Teach Your Child to Read and Write : A how-to guide for parents

ReadingWriting

Apr 23

Written By Sam Wu

Whether you’ve decided to homeschool or you’re just looking to give your preschooler a head-start, parents often begin to teach their children to read and write about the time little ones take their first steps.

It seems straightforward at first. There are the ABCs and those tempting workbooks to trace letters in the front section of Target. Certainly, a love of reading should be instilled. But then questions arise. Isn’t there more to this process of setting a little one’s feet on the path to literacy? What separates a strong, capable reader from a struggling, stagnant one? How do I make sure I’m covering all the bases and in the right order?

Well, bring all your questions—we’ll bring the answers! By the end of this guide, you will be prepared to successfully teach your child to read.

Reading

There’s a new phrase for an old concept going around in academic discussions about literacy. It’s called the science of reading and it refers to a collective set of skills that include:

Phonological awareness,
Phonics and word recognition,
Fluency,
Vocabulary and oral language comprehension, and
Text comprehension.

As you read bedtime stories, answer the endless barrage of “Why?” questions, and practice ABCs, you are already working on many of these skills. For decades, studies have affirmed that regular systematic instruction in these skills is the ticket to growing readers who are able to maintain sustained growth and improvement. Let’s talk about these five skills that make up the science of reading.

1. Phonological Awareness

What a fancy name for a simple concept! Interestingly, phonological awareness has nothing to do with written words or letters. It is your child’s ability to recognize and manipulate the spoken sounds of sentences and words.

Think of all the different sounds we make when we speak like a pile of Legos. As your child engages with the different pieces and becomes adept at snapping Lego pieces (sounds) together to make simple creations (words) and then joining those bits into bigger, more complex creations (sentences), they are learning to speak. Next, as they master this game and begin taking their creation apart to substitute a red Lego for a green one or make a pattern where every third Lego is blue, they are diving into the subtleties of phonological awareness.

OK—Lego analogies aside—examples of phonological awareness include things like:

Identifying words that rhyme (end with the same sound),
Recognizing words with alliteration (beginning with the same sound),
Segmenting (separating) a sentence into words,
Segmenting the syllables in a word,
Segmenting the phonemes (individual sounds) in a word. Fun fact: there are 44 phonemes in English! (NOTE: Once your child gets to this nuanced level of sound manipulation, the skill has its own name—phonemic awareness.)
Blending syllables and phonemes together to create words,
Substituting sounds at the phoneme level, and more.

Phonological awareness is playing around with the Lego in all its assorted chunks and variations, and it doesn’t actually involve reading a single word on a page or knowing a single letter of the alphabet!

How to Teach Phonological Awareness

Talk, read, and sing to and with your child . . . frequently! You’ll hear this advice again before the article is over.
Recite nursery rhymes and poetry. Learn some by heart. Choose some books that rhyme or have alliteration.
Play alliteration games. Think of as many words as you can that begin with a particular sound. /ch/ /ch/ church, chicken, child . . .
Play around with rhymes or make your own nonsense rhymes. Start with one word and substitute different beginning sounds while keeping the ending sound the same to create rhyming ones.
Play sound isolation activities. First, identify the beginning sound in a word (no alphabet experience necessary). “What sound does bear begin with? That’s right! /b/ /b/ /b/.” After this becomes easy, move on to ending sounds. Gradually, you can work up to the middle vowel sound in C-V-C words (consonant-vowel-consonant words) like cat, hot, man and cap. Then, finally, to segmenting an entire word of any length!
Reverse your segmenting game into a blending one. Say each sound in a word like bat: /b/ /a/ /t/. Then have your child put them together smoothly and tell you the word.
Visit Tenblox for more phonological awareness activities and structured support for parents.

And one final piece of advice for phonological awareness, make an effort not to use “baby talk” with your child. Model the correct pronunciation of words whenever possible. Reading and writing are based, first and foremost, on listening and speaking. The skills are intrinsically related. So, building proper listening and speaking skills helps lay a foundation for reading with no cracks!

2. Phonics and word recognition

How is phonics different from phonological (or phonemic) awareness? Well, this is where we begin to attach written symbols to those all-important sounds. The fancy name for a written phoneme (or single sound) is a grapheme (graph comes from the Greek for “written down”). So, graphemic awareness is learning to associate those individual sounds in words with their written counterparts—”b” says /b/, for example.

Is graphemic awareness the same as phonics? Sort of. Phonics technically refers to the process of teaching reading and writing by applying the concepts of graphemic awareness, along with their associated rules of usage. These rules are just as critical as graphemic awareness alone because one needs to know when a vowel makes its short sound or its long sound, when is a “c” soft and when is it hard, etc.

Phonics begins with simply learning the ABCs. Then, children move on to higher-level skills like decoding and blending—analyzing and interpreting written symbols in order to convert them into spoken words (a.k.a. read them).

Let’s take the example question we used when looking at phonemic awareness and expand it slightly to practice phonics.

What sound does bear begin with? That’s right! /b/ /b/ /b/

And which letter makes the /b/ sound? “B” does, correct!

“B” says /b/, so bear begins with the letter “b”.

Now, where does word recognition come in and how is that different from learning phonics? Word recognition involves something called sight words. These are words that a child cannot decode either because (1) they don’t follow the standard phonics rules or (2) they follow phonics rules that are more advanced than the child is capable of learning yet. However, the child still needs to read the word in order to read meaningful text. That’s a lot of jargon, so let’s look at an example.

“Was” is a typical kindergarten sight word. It does not follow the typical phonics pattern that a kindergarten student has learned, namely that “s” says /s/. They do not learn until much later that “s” can also say /z/. Nevertheless, in order for a kindergartner to read meaningful books, they need to know how to read “was”. So, the solution is sight words.

Sight words are words that are memorized—you got it—by sight, not decoded phonetically. And while it is best to keep these words to a minimum, practicing a carefully curated list of sight words will help your child learn to read because it allows them to access engaging and informative text—in other words, real stories and books they’re actually interested in reading!

How to Teach Phonics and Sight Words

Point out and name upper and lowercase letters in a variety of fonts.
Play games and sing songs that teach the alphabet.
Teach children not only the name of each letter but what they “say” (the main consonant sounds and the short vowel sounds).
Teach children which letters are vowels and that all the other letters are consonants. This knowledge will come in handy down the road for more advanced phonics instruction. Trust me!
Point out a letter and name it. Then, have the child reply with the sound it makes.
Match spoken words to written ones based on their first letter.
Tell what letter a word begins or ends with based on its beginning or ending sound.
Tell what sound a written word begins with based on its first letter.
Practice common sight words using flash cards until the child knows them quickly from memory.
Help children learn to pronounce words correctly.
Visit Tenblox for more phonics and word recognition activities and structured support for parents.

3. Fluency

Fluency is one of those tricky metrics that is difficult to put your finger on. Yet, you know when it’s there and, maybe more so, when it’s not. When someone is reading with fluency, they have automaticity and expression. You can tell they are focused on the meaning of the words and the pictures they paint in their mind. If fluency is lacking, a reader sounds stilted and choppy. As you listen, you can tell that all effort is going toward decoding the words rather than visualizing their meaning. Expression or inflection is lacking. Comprehension is difficult.

Fluency typically grows with time and experience, but it’s still a good idea to help your child practice strategies for intentionally improving fluency. Here are three proven methods:

Modeling

I know it’s cliche, but the simple advice is often the best—reading to your child is critically important to help them develop their own reading skills. Model fluent reading for your child at every opportunity.

Read aloud often. Read anything: read what you’re reading, read the cereal box, read the weather report. Read books with complex sentence structure. Read books with dialogue. Do the silly voices. The more your child hears language spoken the easier it will be for them to emulate things like pitch and expression.
Listen to quality audio books. Have your child follow along with the written text while listening to the audio version (or listening to you read it).
Track the written text with your finger while you read and teach your child to do the same.

Repeat Reading

“Significant”—this is the word experts use to describe the effect of repeated reading on building fluency. In fact, the National Reading Panel says that this is, “the most powerful way to improve reading fluency.” (emphasis added for . . . emphasis) So, the next time Where the Wild Things Are is requested for the five hundred and seventy-eighth bedtime in a row, take a breath, smile, and know you’re doing their fluency some good (and don’t forget to track the words as you read).

Read stories repeatedly. It’s as simple as that.

The Purpose of Punctuation

So, how do we know how to give voice to written symbols? Well, fortunately, some brilliant person invented extra symbols that go in amongst the phonemes and tell us precisely how to read the words. I bet your internal voice lifted at the end of the first sentence of this paragraph and paused ever so slightly around the word “fortunately.” Thank you, punctuation!

Teaching children the purpose of punctuation marks is often glossed over in the early stages of reading. For some reason, these symbols are relegated to the halls of formal grammar instruction in later years. Yet, they are vital cues for young readers trying to develop fluency.

Teach children, explicitly, to watch for punctuation marks that signal how to read the text.
Show them how it works. This is where the modeling and tracking with your finger come into full effect. Pause slightly at commas, pause longer at periods. Lift your voice for question marks. Show excitement for exclamation marks!
Play around with punctuation. Write the same sentence on a sheet of paper multiple times, one ending with a period, one with a question mark, and one with an exclamation mark. Take turns reading each one and listening to how the punctuation mark changes the reading.
Visit Tenblox for more fluency activities and structured support for parents.

4. Vocabulary and Oral Language Comprehension

Here is a point about reading I cannot underscore enough—the ability to decode written words is not enough. Children must be able to make meaning of the words they read—this is comprehension. And for that, they need a broad and deep vocabulary and a very-important-something called prior relevant knowledge.

Your child can be a ninja-level phonics master and still not comprehend what they are reading without prior relevant knowledge. You can probably decode “sesquipedalian” correctly, but do you know what it means? I mean before you Googled it just now.

We adults are so used to dealing selectively with topics with which we are familiar that we have lost touch with what a lack of prior relevant knowledge is like. So, I want you to try this. Try reading an article about a totally unfamiliar, technical topic. Mine might be something like calculating the voltage in a parallel electrical circuit or installing a differential locker in a Ford Bronco. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Now, how did that feel? How many times did you have to stop and re-read something? How slowly did you read compared to your normal reading rate? How many times did you need to look up a word, assuming you took the time to do so? How much did you feel like you “got it” when you finished the article? Did you enjoy the experience?

How to Teach Vocabulary and Oral Language Comprehension

The solution? More simple truths. I warned you that you’d hear this advice again. Read and talk to your child from a variety of sources. Let them grapple with hearing complex sentence structure and new words in their proper context. There you have it—context.

Children need context for what they’re reading about. And context comes from exposure to a wide variety of concepts, ideas, knowledge, facts, theories, and all their surrounding vocabulary. The more we help a child build a web of connecting concepts and vocabulary, the more they can take meaning from the words they encounter on the page. Context and vocabulary—gained, first, through speech—this is the foundation.

Create a language-rich environment. Discuss, debate, ask open-ended questions. Prompt your child for more language, “Tell me more!”
Label and describe things. Let the nouns, adjectives, and adverbs pour forth. Use a variety of uncommon descriptive words. The ice cream could be not just delicious but mouthwatering, delectable, scrumptious, exquisite, or heavenly!
Use figurative language. Make comparisons. Use similes and metaphors.
Employ the five senses. Pick an object at random and discuss with your child how it looks, feels, sounds, smells, and (if appropriate) tastes. How many words can you think of?
Answer all their questions. Take the time to find the answer if you don’t know it.
Explore a variety of topics. Watch dinosaur documentaries. Read books about the ancient Egyptians. Learn about what the different types of clouds are called and how they’re formed.
Don’t talk down to them. Use the real words. Explain them if necessary.
Visit Tenblox for more vocabulary and oral language comprehension activities and structured support for parents.

5. Text Comprehension

And, at last, we come to the bottom line—the one thing reading is all about—understanding the text. Through decoding, learning necessary sight words, increasing automaticity, and developing a rich vocabulary and contextual background knowledge, children come to a place where they can take meaning from text and, ideally, find the process pleasurable or at least not difficult. But there is still more we can do to increase text comprehension than just the sum of these parts.

First and foremost, because it bears repeating, cultivating a wide and deep array of prior relevant knowledge is critical to text comprehension as well as oral language comprehension. In his book Why Knowledge Matters, E. D. Hirsch, Jr. lays the blame at the feet of elementary curricula that are weak in content-rich subjects, like history, geography, science, literature, and the arts, as a major reason why so many children struggle to advance their reading skills. This is especially noticeable after about the third grade when children begin to read about more advanced and abstract concepts.

If your child is trying to read a book about space, but they have little to no background information about it, they may be able to decode “solar system,” “meteor,” “shuttle,” and “orbit,” but how much will they comprehend without the background knowledge?

Peg Griffin in her book Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children says it best. "Every opportunity should be taken to extend and enrich the children's background knowledge and understanding in every way possible, for the ultimate significance and memorability of any word or text depends on whether children possess the background knowledge and conceptual sophistication to understand its meaning."

How to Teach Text Comprehension

Parents should be aware that there are some flawed (yet still popular) strategies floating around that claim to teach reading comprehension but have been shown to be deeply problematic. These strategies are known collectively as three-cueing and consist of guessing at a word based on the first letter, guessing based on the context, and guessing based on pictures on the page—in other words, teaching kids to guess. Diving into the problems of three-cueing or if/when it can be used effectively is beyond the scope of our purpose here. It is enough to know that you should probably pass up exercises that involve guessing for a more proven strategy. Here are some to try.

Build prior relevant knowledge!
Ask your child questions about what you’ve just read. Ask for details: “What color was the man’s hat? He bought lots of things at the store. Can you name three of them?” And ask open-ended questions: “What did you think was the funniest part? How do you think the man felt when it started to rain?”
Cultivate the habit of narration, retelling the important parts of a story in order and in your own words. This skill takes lots of practice! If you’re not familiar with narration, you might want to check out some resources that guide you through teaching the skill.
Identify the main point or event in a story. Like narration, this takes practice. You can begin by asking a child to tell you one important thing or event from the story and gradually work up to identifying the main one.
Look for and discuss the teaching moments in stories. Is there a moral to the story? Did the main character learn an important lesson? Was the story designed to teach the reader something?
Be aware of story structure. Most stories have an identifiable beginning, middle, and end. Point out these elements as you read. Characters are introduced in the beginning. Is there a clear hero or heroine? Is there a clear villain? The middle of the story usually contains a quest, a challenge, or an obstacle—someone is trying to achieve something and typically meets resistance. Finally, an ending brings resolution. There is triumph or victory. Questions are answered. Loose ends are neatly wrapped up. In non-fiction books, you can point out how main topics are divided into sub-topics, and then details are provided. For example, a book about sharks might have chapters about different types of sharks, which contain descriptions and facts about each one.
Visit Tenblox for more text comprehension activities and structured support for parents.

Writing

Once your child begins to gain their footing with reading, you can begin to devote some attention to writing . . . some attention, mind you. Many well-intentioned parents and teachers push formal writing far too much and too early. It is best to remember that this is a skill built on the foundation of reading, so reading comes first. Additionally, children need to be not only cognitively ready for writing but also physically ready.

In short, writing itself can wait. But there are plenty of ways to work on writing skills in the meantime. Then, when your child is ready to write, they’ll already be prepared.

For our purposes, we’ll divide teaching writing skills into three distinct skill areas:

Physicality,
Mechanics, and
Composition.

Physicality

Reading requires some physical capability. We hold the book and turn pages. We track the words with our fingers. Yet, reading does not require nearly the physical capabilities or stamina that sitting at a table or desk and putting pencil to paper does.

Parents and teachers frequently overlook or downplay the significance of both gross and fine motor skills when it comes to writing. It takes time to gain sufficient amounts of these skills in order to write with ease and comfort. For a visual illustration, check out the x-ray of a seven-year-old’s hand (ready to write) with the hand of a younger child (not ready to write).

How to Build Physicality for Writing

Instead of expecting a four-year-old to turn out a page of neat ABCs, work on some exercises that prepare them to do that later. Here are just a few ideas to get you started:

Fine-Motor Activities

Play with clay or Play-Doh. Roll it into long strings and form letter shapes with it.
Pick up tiny objects like beads with tweezers and sort them into ice cube trays.
Play with Lego and other building toys.
Trace letters into sand or foam.
Use a spray bottle to water plants.
Engage in a variety of craft projects that practice using crayons, scissors, glue sticks, and paint brushes.
Open and close bottles with caps.
Play with lacing cards or other threading activities.
Make pointillism art with Q-tips.

Gross-Motor Activities

Work on core strength, which helps a child to sit comfortably in a chair for extended periods. Play on the playground. Hang on the monkey bars. Climb the climbing wall. Swing on the swings.
Work on balance activities. Ride bikes and scooters. Walk on balance beams. Play hop-scotch. Do yoga.
Work on hand grip and hand-eye coordination activities. Play sports with bats and racquets. Have your child help sweep or mop. Play catch.
Visit Tenblox for more fine-motor and gross activities and structured support for parents.

Mechanics

When your child is ready to put words on a page, you may find that your thoughts turn immediately to mechanics. The mechanics of writing boils down to subjects typically looked on with horror: grammar and spelling. Yet, building these skills does not need to be drudgery for you or your child. Much of it, in fact, can be done at the same time that you’re building reading skills. Spelling, after all, is really just the reverse of decoding. “What written letter or letters do I use to make this sound?” And remember when you were pointing out all that punctuation? Well, it comes in handy for writing, too.

The number one thing to remember when teaching mechanics is the “one thing” rule. Only focus on teaching one new or difficult thing at a time—only one. So, if your child is having a hard time remembering to capitalize the first letter of a sentence, overlook the spelling mistakes for now (Just make note of the words they need to practice in the future.) If you’re working on spelling words that end in -ed, don’t fret about the missing periods. It may seem counter-intuitive, but allowing a child to work on just one area of focus at a time will net you more improvement in the long run.

How to Teach the Mechanics of Writing

Separate teaching the mechanics of grammar from your child’s own creative writing as much as possible. This is to avoid stifling their natural desire to express themselves. Instead, use a guided curriculum or excerpts from their favorite books to practice. This can be done with methods like:
- Copywork,
- Written narration, and
- Dictation.
Like the oral narration activities recommended above, these skills take practice to both teach and perform. So, if you’re unfamiliar with them, consider using some resources to learn how to implement them effectively.
Take any opportunity to orally teach, notice, and practice writing skills without the need for actual writing. Talk about punctuation you see in books and their uses. Notice unusual spellings. Model speaking in complete sentences.
Be your child’s transcriptionist and write for them. This does actually count as writing! Write down their oral story narrations. Have them watch you write. Show them how you place capitalization and punctuation. Show them how you indent the first line. Let them copy it if they want to when you’re done.
Teach the parts of speech and play games with them. For example, “Nouns are words that name people, places, things, or ideas. How many nouns can you name in this room?”
Consider a proper phonics-based or Orton-Gillingham based curriculum to teach spelling.
Purchase a set of letter magnet tiles so your child can practice spelling without the effort of writing.
Use the kits of magnet words to practice building sentences.
Visit Tenblox for more mechanics activities and structured support for parents.

Composition

From the moment our children uttered their first word, every adoring parent has known that they have very important, interesting, and often hilarious things to say. We call their unique insights, questions, and humor their voice. And fostering that voice should be the main focus of a parent in the early stages of writing.

Academically, we refer to this type of writing as composition. And we adults love to drain the life from it by requiring strict adhesion to forms, like the boring five-paragraph essay, or assigning a prescriptive writing prompt, like “what you did this summer.” Trust me, there will be plenty of time to develop these skills down the road when their skill with mechanics and physical writing stamina has grown to match their ability to use words.

Instead, focus on developing that unique writing voice. Teach your child that they have wonderful things to say and that other people want to read it. The most important rule for composition—have fun with it!

How to Teach Composition

● Next time your child starts to tell you about something funny or exciting that happened to them, grab a pen and paper and write it down. Tell your child that you want to capture their story so you can share it with the rest of the family.

Ask them to narrate what is happening in their drawings to you and write down their responses as captions. This may even spark an ongoing comic book series!
Help your child write letters to family members, doing the writing for them as much as necessary.
Keep a journal of your child’s funny quotes, goofy jokes, or profoundly wise words.
Ask them to make up an alternate ending to a favorite bedtime story or an adventure set in their favorite video game. Encourage the use of text-to-speech apps or voice recorders to capture these longer narratives.
Visit Tenblox for more composition activities and structured support for parents.

Sources:

Sam Wu