A few of my past articles have addressed reading and how children learn to read. In those articles I discuss how children learn letter sounds and begin to blend sounds to create words. This is the most basic form of reading and usually takes place in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten. Because blending sounds to make words is a very common practice in the early stages of reading, many books are created based around this skill. We call those books phonemic readers. In these phonemic readers the text is specially designed in order to for the children to be able to sound … Continue reading →

In a recent series about how children learn to read, I described the first two main stages and then gave ideas on how to help children better work with words. The first stage of learning to read is learning the letter names and sounds. The second stage involves blending the sounds together to make words. After children learn some simple words they can then begin to learn how to manipulate the words to create new words. Once children have mastered working with words, they are ready to begin putting a series or group of words together to create an idea. … Continue reading →

Recently I began discussing the various stages that children go through in order to learn to read. The simplest of the stages deals with letter recognition and letter sound naming. After children have accomplished this skill, they begin putting sounds together to make words. There are ways that children can learn to work with words. After a child can read a word, that child should learn to manipulate the word in a variety of ways. Simply saying the word does not give enough depth to the concept. Children need to learn to build words from letters and use those letters … Continue reading →

In my last article I started a discussion about children and learning to read. In the last article I discussed the first stage of learning to read. This stage includes letter recognition and letter sounds. After children master several letter sounds, they are ready to begin what is called sound blending or word blending. In this phase, children begin to put sounds together to make words. Children can begin this step even when they do not know all of the letter sounds. Work with the letter sounds that the students do know. CVC (consonant vowel consonant) words are the most … Continue reading →

One major enjoyment that I receive from teaching kindergarten is having the opportunity to see children learn to read. It is a very rewarding experience to know that you have been a part of a concept that will open thousands of doors for these children. From my research and experience as a kindergarten teacher I have discovered that learning to read must come in the form of stages. Teachers cannot expect that the students will be on the same stage or in the same phase of reading at the same time. Therefore teaching children to read takes much individualized teaching … Continue reading →