOW:

• You are aware of the individual sounds that are made when speaking. In English around 44. This is called phonemic awareness.

• Know that the alphabet is used to represent these sounds in words that are written down.

• Recognize the 26 letters that are used to spell hundreds of thousands of words in lower and upper case form.

• Realize that there are more sounds than letters to represent them. One, two, three and sometimes four letters are used to spell one sound. Letters c, q and x are superfluous. C has the sound of either k or s, qu stands for kw and x sounds like ks.

• The sounds of the language are divided into 2 categories. Vowel sounds and consonant sounds.

• Know 25 sounds are consonant sounds and 19 are vowel sounds.

• Six consonants are semi-vowels. (l, m, n, r, y ,ng)

• Know 19 vowel sounds and that every word or the syllables in a word have to contain a vowel sound

• A number of vowel sounds can be spelled in a variety of ways.

• Recognize the all purpose muttering vowel or schwa sound

• Recognize the 2 difficulties with the English alphabet and spelling. Too many sounds and too few letters to spell them. Some of the single letters are used to spell 2 entirely different sounds (a, e, i, o, u, c, g)

THE KNOWLEDGE OF LETTER SOUND RELATIONSHIPS (PHONICS) IS AN IMPORTANT SUB SKILL OF READING.
Many people have reading and writing issues because they lack this phonics knowledge.

I remember a student who was amazed to find his reading improved after we worked through the phonics related to the English Alphabet code.

I invite you to join our Newsletter List. To receive a FREE eBook on Phonics, ‘How the English Alphabet Works’     Click here.

To learn about a great reading series that incorporates phonics in a systematic way go to

the informative site of the  Fitzroy Readers a phonics based program but also much more!

There is lot of excellent information here.

You will have access to  helpful articles on phonics, literacy and the Fitzroy Readers.

The Cat in the Hat

And finally a word from Dr Seuss  whose best selling children’s books were written around a sight vocabulary given to him by his publisher.   In June 1981, in the Arizona Magazine he was quoted as saying “… I think killing phonics was one of the greatest causes of illiteracy in the country.”

It says a lot for Dr Seuss’s creativity as he produced books that remain very popular.

If you are interested in seeing the books of Dr Seuss

click here.

By Lynne Hunt

There is an art to teaching your child to read. You need a combination of patience, encouragement and intelligence as well as a good grasp of the concepts involved in teaching phonics, using sight words and finding a method that engages your children without overwhelming them.

In order to be a good teacher or a helper of the schoolteacher, you need to be able to keep a variety in the lessons that you give to the child and this needs to be done in preschoolers, kindergarten or nursery school teaching and beyond. I hope that you are one of the parents that realizes and recognizes the huge amounts of help that can be found both on and offline in their efforts to help teach your child to read.

Preschool

The job in preschool is “phonemic awareness” to start making your child aware of the differences between sounds. Just by listening to a plane flying overhead you can ask your child what it is. To you it seems natural to know what that sound is but a child might not yet have made that connection. Cars, lorries and helicopters make different sounds and when your child can recognize these sounds then they may be ready to start differentiating between sounds in words.

They may also not yet know the cause and effect principle and until you teach them that hitting a fence with a stick results in a noise like a drum they might not appreciate it. Once you tell them they will not forget.

A good guide to see if your child is ready is to do the What does “Word” start with game. For example if your child is called David you can ask, What does David start with emphasizing the first D sound in David. Children love doing this for a few minutes a day.

Reading Letters

The recognition of letters and sounds of those letters is a similar process. The child needs to recognise the letter visually to be able to guess at the pronunciation. Once that recognition is achieved then your child is ready to move onto combining letters. There are many online resources to give you phonics games, phonics activities and sight word lists that you can use to help you to teach your child to read. Check out the resource box at the bottom of this article for links to many places where you can find great activities to do with your child.

Sight Words Lists

Once your child can recognize quite a few letters you start confusing him or her by adding in sight words! Sight words are words that are not pronounced phonetically. Therefore they need to be learned on sight rather than by using the individual letter sounds to spell them out. There are many sight words lists available online and off and they are an essential part of any program that helps to teach your child to read.

All of these methods for helping to teach children reading can be combined and enjoyed by both parent and child. Applying these teachings along with the resources you can find on and offline so as to give your child a richer learning experience is an excellent way of moving forward in your plan for teaching children reading.

Lynne Hunt is a primary teacher and mother of three children: Maria aged 17, Daniel aged nearly 5 and Anita aged 3. She has taught now for 17 years, with experience teaching children from 3 years-old to 7 years-old and also teaching English as a second language to children aged from 2 up to adults. She lives in Spain, in Valencia, where she has lived now for 10 years and she has been working in a British School there with great success in developing reading skills among both learners of English as a foreign language and native speakers.

Lynne has recently developed a website to help parents to teach their children to read which you can find at http://www.teachyourchildtoread.net. There are many other articles about Teaching Your Child To Read there.

The links page for all of the online resources that Lynne recommends can be found within the website at http://teachyourchildtoread.net/links-to-useful-resources

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lynne_Hunt
http://EzineArticles.com/?How-to-Start-to-Help-Teach-Your-Child-to-Read&id=2907438

Phonics and more usually children and reading are often highlighted in the press. below is such an article about how education authorities see the state of play of phonics and reading in British schools.

‘Teachers and head teachers say phonics is a good way of teaching children to read, but is not a magic formula and good teachers will use various strategies to meet their pupils’ needs.”

“Teaching children to read is at the heart of their curriculum. Rigorous, intensive and systematic phonics teaching underpins reading, spelling and writing.”  Christine Gilbert, Ofsted Inspector

Quotes from ‘Ofsted Inspectors say literacy standards fall short’  by By Angela Harrison, Education correspondent, BBC News. Click below to read the article.

Too many children leave primary school unable to read or write well enough, England’s chief schools inspector says. What is the best way to ensure that children can read and write when they leave primary school?

The BBC ‘Have Your Say’ has some interesting comments for you to read as well.

If you would like a free copy of “How the English Alphabet System Works”  please click here

PHONICS AS PART OF EARLY READING INSTRUCTION REALLY NEEDS TO BE TAUGHT SYSTEMATICALLY

Phonics is about letter sound relationships.  Phonics for kids is specifically teaching what letter or groups of letters stand for the phonemes in words.

Did you know there are a significant number of children who learn to read without formal  phonics instruction before going to school?

How do they do this?  Mem Fox says they do so because ‘they‘ve been looking at the same print as they have listened to the same language in the same stories, which have been read again and again.’ As a result the print becomes familiar, language becomes familiar.

PHONICS IN EARLY READING LESSONS

How phonics is taught is important.

Mem Fox looks at learning to read as being more about learning language than about making sounds from the letters on a page. She is wary about teaching synthetic phonics. To her that means phonics teaching that is divorced from the content of a text being studied.

However she does not ignore the role of the alphabetic principle.  “We do need phonics of course, as soon as we learn to write, aged about four or five, when we struggle to make meaning by matching the sounds of language to the letters we scrawl across a page. It’s during this complex struggle that we learn our phonics and then our spelling.”

In her book, ‘Reading Magic – How Your Child Can Learn to Read Before School – and Other Read –Aloud Miracles’,   Mem Fox’s  love of reading, her profession of teaching teachers and writing for children shines through. She also explains the role of phonics in learning to read.

She is somebody worth listening to.

                                                                         READING MAGIC

The must-have guide to reading with children, now in a new and revised edition Best-selling children’s author and internationally respected literacy expert Mem Fox reveals the incredible emotional and intellectual impact reading aloud to children has on their ability to learn to read. With passion and humor, Fox speaks of when, where, and why to read aloud and demonstrates how to read aloud to best effect and get the most out of a read-aloud session. She discusses the three secrets of reading, offers guidance on defining and choosing good books, and–for this new edition–includes two new chapters on boy readers and phonics, a foreword, and a list of “Twenty Books That Children Love.” Filled with practical advice, activities, and inspiring true read-aloud miracles, this book is a turn-to classic for educators and parents.

Click here to get your copy.

Mem Fox  outlines two philosophies about teaching to read.  She also states unequivocally that research tells us it’s not the method so much as the teacher who makes a difference.  I might add the teacher does need to understand what they are teaching! Very few teachers are trained in phonics let alone knowing how to teach phonics to kids.

The reading method taught to young beginner readers, in vogue over forty years ago in schools, was called the ‘look and say method’.  This method introduced lists of disconnected words, and children memorized them. The books they read from (ugh!) contained stilted text of memorized words.

However children did write, have talking sessions, and listened to stories!

I can clearly remember when the concept of “Whole Language” was introduced in the early 1980’s.

Mem Fox again, “Whole language was also ‘whole’ in that the teaching of reading happened at the same time as children learned to read and write. The whole of literacy was taught simultaneously: reading, writing, speaking, listening and viewing.” She also says, “But always the phonics, the words and the sentences made sense since they related back to something that had meaning to the children: a story they loved.”

I remember thinking when told about this ‘new approach,’  “That’s not new. It is common sense!”

I was taught to read and write the ‘whole language way.’   It is all language based!

The “Progressive Primer Series” published by Whitcombe and Tombs of New Zealand were used to teach young children to read from the late 1920’s to the mid 1950’s in Australia and New Zealand .  Instead of having separate little books, as today, the books were graded with a number of stories in each.   Even then phonics for kids was objected to.

The handbook for teachers, ‘The Teaching of Reading to Infants’ states: There needs to be a dual approach to reading – visual work and phonic work proceeding in parallel lines.

“The old objection to a phonic approach was that it mechanized the subject matter, making reading stilted and unreal. In the Progressive Primers this error has been avoided by building only those words which occur frequently in the child’s vocabulary. The sounds are presented in a definite order, taking into consideration –

• Ease of pronunciation,
• Frequency of sound occurring in reading matter
• Child’s power of imitation.

The phonic exercises are carefully graded and arranged. Games of many kinds are introduced to make the acquisition of the mechanical aid to reading as joyous and happy a process as possible. Any teacher who follows faithfully the phonic system of the ‘Progressive Primers’ cannot fail to lay a solid foundation for accurate reading and steady progress. “

Mem Fox is right. The authors of the ‘Whitcombe and Tombs Progressive Primers’ were right.

Reading can occur because we have the miracle of language.

My experience has been that many students who struggle with reading do not understand the Alphabetic Principle. Somehow they didn’t learn phonics. Without this understanding reading is virtually impossible.

“As adults we use phonics whenever we encounter an unfamiliar, multi syllabic word, or we spell a word incorrectly.”   Mem Fox

Lots of adults and many children do not have the knowledge to do this. They were not taught this systematically in the early years of learning to read!

The must-have guide to reading with children, now in a new and revised edition Best-selling children’s author and internationally respected literacy expert Mem Fox reveals the incredible emotional and intellectual impact reading aloud to children has on their ability to learn to read. With passion and humor, Fox speaks of when, where, and why to read aloud and demonstrates how to read aloud to best effect and get the most out of a read-aloud session. She discusses the three secrets of reading, offers guidance on defining and choosing good books, and–for this new edition–includes two new chapters on boy readers and phonics, a foreword, and a list of “Twenty Books That Children Love.” Filled with practical advice, activities, and inspiring true read-aloud miracles, this book is a turn-to classic for educators and parents.

Click here to get your copy.

The place of Phonics for Kids in early reading lessons  is clearly explained in this book