How to Learn to Read
How to Learn to Read
There is no perfect model on how to learn to read. And there is no perfect model on how to build a child’s literacy skills. A balanced approach to teaching reading combines a strong foundation in phonics with whole language methods. Children gain the skills to recognize and manipulate the sounds of letters and words, and the skills to understand what they read. Since all children learn differently, only a balanced approach to teaching reading can give children the skills they need to read well. Word recognition involves sight and decoding. Skilled readers acquire sight words and are expert decoders. They recognize words by analogizing, stringing together pronounceable word parts or contextual guessing. Sight recognition means instant recognition without analysis. Decoding involves translation. Early decoding requires audible sounding out and blending. Later decoding is faster and silent. Analogizing is the ability to recall a word with the same spelling pattern and make the unfamiliar word rhyme with the remembered word. Contextual guessing is using the rest of a sentence to guess unrecognized words.
How to learn to read: Assessment
Children won’t know how to learn to read without acquiring sight vocabulary. And they don’t just jump into decoding and acquiring sight vocabulary. They move through predictable phases of using the alphabet more and more skillfully. Before children learn to use the alphabet, they employ a default strategy of attaching a visual cue to meaning. This visual cue strategy explains why very young children can recognize many words in their normal surroundings. When children gain alphabetic insight, they begin to use phonetic cues instead of visual cues. They use some letters – usually at the beginning of a word – to cue some of the phonemes in the word. This provides a systematic access route to the word in the lexicon.
How to learn to read: Remediation
Reading skills are like building blocks in the process of how to learn to read. To learn to read well, children need the blocks of knowing the sounds of letters and the blocks of knowing the meanings of words (vocabulary), word parts (grammatical markers) and groups of words (overall meaning or semantics). To build these foundations of reading, children need effective reading instruction. Children who have trouble learning to read need to be specifically taught the relationships of letters, words and sounds. Awareness of letter/sound relationships is the main tool good readers use to decode unfamiliar words. And each child needs a different amount of practice to be a fluent reader. At LearningRx, we recognize that not all children learn to read at the same pace. That is why we train the brain for success. Our methods have worked for more than 20 years. Call a LearningRx Center near you or check us out at www.learningrx.com.
There is no perfect model on how to learn to read. And there is no perfect model on how to build a child’s literacy skills. A balanced approach to teaching reading combines a strong foundation in phonics with whole language methods. Children gain the skills to recognize and manipulate the sounds of letters and words, and the skills to understand what they read. Since all children learn differently, only a balanced approach to teaching reading can give children the skills they need to read well. Word recognition involves sight and decoding. Skilled readers acquire sight words and are expert decoders. They recognize words by analogizing, stringing together pronounceable word parts or contextual guessing. Sight recognition means instant recognition without analysis. Decoding involves translation. Early decoding requires audible sounding out and blending. Later decoding is faster and silent. Analogizing is the ability to recall a word with the same spelling pattern and make the unfamiliar word rhyme with the remembered word. Contextual guessing is using the rest of a sentence to guess unrecognized words.
How to learn to read: Assessment
Children won’t know how to learn to read without acquiring sight vocabulary. And they don’t just jump into decoding and acquiring sight vocabulary. They move through predictable phases of using the alphabet more and more skillfully. Before children learn to use the alphabet, they employ a default strategy of attaching a visual cue to meaning. This visual cue strategy explains why very young children can recognize many words in their normal surroundings. When children gain alphabetic insight, they begin to use phonetic cues instead of visual cues. They use some letters – usually at the beginning of a word – to cue some of the phonemes in the word. This provides a systematic access route to the word in the lexicon.
How to learn to read: Remediation
Reading skills are like building blocks in the process of how to learn to read. To learn to read well, children need the blocks of knowing the sounds of letters and the blocks of knowing the meanings of words (vocabulary), word parts (grammatical markers) and groups of words (overall meaning or semantics). To build these foundations of reading, children need effective reading instruction. Children who have trouble learning to read need to be specifically taught the relationships of letters, words and sounds. Awareness of letter/sound relationships is the main tool good readers use to decode unfamiliar words. And each child needs a different amount of practice to be a fluent reader. At LearningRx, we recognize that not all children learn to read at the same pace. That is why we train the brain for success. Our methods have worked for more than 20 years. Call a LearningRx Center near you or check us out at www.learningrx.com.
