The Reading Process

     Learning to read is a developmental and sequential process.  Children begin the process of learning to read even before they start school, and you're their first teachers!  They are learning about sounds and rhythms as you talk and play with them, teach them nursery rhymes, and read to them.  The importance of what you do at home with your child never lessens, even as he/she grows older.  And it always improves reading ability!

At school, your child begins by developing phonemic awareness abilities, which include: whole word discrimination, rhyming, syllable counting, and segmentation, isolation of speech sounds, segmenting speech sounds, and the blending of speech sounds.  Much of the kindergarten year is devoted to these skills as well as to print orientation.  These skills are also developed throughout first grade, and even, to some degree, in second grade. 

After phonemic skills are in place, students are ready to learn letter sounds; then to blend them together to read.  We begin with initial consonants and short vowels.  Students are taught techniques such as tapping to make the blending process easier for them as they learn to decode.  Since I teach all of my students tapping, here is what you can expect to see them doing.  They will tap the sound of each letter in a word on their thumb with successive fingers.  At the same time that they are tapping, they should be saying each sound.  This helps the child hear each sound and associate it with the letter in print.  It also helps your child to spell.  Ask him/her to show you tapping and please encourage them to use it. 

As your child reads now, you'll notice that he/she is less dependent on pictures and is able to read most 3 letter short vowel words.  That is because he/she is actually reading, and no longer needs to use guessing or even pictures to figure out what is going on in a story. 

Thank you for listening to your child read each night.  What you do at home continues to make a huge difference in your child's progress here at school!  It also makes my job easier!  

Gail Hook

Reading Specialist at NES