Learning to read

Learning to read is an exciting time for children and their families. For many parents, helping their child learning to read established a pattern for their involvement in their child's academic education. Here are a few important hints:

Be Involved and Patient

Learning to read is the culmination of a great many learned skills and developmental processes. Learning to read is a long-term program. At times, there is no visible progress. At other times, they make dramatic daily progress. In all cases, show patience, confidence, and be encouraging of new skills.

Learn about learning to read

There are many great books and websites on learning to read. While you don't need to become knowledgeable about all the latest theories about learning to read, there are some basics which you should understand. The Time4Learning free newsletter provides useful and digestible insights into how children learn to read and how parents can help teach them. It also points to the best websites, articles, resources, and books for more info on a specific steps or issues in learning to read.

Learning to Read has a sequence

Just as children start with Tball before playing baseball, there are specific steps in learning to read. Trying to teach the steps out of sequence can inadvertently frustrate your child (and you). For instance, prior to successfully learning phonics, the child should master a set of pre-reading skills including understanding basic print concepts, discerning the sounds, understanding that words are made up of sounds which they need to think about as interchangeable parts, and memorizing the alphabet. To help parents understand the steps in learning to read, Time4Learning has developed The Reading Skills Pyramid . And while most children do follow this sequence, be aware that each child is different and that there are a great number of variations.

Learning to Read is Multimodal

Learning to read is easiest if you involve all the children's learning styles and modalities. They should see the words on wall posters, have toys in the shapes of letters to play with, being drawing them, playing games with them on the computer, and of course, seeing them in books. Each of these different activities helps develop prereading skills.

The Time4Learning language arts program can serve as the core or supplementary curriculum for children learning to read. Learn more about how Time4Learning's online program can help your children's education.