What's the best way to teach early reading in preschool?
Reading and how best to teach it has long been a debate among educators, parents, etc for decades. However, there has failed to emerge one idea or method that has stood above the others for very long. So while there remains a consensus of varying opinions on the subject, one school of thought continues to remain at the forefront - phonics instruction. The primary focus of phonics instruction is to help beginning readers understand how letters are linked to sounds (phonemes) to form letter-sound correspondences and spelling patterns and to help them learn how to apply this knowledge in their reading.
Learning to read using phonics has fallen under the guise of the evidence based body of knowledge known as the Science of Reading (Lyon & Chhabra, 2004).
The Science of Reading is very clear about what matters in teaching early literacy instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and reading comprehension.
Phonological awareness: Refers to teaching students to recognize and manipulate the sounds within words. This allows them to move from syllables to the individual sounds, or phonemes as well as explicitly connecting phonemes to letters to more effectively support word decoding
> Some phonological awareness skills include:
Identifying how many words are in a spoken sentence
Counting syllables
Rhyming
Phonics and word recognition: This refers to teaching letter sounds and sound-spelling patterns explicitly and systematically.
> In other words, phonological awareness is solely based on sound. Whereas phonics refers to sounds and symbols coming together.
> Phonics instruction:
connects phonemic awareness to alphabet symbols
should be systematic in approach
is explicit (sound-spelling relationships are explicitly taught)
progresses gradually with one or two new sounds at a time
includes lots of opportunities to practice
Vocabulary and oral language comprehension: While phonics and phonemic awareness are about being able to say or spell a word, vocabulary is about knowing what a word means. It’s one part of language comprehension. The bigger our vocabulary, the easier and more fluent our reading becomes.
Comprehension: Comprehension is one of the earliest skills children learn. Comprehension means understanding words individually, as well as sentences, paragraphs, and texts as a whole. This is acquired from rich texts via read-alouds and scaffolded reading. Being able to sound out words means very little without comprehension.
Fluency: Fluency is putting it all together at the same time.This includes frequent chances for students to read and re-read orally from connected text—sentences, paragraphs, and passages. Fluent readers sound out words effortlessly and focus on comprehension and meaning as second nature. They can read with expression and explain what they read without parroting the text.
A helpful tool to learn the correct sounds of letters. There are 44 speech sounds in English
Decoding: The Basics
Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong (Podcast)
There's an idea about how children learn to read that's held sway in schools for more than a generation — even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read. In this podcast, host Emily Hanford investigates the influential authors who promote this idea and the company that sells their work. It's an exposé of how educators came to believe in something that isn't true and are now reckoning with the consequences — children harmed, money wasted, an education system upended.
Kids Reading Corner
Reading for Parents
The Science of Learning to Read Words: A Case for Systematic Phonics Instruction, L. Ehri
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