Courtesy of Jim from ChildrenLearningReading.com

Learning to read at a young age is important for the development of the child. It helps them develop a better understand of their surroundings, allows them to gather information from printed materials, and provides them with a wonderful source of entertainment when they read stories and rhymes. Children develop at different rates, and some children will develop reading skills quicker than other children; however, what’s important is that as the parent, you are keenly aware of your child’s maturity and reading level to provide them with appropriate books and activities to help them improve.

As parents, you are the most important teacher for your children. You will introduce your child to books and reading. Below we have some tips to help you teach your child to read.

Tip #1

Teach your child alphabet letters and sounds at the same time. Studies have shown that children learn best when they are taught the letter names and letter sounds at the same time. In one study, 58 preschool children were randomly assigned to receive instructions in letter names and sounds, letter sound only, or numbers (control group). The results of this study are consistent with past research results in that it found children receiving letter name and sound instruction were most likely to learn the sounds of letters whose names included cues to their sounds. [1]

When teaching your child the letter sounds, have them slowly trace the letter, while saying the sound of the letter at the same time. For example, if you were teaching your child the letter “A”, you would say:

“The letter A makes the /A/ (ah) sound.”

Then have your child say the /A/ sound while tracing the letter with his or her index finger.

Tip #2

When teaching your child to read, always emphasize with them that the proper reading order should be from left to right, and top to bottom. To adults, this may seem so basic that anyone should know it. However, our children are not born with the knowledge that printed text should be read from left to right and top to bottom, and this is why you’ll sometimes see children reading from right to left instead – because they were never explicitly taught to read from left to right. When teaching your child how to read, always emphasize this point with them.

Tip #3

Teach final consonant blends first. Teaching words such “at” and “and” can lead your child directly to learning words that rhyme with these. For example, for “at”, you can have:

Lat
Pat
Mat
Cat
Sat
Bat
Spat
Chat

For “and”, you can have these rhyming words:

Sand
Band
Land
Hand
Stand
Bland
Brand
Grand
and so on…

You can start teaching blends once your child has learned the sounds of some consonants and short vowel sounds. You don’t need to wait until your child has mastered the sounds of all the letters before teaching blends.

Learning to read is a long process, but it doesn’t have to be a difficult process. Broken down into intuitive and logical steps, a child as young as two years old can learn to read, and older children can accomplish even more.

>> Click here to for a simple, step-by-step program that can help your child learn to read, and watch a video of a 2 year old child reading.

Notes:

1. J Exp Child Psychol. 2010 Apr;105(4):324-44. Epub 2010 Jan 25.
Learning letter names and sounds: effects of instruction, letter type, and phonological processing skill.
Piasta SB, Wagner RK.
Preschool Language and Literacy Lab, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.

Courtesy of Jim Yang from ChildrenLearningReading.com

Phonemic Awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the individual sounds which make up words. In the past few decades, large amounts of research have improved our understanding of phonemic awareness and its importance in helping children learn to read. There are hundreds of research studies conducted on all aspects of phonemic awareness, and how it affects and benefits reading and spelling abilities of young children. The National Reading Panel of the US have stated that phonemic awareness improves children’s reading and reading comprehension, and that it also helps children to learn to spell. Based on the research and reviews done by the National Reading Panel, they have concluded that teaching phonics and phonemic awareness produces better reading results than whole language programs.

When teaching phonemic awareness, children are taught the smallest units of sound, or phonemes. During the teaching process, children are taught to focus on the phonemes, and learn to manipulate the phonemes in words. Studies have identified phonemic awareness and letter knowledge as the two best school-entry predictors of how well children will learn to read during the first 2 years of instruction. In a review of phonemic awareness research, the National Reading Panel (NRP) identified 1,962 citations, and the results of their meta-analysis were impressive as stated in the NRP publication:

Overall, the findings showed that teaching children to manipulate phonemes in words was highly effective under a variety of teaching conditions with a variety of learners across a range of grade and age levels and that teaching phonemic awareness to children significantly improves their reading more than instruction that lacks any attention to phonemic awareness (PA).

Specifically, the results of the experimental studies led the Panel to conclude that PA training was the cause of improvement in students’ phonemic awareness, reading, and spelling following training. The findings were replicated repeatedly across multiple experiments and thus provide converging evidence for causal claims. [1]

As can be clearly seen, teaching children phonemic awareness early on significantly improves their reading and spelling abilities. Furthermore, the NRP research stated that these beneficial effects of phonemic awareness teaching goes well beyond the end of training period. The NRP phonemic awareness research also found that the most effective teaching method was to systematically teach children to manipulate phonemes with letters, and teaching children in small groups.

Phonemic awareness (PA) teaching provides children with an essential foundation of the alphabet system, and a foundation in reading and spelling. The NRP has stated that PA instructions is a necessary instructional component within a complete reading program.

Below are two other studies done on phonemic awareness, and its effects on reading abilities. In a study involving children aged 6 to 7 years old, researchers found that the few readers at the beginning of grade one exhibited high phonemic awareness scored at least close to perfect in the vowel substitution task, compared to none in children of the same age group who could not read when they entered school. The research also stated that phonemic awareness differences before instruction predicted the accuracy of alphabetic reading and spelling at the end of grade one independent from IQ. Children with high phonemic awareness at the start of grade one had high reading and spelling achievements at the end of grade one; however, some of the children with low phonemic awareness had difficulties learning to read and spell. The study suggested that phonemic awareness is the critical variable for the progress in learning to read. [2]

Another study looked at phonemic awareness and emergent literacy skills of 42 children with an average age of 5 years and 7 months. The researchers indicated that relations between phonemic awareness and spelling skills are bidirectional where phonemic awareness improved spelling skills, and spelling influenced the growth in phonemic skills. [3]

It is clear that with the conclusions made by the National Reading Panel and other research studies on the benefits of phonemic awareness, children should be taught PA at a young age before entering school. This helps them build a strong foundation for learning to read and spell.

>> Help your child develop phonemic awareness and teach your child to read today

Notes:

1. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction (NIH Publication No. 00-4769). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

2. Cognition. 1991 Sep;40(3):219-49.
The relationship of phonemic awareness to reading acquisition: more consequence than precondition but still important.
Wimmer H, Landerl K, Linortner R, Hummer P.
University of Salzburg, Austria.

3. Exp Child Psychol. 2002 Jun;82(2):93-115.
Emergent literacy skills and training time uniquely predict variability in responses to phonemic awareness training in disadvantaged kindergartners.
Hecht SA, Close L.

I’d like to share with you an interesting case study of how 2 sisters (a 3 year old and a 5 year old) learned to read in just 4 months – both learned to read using the Children Learning Reading program. They attended the summer reading camp operated by the program’s creator, Jim Yang.

Jim has been teaching kids – and teaching parents how to teach their kids – to read for quite some time. During the summer months, he runs a reading camp teaching many children to read. most of the the children he teaches are 4 to 7 years old, with the occasional 3 year old or 8 year olds who are having reading difficulties.

To complete both stages of the reading camp, it typically takes about 4 months – attending 3 times a week and each session is 1 hour long.

This case study is about 2 little girls (sisters) that attended the reading camp. When they started (June), the older sister P. S. was 5 years 4 months, and the younger sister A. S. was just 2 years 11 months old. Probably most reading teachers would not even consider working with a 2 year old – since when can a 2 year old learn to read!?!

Well, no problem for Jim, as he had taught all of his own children to read by age 3. So when their mom asked if she could bring her almost 3 year old, Jim said: “sure, why not? I’ll have both of them reading for you in a few months.” Certainly, she had a healthy degree of skepticism.

So by the end of 4 months, after completing the Children Learning Reading program, her older daughter was reading at a grade 2 level (reading age 7.3 years), and her younger daughter was reading at a grade 1 level (reading age 6.8 years). I can’t embed videos in emails, so please head over to Jim’s website, scroll down, and watch the short video posted under “Success Story #3”. There, you see just how well her older daughter was reading by the end of 4 months, plus follow-up videos several months and one year later showing their amazing progress.

Click Here to Watch Video (See Success Story #3)

The Initial Reading Assessment

At the start of the reading camp, there is a quick reading assessment. The younger girl A. S. did not need an assessment as being just 2 year 11 months old, she did not know any letters or sounds, yet. The older sister P. S. knew most of the alphabet letter names and “sounds”, but she was pronouncing some of the sounds incorrectly.

No surprises there, as almost every single child that attends the reading camp are taught many phonemes incorrectly (!!), either at preschool or in Kindergarten. Such is the state of our education system.

Learning to Read

Being 3 years apart, there’s a big difference in how quickly the older sister will learn compared to her younger sister. They start off with the Children Learning Reading program as usual, except after a few lessons, adjustments were made to accommodate for the different learning paces of the older sister and the younger sister.

This system of teaching reading is a unique combination of synthetic phonics with phonemic awareness that produces amazing results in children of all ages. Obviously, one of the initial goals was to REALLY correct the incorrect sounds the older sister had learned in pre-school! She was starting kindergarten in September. After just the first week, the older sister P. S. caught on and was doing great with phonemic awareness activities such as blending and segmenting. Little A. S., being a lot younger, took about 2.5 weeks before she started catching on.

The Results

With such a logical and sequential order of learning, the results are always phenomenal, and parents are almost always flabbergasted at what can be accomplished in just 3 to 4 months.

By week 4, the older P. S. was already reading simple, short, decodable sentences, and the younger A. S. (just turned 3 now) is able to phonetically read many many words. After 2 months, every time they came to their lessons, their mom (always with a big smile) was always telling stories about how the 2 of them are reading everywhere they go!

After 3 months – at about 3/4 way through completing the reading program – the older sister P. S. was already reading simple, short stories independently. Little A. S. (now 3) could also read (phonetically) an amazing amount of words, sentences, and even some very simple short stories. Keep in mind she just turned 3. At 3 months is when their reading abilities really took off, and their mom just could not believe the type of results she was seeing in her children – she kept on saying that she did not think this was even remotely possible.

Indeed, it is. You just have to have the right techniques and methods when it comes to teaching reading, and one of Jim’s favorite comments he received about his teaching methods is that:

“It totally de-mystifies reading.”

The girls completed the reading camp by end of September, and their mom said it was unbelievable how far ahead both of her daughters were compared to other kids. In the video (see success story #3), you can see just how well P. S. was reading by the end of 4 months.

Teaching reading is something that Jim does extremely well. While you and your child may not live in the same city (or even country) as him to attend his classes, his Children Learning Reading program is available for parents to purchase online. Thousands of parents have used his methods to successfully teach their children to read with amazing results.

>> Click here to watch a short video presentation to learn more about the Children Learning Reading program, and see how you can effectively teach your child to read.

Here’s what their mom had to say about their experience:

My children loved the program and so did I. I am extremely pleased with the results. My children started the program at 2 years 11 months and 5 years 4 months with Jim, and neither child was reading before the program. My children loved the program, and Jim is an excellent teacher. After 4 months, my 3 year old is reading at a grade 1 level, and my 5 year old is at a grade 2 – 3 level. I never expected such amazing results.

Jim’s program takes the mystery out of teaching children how to read. It is so well organized that any child can learn to read with it. The outcome exceeded my expectations. At the start of the program, I thought my 3 year old might learn some letters and my 5 year old would learn some words, but after completing the program in 4 months, my 3 year old could read long sentences and simple short stories, and my 5 year old could read level 2 books on her own.

Thanks,

Parminder S.

>> Learn more about Jim’s super simple, logical, sequential system of teaching reading, please click here to watch a short video explaining his methods.