How to Teach Your Child to Read
Hello and welcome back to Simply Clarifying. In today’s video, I’m gonna share with you six tips to get your child reading in two weeks. Yes, you heard me right. Two weeks. The activities that I share are tried, true and tested and they’re going to promote positive reading skills and gain fluency.
My name is Clara Campanella and I’m a homeschool mom for the past 10 years to my three children.
I’m also a certified Orton-Billingham therapeutic tutor, and that’s a tutor for children with specific learning disabilities. I’ve been a tutor for the past 19 years, so my job is teaching children how to spell, read, write, all things language arts, and I’m also here to help you, how to help you navigate the world of homeschooling, whether you’re just beginning or you’re in the midst of it. I’m here to help you. Make sure you stay to the end of this video because I have a couple of bonus freebies that I know you’re going to want.
These are going to help you get started in teaching your children how to read.
But first I want you to hit that subscribe button and the notification bell so you know when I upload my next video. My plan is to upload every Wednesday morning, but you never know. I might have a new one here and there, so make sure to subscribe and be in the know. Okay, before we begin, let me preface by saying that every child is different and unique and their learning styles are oh so different.
But the tips that I’m going to give you today are for children that are developmentally ready. And that can be any age. Every child is different. For some, it might be around six years old. For others, it may be when they’re about three or four.
And for others, it may be when they’re about 10. It all depends on your child. So please keep that in mind when I offer these tips. Tip number one is to read, read, read, read to your children. And hopefully, you’re already doing that so you’re one step ahead.
But I cannot emphasize more that reading to your children is the fundamental basis for reading. And here’s why. Children need to hear language. They need to hear syntax, vocabulary, fluctuations in voice, the nuances in our dialogue. They need to hear this for them to be able to do that when they’re reading independently.
That can be anywhere and everywhere you go, carving out special time in the day.
A lot of people like bedtime, that just seems practical, but having that time with your child is so precious. Not only does it promote, of course, attachment and closeness, but it definitely is building those pre-reading skills. So number one is to read to your child. Number two is to immerse your child in language.
Reading is everywhere in the grocery store, of course, at the library, out and about in daily life when you’re going to the park and you see traffic signs. Point out language, point out reading, read things to your child, get them to look at labels on foods, anything that is a part of daily life where you see language. This is the time to pointed out to your children. Perhaps it may be to tell the letters. This is also a great time to tell them the letters in their names and the sounds that they make.
Make it fun. Make Play-doe letters, draw letters in sand. There are so many ways to make it fun and interesting for children, especially when they’re under the age of five. This is just a really great way just to immerse their world with language and reading. Okay, so you’re already reading to your kids.
You’re pointing out labels and signs and the letters in their name. Number three, it’s time to teach the letter sounds. Now, this is so important. This is the vital one. You want to teach the letter sounds not just the name.
And so often, I know it’s so cute. Your child can recite the alphabet and they can do the alphabet song.
That is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the sounds the letters make. That is way more important than the name of the letter.
You’re going to introduce the letter and the sound. Now, you’re not going to go in alphabetical order. There is a sequential way to teach this and you can pick a program. There’s, of course, The Writing Road to Reading. There’s All About Reading.
There’s tons of programs out there that will give you their sequential order or they like to call it order of presentation. And I have my way and maybe if you stick to the end of the video you might get a Freebie. Yeah, you want to definitely introduce sounds. That is the most important thing. Now, you need to know the proper sounds of each letter.
R does not say R. We don’t say, “Rabbit.” R says R, and it’s just breadth.
I always say R, and I hear a little breath and I feel it on my fingertips. You need to learn how to pronounce properly the letters yourself and I’m going to help you with that as well.
Teach the sounds of the letters in the order of presentation that you choose, with whatever program that you decide to use in your homeschool. This is also the time to introduce vowels and consonants. You would be surprised how many children do not know the difference.
You need to point this out. Every word in the English language has a vowel.
We need vowels. Other languages don’t, but they need to differentiate between consonants and vowels and this is the time to teach them. Now, tell me down below, do your children know the difference between vowels and consonants? And if they do, how did you teach it? Number four, it’s time to teach word families.
These are final consonant blends on the end of short words that are consonant vowel, consonant words. Example: act, it, op, an, am. Those are all word families, and what this is going to do is it’s going to promote rhyming. Rhyming is so important. That’s why I love Dr.
Seuss books. They’re great. Read those kinds of books. Do nursery rhymes, rhyme all the time.
That is how we build language and this is so important when you’re building these word families because what’s going to happen is when you’re teaching a word family, such as at, then you’re going to start building with beginning consonants.
We have cat and mat and sat and we’re just building more vocabulary. This is so important. Remember, word families, do lots of rhyming. Okay, number five is let’s start doing some double consonant blend word families. This will be like sand, hand, land, and then you can move on to camp and lamp.
They have the MP, the ND, you’ve NT. There are so many double consonant blends, so we’re building now. We’re not going to stick with just consonant vowel consonant words. We’re now having beginning consonant blends that have double consonants like stamp, so we have the ST in the beginning and then we have the MP on the end. So you have your double final consonants.
We’re just building. This is the time to start moving on a little bit from the shorter little words. Of course, these are still one syllable words, but we’re blending more.
And this is where reading takes place. We’re blending and we’re sounding out.
Number six, comprehension. You want to be always talking about what you’re reading. And so if you’re just reading single words, you’re going to talk about what do those words mean. Here’s an example: mat. What does a mat mean?
What do we use a mat for? Can you put the word mat in a sentence for me? You want to build vocabulary starting with obviously the single words. When you move into stories, when you’re reading to your child, stop and ask questions. What do you think is going to happen?
Can you make a prediction? Or you can just ask simple ones. What color were Tom’s pants? Little things like that, just so we know that they’re understanding what we’re reading to them.
And then of course when they’re reading independently, you ask questions.
Tell me about this character. What was he doing? What was the problem in the story? Always discussing and talking. Comprehension is so important to reading.
Now, this is not a tip that I included, but I am going to talk really quickly about sight words. Now, my definition of a sight word is a word that you cannot sound out. For others, it is high frequency words. I do not prescribe to a whole language-based teaching of reading and spelling. I am all about phonics.
I want my children and the children that I work with to understand their language. And for me, the best way is through phonics. It is not through memorizing what a word looks like. Now, for sight words, this is different. Sight words are words you cannot pronounce, okay?
So those will be words like said and come and pretty.
They don’t say the sound they’re supposed to say. And for words like that, they do need to be memorized, and there’s different ways to do that. There are studies out that say phonemic awareness and phonics is the best way to teach reading for long-term success. And so that is why I’m not a fan of whole language-based teaching.
I’m definitely one for phonics, but of course sight words are words that you’re going to have as kind of special. I put them in red letters, I’m teach them separately, and I make kind of games and fun things for them to do. So that’s a whole other video, it’s all about sight words, but they’re not high frequency words, which is what some people would assume are sight words. Okay. Let’s recap.
Number one, read to your child.
Number two, immerse your child in language. Number three, teach the letter sounds, not just the names. Number four, teach word families. Number five, continue with word families by adding double consonants.
And number six, comprehension. Ask questions while you’re reading and while your child is reading to themselves. Okay. If you stayed to the end, I have my freebies. Yes, you heard plural, freebies, but before I tell you about them, I want you to subscribe below.
I also want you to comment on what program you’re using currently for your child, or that you’re thinking about using for your child, for reading and spelling. I also want you to tell me if you have a struggling reader or if you’re nervous about teaching reading to your children. And make sure to hit that notification bell so you know when I upload the next video and you get this great content right to your inbox.
My first free download is the list that I’ve come up with on the order of presentation of how I think that letters sounds should be taught. There is a clickable link down below where you can download it for free, and it just goes through the whole alphabet in the order that I believe you should be teaching the sounds to your children.
Now, there’s a bonus download and that is a list of word families in the order that I find works for my children, worked for my children, and is working currently for the students that I teach. I’ve strategically put together a list of word families that once you have introduced the single sounds of the alphabet, then you can soon move on to these word families and they’re in a sequential order.
So go check my description down below and click those links and get those freebies right away. And thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video and I look forward to seeing you next time.
Bye, bye..
