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How to Teach Your Baby to Read

  How to Teach Your Baby to Read By:  ChildrenLearningReading.com Teaching your baby to read is becoming a more and more high priority for parents now as it becomes clear that learning to read at a young age offers numerous advantages for the child once he or she begins school. Studies have consistently found that teaching a baby to read and helping children develop phonemic awareness well before entering school can significantly improve their development in reading and spelling. However, when it comes to teaching babies to read, there are two main teaching methods . These two main methods of teaching a baby or child to read are the whole language method, and the phonics and phonemic awareness method (the phonetic approach), which should be the preferred teaching method in helping children learn to read. Some prefer the whole language method, while others use the phonics approach, and there are also educators that use a mix of different approaches. With the Look-say approach o...
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How to Teach Phonics and Reading

  How to Teach Phonics and Reading By:  ChildrenLearningReading.com Teaching children to read by teaching phonics activities is a lot like doing math, where you have to know what the numbers are, how to count, and you need to learn to add and subtract before learning to multiply and divide. Teaching phonics to children is no different where you follow a step-by-step approach by first teaching the child the alphabet letters and phonics sounds, and then teaching them the combination of different letters to create different words, and using words to form sentences. It is a very logical and sequential buildup of phonics knowledge and reading ability. Before a child can learn to read, he or she must first learn the alphabet letters and know the sounds represented by the letters. It's usually easier to teach some consonants and short vowels first before moving on to more complicated things such as consonant digraphs (2 consonants formed to produce one sound, such as "ch" or ...

Developing Phonemic Awareness and Learning Reading

  Developing Phonemic Awareness and Learning Reading By:  ChildrenLearningReading.com As more research brings to light the advantages of phonics and phonemic awareness instructions have over whole language teaching methods, more parents are becoming aware of teaching using phonics and phonemic awareness skills. Many parents today are concerned about the method that is being used to teach their children how to read, and rightfully so. The whole language method is more of a method of "word memorization", where the child is taught to look at printed words as whole configurations, much like looking at Chinese characters. Teaching phonemic awareness skills involves the breakdown of words into individual sounds (phonemes), and then joining the parts to form, or sound out the words. By contrast, whole language learning stresses the flow and meaning of the text, where "sounding out" words are not used, the words are decoded through its larger context, and word memorization ...

Teaching Children to Read and Write

  Teaching Children to Read and Write By:  ChildrenLearningReading.com Most parents, at one point or another, fret over the education and the development of their children. Many concerned parents research and seek information on the topic of teaching children to read and write. I for one, am glad to see so many parents wanting to get an early start for their children in reading and writing because studies have shown that developing these abilities early on before entering school provides numerous benefits and advantages later on as the child progresses through school. More worrisome should be the fact that over one-third, 38% to be exact, of all grade 4 students cannot even achieve a basic level of reading ability according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This is an alarming statistic. Will your child become one of the 38% who cannot reach basic reading achievement by grade 4? For most children, this poor ability to read can be easily prevented with ...

Advantages of Teaching Children Reading Early

  Advantages of Teaching Children Reading Early Before a child learns to read, he or she must first learn the spoken language , and this is one of the first instances where family members such as dad, mom, older siblings, and grandparents play an important role in "teaching" the child the spoken English language. Whether young children realize it or not, they gain very early exposure to the alphabet when parents sing the alphabet song to them. They begin to develop language skills by being read to and spoken to. One of the keys to teaching children reading early on is by exposing them to alphabet letters, books, and reading to them often . Reading nursery rhymes and children's books is an important part of getting children to understand the printed text. Talk to your children, and talk to them often, whether they understand or not is not important when they're just babies. The more you talk and interact with your little ones, the better they will develop. The key is ...

Teaching Letter Names and Sounds

  Teaching Letter Names and Sounds So, you want to teach your child to read , but before a child can learn to read, he or she must first learn at least some of the letters in the alphabet, their names, and the sounds that they represent. To be able to read, a child must be able to recognize the letters, know the sound of the letters, and be able to recognize the letters quickly and say the sound without hesitation. There is plenty of discussion and disagreement on whether it's better to teach children using whole language programs or using methods that incorporate phonics and phonemic awareness instructions . I think the debate on this is settled when the National Reading Panel stated from their findings of reviewing over 1,900 studies that phonics and phonemic awareness produces superior reading results than whole language programs. There is also some debate on whether to teach your child only letter names, or only the sounds which the letters represent. However, studies have als...

Teaching a Child to Read at an Early Age

  Teaching a Child to Read at an Early Age Did you know that 38% of grade four students have reading abilities below the lowest basic level as determined by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)? The NAEP is the only ongoing survey of what students know and tracks their performance in various academic subjects for the United States. In their report, the NAEP found that 38% of grade four students had reading achievement below basic levels, with a basic level reading score being 208. To put things in perspective, the US reading scale has an upper limit score of 500, with average reading scores for grade 4 (217), grade 8 (264), and grade 12 (291). The grade 4 reading achievement levels are categorized by the NAEP as Advanced (268 scores), Proficient (238 scores), and Basic (208 scores), and the basic reading achievement level is defined as follows by the NAEP: Fourth-grade students performing at the Basic level should demonstrate an understanding of the overall meani...