Background Knowledge about Reading for Parents of Young Children
A successful reader must understand and speak a language.
Learning a language is a complex activity and begins at birth when loving parents speak to their baby.
Language development in young children must be monitored carefully.
A child learns language by being surrounded by people who interact with him or her constantly.
If you have any concerns about your child’s speech seek professional help immediately. This can be done through your local doctor, pre-school or school.
For a young child to learn to read he or she must recognise word boundaries. That is when one word starts and ends and to recognize the next one. At the same time a child must know the meaning of the words and the sentence and relate it to their own world. Language also has grammatical rules that have to be mastered.
Observing young children develop language is awesome.
There are many people who have not mastered reading and writing and it is not their fault. Learning to read is a skill and teaching it was often hit and miss and many children struggled often due to inadequate reading theory and uninformed teaching.
Today things are looking much better but many children are still at risk if their
reading Instruction is based on human reason rather than solid scientific research.
Reading success in the past was largely accidental – due to parental input, intelligence, talent and the integrity, knowledge and the integrity of teachers who were also poorly trained..
Because reading and writing are such important skills in modern society a lot of scientific research is continually being undertaken.
Scientific research is testing theories to see whether they work and produce the same results constantly.
Reading Research is only around 25 years old.
Most educators have their students interests at heart and many fads rather than solid scientific research were seized upon to help students. The results of reading research is now filtering down to educators.
Systematic phonics teaching as part of learning to read is commonsense as well as supported by research.
Unlike learning language which children model from those around them learning to read is not an inate skill and aspects of it need to be taught specifically.
“Early, systematic, explicit phonics instruction is an essential part, but only part, of a balanced, comprehensive reading program,” maintains John J. Pikulski, International Reading Association President.
To be effective in the modern world it is important to be an expert reader.
Modern research can help.
If you have any questions about this article please do not hesitate in contacting me.
If you would like information about how phonics can be taught systematically I have written an ebook that explains this. Visit www.superlearner.com.au for more information.
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