What I wish I would have known

Reading. The foundation of academic learning. There are many books, curriculums, and blogs devoted to this subject. And rightfully so, reading is vastly important and a subject in which our children are failing in. I have learned that in America, we have not made any progress in reading comprehension and instruction in over thirty years. Many students now graduate high school effectively illiterate. It was sobering to read those statistics. My own children struggled in this subject when I brought them home seventeen years ago. I struggled and spent a small fortune for phonics curriculum before I found the golden ticket that helped my girls to read. In fact, for our second daughter, it wasn’t until we adopted our third daughter and Nicole began to teach her how to read that the puzzle of reading fell into place!

Did you catch that? It wasn’t until Nicole began to tutor Grace in reading that reading made sense to Nicole! By the way, Nicole was an excellent teacher, Grace learned how to read at age three.

What I wish I knew then what I know now. I wish I knew about phonemes. Phonemes is the foundation of phonics. Phoneme awareness is the knowledge of sounds in a word. Some children learn this foundation intuitively. Grace learned this without much effort and with stunning speed. Some children need to learn phoneme explicitly. Nicole was one of those children. She needed to listen closely to the sounds in the words without confusing them with the symbols we call letters. Assigning symbols to the sounds must come later.

The typical ages and stages of phoneme awareness? Awareness can begin young; three or four. The length of the stage is individual. For some children, it is extremely fast, for others it can seem to drag on. Thankfully, curriculum is not necessary to teach phonemes. Using objects, toys, and even animals to discuss the sounds of objects around the child’s environment. Starting with the first sound of CVC words such as: dog, cat, ball, and bus. The child can isolate different sounds that they hear. NOT letter names, letter SOUNDS. Once children can isolate the sounds that they hear in the words around them, they are ready for reading instruction – phonics.

Do you have concerns about your child’s phoneme awareness? Are they struggling with basic reading or seem to be cycling around in circles without gaining ground? You are not alone! I struggled along with my daughter for years! She was beginning to believe that she would never learn; that it was beyond her ability. This is what begins to happen to our children as they struggle without gaining ground in this area. When I brought my girls home to homeschool, I had to reteach them the joy of learning. I had to regain my parental authority and trust. My girls had to learn that they could trust me. It was painstakingly long. There were days that I thought I had failed them. I spent hours researching websites looking for ways to teach my children in an engaging way.

Step by step instructions to teach phonemes:

BEST NEWS – ABSOLUTLY FREE!! No curriculum needed

1. Find an object in natural environment, begin with CVC words: DOG or CAT

2. We are not spelling the word – we are focusing on the sounds.

3. Important to remember – keep sounds pure “D” (the sound does not sound like “Da”

4. Introduce the lesson as a game, a sound game. The game should be short, quit the game BEFORE it stops being fun

5. INTRODUCTION: Let’s play a game! Find a CVC object and ask the child what it is. This is easy and the child will immediately feel success. Let’s say the object is a ball. Ball works because you only hear the “l” sound once.

6. Once you know the child knows the name of the object, ask them what sound they hear first. If they say a letter name, that’s okay, just redirect back to the letter sound. Say, “no sweetie, we are focusing on the sounds in the word. What is the first SOUND in the word Ball?” Put a little emphasis on the first sound.

7. When they successfully provide the correct sound, celebrate a bit: fist bump, high five, a happy woohoo provide great reinforcement for young children. Now you are ready for the second step.

8. Now ask the child if they hear that end sounds of a word. Remember to keep the sound pure, especially sounds like “L”. People often want to sound assign “La” instead of “LL”.

9. Do not kill the moment, if the child is enjoying this experiment, have them pick another word to dissect. Have fun figuring out the sounds you hear in the word. Celebrate each accomplishment. End BEFORE child experiences a failure.

Best feature, your child gets to spend quality time with you, gets to feel accomplished in an area of struggle.

Future targets:

1. Middle sounds. These are the hardest to hear. Again, start supper easy CVC words such as cat.

2. Move on to CCVC (Block). Talk about bending sounds, and see if your child can isolate that sound. Once they have, a light will go on your child will take off!