This year has forced you to do quite a bit at home—figuring out where your Peloton bike will go, discovering your hidden passion to make macarons (or, perhaps, eat them), among others. For parents of young children, you have a very unique challenge—to teach your kids how to read at home instead of fully at school. In a previous article, I detailed how you may go about
homeschooling your children. This post will be more succinct and highlight a particularly specific skill—the ability to read. Thankfully, the most important academic skill isn’t too scary if you know how to approach the process and what to look for as your young kiddo builds skill in this area.
Phonics, Phonemic Awareness, and Phonological Awareness
Before learning how to teach your kids to read, let me first discuss some quick terminology. Have you heard to terms phonics, phonemic awareness, and/or phonological awareness? Likely, you have not unless you’re an elementary school teacher like me. These terms are often difficult to decipher from one another yet are critical for your success at teaching reading at home. Let’s start with tackling each of these terms individually.
- Phonics is simply understanding that each letter has a corresponding sound. For example, you definitely know that “tee” sounds like the letter “T”, right? Yup, right. That’s phonics.
- Phonemic awareness takes the understanding of phonics and ups the ante a bit. It explains how we can discern that the /c/ at the beginning of the word “cat” is different from the /at/ that follows that sound. (Fun fact! There are 43 individual phonemes in the English language. But fear not, you won’t be quizzing your kiddo).
- Phonological awareness is similar to phonemic awareness but is, again, a bit loftier. In the previous example, we highlighted the understanding of /c/ in “cat” sounding like a “K”, right? Well, phonological awareness is one’s ability to manipulate the various sound units in a word. So, placing the sound /ack/ with /p/ as the beginning makes a different word sound than if you put /b/ before /ack/.
Tired yet? Fear not. Chances are, your young reader is going to need some support with one of these skills as they begin their reading journey. So, let’s take a dive into how to know where your child is and what to do if they need phonics, phonemic, or phonological awareness support.
Does Your Student Understand Basic Phonics?
Does your student look at a “D” and say “C” or start to pronounce the word “kart” and say “start”? If so, it’s likely they have an issue with the alphabetic principle or, simply, phonics. They may also not be able to produce the correct letter when you give them a sound or vise versa. (Say “K”, and they’ll write “F”, for example.).
What Can I Do to Help My Child Build Phonics?
I'm glad you asked! If you have a Scrabble set or a fancy tablet game with letters, get to building! Talk with your student about the sounds of letters as you construct new and exciting words. And don’t be afraid to create words, too! Nonsense words are often used to help students understand the basic rules of phonics. For example, “frub” is not a word, but if a student can 1) say it and 2) clap the syllables, they are getting the hang of phonics!
The Nuance of Phonemic vs Phonological Awareness
There’s a lot of grace here, and unless you are both a parent and elementary school teacher, your student won’t be upset if you constantly confuse these two. I’ll actually offer support for both of them at once because the difference really doesn’t matter in the living room. You may remember, as a student, (depending on how old you are or how good your memory is) clapping words aloud in class. This is called syllabication, and each clap occurs on a different syllable in a word, right? Well, get to clapping! One of the earliest indicators that students need support with early literacy is their inability to decipher between syllables. So, if your child has a difficult time clapping out “potatoes,” they don’t really understand the sounds within the word. Those sounds, called phonemes, are what build up the English language. You might be thinking, "Well, okay, awesome—how the heck do I help my child with that, though?" Great question! I'll brief you on a couple of strategies below for when you are strictly teaching your kids to read or intervening (not during actual reading). But for now, let's discuss a quick and helpful way to support a reader when they are actually attempting the skill of reading and get to a word they cannot sound out. First, you'll want to let them struggle. Don't be too mean here. We aren't talking 3 minutes of cliffhanging—more like 10 seconds. Encourage them, pause for them, and whatever you do, do not help them during this time. Why? If they aren't with you and encounter a large or scary word they've never seen, they'll simply look at the word, give up, look at the larger person (i.e., adult) in the room and wait for the life jacket. Nope, don't do that! Instead, point to the word, and ask them what part of the word they think they may already know. Let's take a word for example's sake here: memorize. Whoa, that's a doozy! But wait, isn't there a "me" in that word? And how about a "mo"? And doesn't a word that ends in "e" makes the vowel before the final consonant (in this case, "i" before the "z") say its name (so that i-z-e is EYE-z-eh—the EYE is what "i" sounds like, right)? Well, it's likely your kiddo may now know how to decipher memorize right off the bat, but with some support (after 10 seconds of struggle), they'll be on their way! So, again, for the terms, and briefly—phonemic equals simplest sounds of a language. Phonological equals manipulating the simplest sounds of a language. (See? Not a lot of difference, and you shouldn’t split hairs.) If your child is having issues with syllables, do the awesome activity mentioned above with all kinds of fun words around the house and in reading.
- Segmenting and blending activities - Take time to break apart words (segmenting) and put words together (blending) from a sound perspective. This is fun, and your kids will love slicing and dicing words.
- Take words, delete sounds - “Hey kiddo, what’s “fun” without /f/?” This helps build their recognition of specific sounds and how they fit within the context of larger units. (For those of you overachievers, that’s a phonological awareness skill).
A Few Notes on Sight Words
Unfortunately, the English language is very tricky. Some words, like “the”, fit no simple phonetic understanding. They simply need to be taught. Search for various sight word lists depending on your child's age. Here's how you determine if your child is needing sight word support and exactly what sight words they need help with depending on their age:
- Remember that sight words are searchable by age or grade level. So, you'll start by searching (or asking your child's teacher, if that's a possibility) online to find the list of sight words for their specific age.
- Quiz them at the top of the list. Don't randomly choose words from the list. Start at the top, and go straight down.
- If your child masters their way through the list for their grade level, go above one grade level. For example, if your child is in second grade, start with a fourth-grade sight word list. Should they get all of those words correct, find a third-grade sight word list and continue.
- When your child misses two or three words on a sight word list, that's the list they will need to practice and thus, the list you will need to actively teach.
Though frustrating (because they follow no real convention that is teachable), sight words are the key to unlocking complicated text. This is worth your time!
Beyond Phonics—Fun With Fluency (And Book Selections!)
Okay, whew. You’re now a literacy instructor! Well done. It may be difficult to teach your kids to read, but that's normal. So, here’s the deal: once your child has a solid grasp of the phonics world, begin having fun with text selection and check their fluency constantly! Fluency is simply how many words your child can correctly read in one minute (minus the errors made from the total words read). Fluency, in a sentence, also measures how animated your student reads (called prosody) and if they cruise gently around commas and stop hard at periods. Fluency helps with all of that. And finally—books! Ask them what they love, and
find books that bring them closer to understanding more about those topics. And get them books from a wide variety of various topics, from various sources. The steps to reading are exciting and profound. Take joy in the simple things, and delight in your child coming to you at night and saying “can I read to you tonight?”
Find the Small Joys in Reading
We've blabbered with phonics, phonemic awareness, and fluency—whew! Take it all in, and reference this post when and if necessary. But most importantly, take joy in the
little steps your child takes when mastering the skill of reading. Read with them often, not just before bed. Ask them questions about the book to see their comprehension really soar. Read often yourself, so you create a "more is caught than taught" type situation. You'll be glad you took an active interest in, perhaps, the most critical skill a young person can learn.
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