Teaching a child to read can be magical! What you do together can hugely determine a child’s success. Knowing that phonological awareness is the best kept secret to reading can be the difference between both of you feeling successful or frustrated!
As a teacher, I personally love every step of the reading process and I love to share the tricks I have learned in the past 15 years with as many families as I can!
Teaching your beginning reader
The very first step to reading, is literally the most important step, and yet also seems to be the least well known and talked about.
So what’s the best kept secret to reading? Well, it may not be what you think it is, unless you have heard of phonological awareness!
Let me illustrate my assumption with a quick story.
Think back to the times prior to the 2020 pandemic, when big play dates and moms nights used to be a thing.
Well, I remember one of those hangouts when some of my friends were talking about preschools in the area and what they were looking for in a preschool.
One of my friends shared, “I just really need someone to teach my kids their letters and teach them their numbers and I’ll be happy. That’s really all I want for preschool before they go off to kindergarten.”
While I can have strong opinions, I’m generally a very non confrontational person, so I don’t necessarily speak up during those conversations. Well, I still kick myself for staying quiet that day, because I realize that sharing my expertise right then and there could have made a big difference.
Because fact is, kids knowing their letters actually doesn’t mean they’re going to be great readers later on. The thing is, nobody really tells you that as a parent!
What Is The Secret To Reading Then?
Did you let that sink in? Kids knowing their letters is actually not a great indicator for them being easily able to learn to read in Kindergarten. Instead, developing phonological awareness is.
Phonological awareness is simply teacher lingo for “being able to recognize and work with the sounds in spoken language”. And that my friends, is actually the best kept secret to reading!
I started to study how to develop phonological awareness and how building it helps kids learn to read 15 years ago! The crazy part is, it’s been 15 years and explicit teaching and developing of phonological awareness is still not standard in every preschool, kindergarten, or first grade class! However, solid phonological awareness is a huge indicator for a child’s success in reading! Much more so than knowing their letters.
As a teacher, I spent several years working with second language learners and I had the opportunity to teach those that were really struggling. Guess what, working on their phonological awareness worked for every single child! Once we had that part down, other things started to fall into place too.
As a tutor to struggling readers, I have experienced the exact same thing! Kids will start to read in a matter of weeks, when we combine working on their phonological awareness and phonics. This has been my secret to reaching reading for years!
What Is Phonological Awareness?
So phonological awareness is being aware of and being able to manipulate the sounds in the spoken language. An example would be that if I give you the word “cat” you can tell me the beginning sound, or you can break the word into its beginning, middle, and ending sound.
How To Practice Phonological Awareness?
You might be thinking right now, “You told us in the beginning that many teachers don’t even know much about this topic yet, so how am I as a parent supposed to figure this out?” I totally get it! But that’s where I come in my friend. I’m excited to share ideas and resources with you!
Ideas For Beginners
When you practice phonological awareness, you do not show your child any letters! I know that seems strange to most people, since we are working on a reading skill, but trust me, this part is essential. Isn’t it funny how withholding letters is part of the secret to reading?
Again, you mainly use your sense of hearing for this part. As you get deeper into practice or if your child seems to struggle with the practice, it is a great idea to use some manipulatives, but no letters. You could use counters, little erasers, or maybe even a fun little snack they can eat when they are done. We have used raisins, cheerios, animal crackers, or even pretzels.
You start very simple! A fun beginner phonological awareness activity is to have your child count the words in a sentence you say. It’s a great way to help them become aware that words stand individually and we put them together into sentences when we speak. Understanding this in your speech, will help them relate this knowledge when they read.
Supporting Struggling Readers
Especially if you have a family history of dyslexia in your family, you want to make phonological awareness activities part of how you play together. Doing this from a young age on, can change the whole trajectory of a dyslexic child’s reading journey. However, no matter if you have a family history of dyslexia or not, phonological awareness activities are one of the most important things you can add to playtime with your kids!
Because that is how straightforward developing phonological awareness really is. You simply play with sentences, words, sing, or read rhyming books.
Rhyming
Dr. Seuss books are still one of my favorite go to’s for rhyming books. Be mindful of the ones you pick and then enjoy the word plays and rhymes together. Reading Green Eggs and Ham or The Cat In The Hat together always makes for some fun and silly bonding time.
If you’re not a Dr. Seuss fan, find some other great rhyming books! There are so many of them! Our family for example also loves the Llama Llama book series. My children are now both avid readers themselves, but they still love this series and will grab it off the shelf to read. I have a feeling these books will be with us for quite a while longer because of the fond memories we have of reading them and the fun we have with the rhymes.
And what about nursery rhymes? Their often old fashioned topics have made them less attractive to today’s parents. Sadly when it comes to supporting our child on their reading journey, we are doing them a huge disservice by cutting them out.
Simple things like singing, listening to, or reading nursery rhymes can be a secret to reading because all these activities help our kids to build their phonological awareness!
As you read and reread rhyming books and nursery rhymes, give your child the opportunity to fill in the rhyming words in a way of reading along with you. They are of course not really reading, but they are actively participating in reading the book. All those little pieces put together are what make this the best kept secret to reading so your child will be a fluent and proficient reader later on!
Play With Words
As you work on rhyming, and counting words in sentences, and counting syllables in words, you can gradually move into working with individual sound in words. When I do that, I like to start with the beginning sounds of words.
Beginning Sounds
Finding objects with a particular beginning sound used to be an amazing way to keep my toddlers busy while I was cooking dinner. For example, I would tell my daughter to to find all kitchen items that begin with the sound /s/, and she would have the best time going through the kitchen, naming things, and checking for the items that started with /s/.
We even used this activity on car rides, when playing “I spy” was getting boring. Games like this are a great way to help a child become explicitly aware of a specific sound in words.
Now What?
When you kiddo is able to orally put words together or take them apart, blending words they sound out when they read will be easy! I truly believe the reason my daughter started to read as soon as she was introduced to letter sounds, was because we had played these games since she could talk!
The Best Kept Secret To Reading In A Nutshell
So I guess when we summarize the secret to reading, you could look at three separate and yet very connected parts:
- Teaching your child the alphabet is still a good idea, but it is not what will teach her to read. However, as your child learns that the sounds in our language are written down in symbols, learning and playing with the alphabet is a good first step.
- Phonological awareness activities should go hand in hand with learning the alphabet. Get in the habit of playing with words, rhymes, and sounds in words. Make it a daily habit during playtime with your toddler and preschooler and you will have a Kindergartener who will become a fluent reader with ease.
- Teach your child letter sounds in the form of very explicit phonics instruction! There are many great programs out there to guide you. The order in which you introduce and practice sounds matters, so you do want to follow a reputable source.
As you practice with your child, watch her begin to read decodeable readers! Trust me, watching a child read her first book independently never gets old for me. The twinkle in their eyes as they explain, “I did it! I read the whole book!” is magical for me and brings just as much joy to my heart as it brings to theirs!
If you want more details or even step by step instructions, along with materials and videos that will teach you how to work with your child and teach her to read, you can pre-register for my upcoming “teach your child to read” online course simply by filling in this Contact Me form! I’m super excited to put this together for you guys!