Developing Pre-reading Skills At An Early Age
By Leslie Tanck

In today’s schools, too many young children struggle with learning to read. As many teachers and parents will attest, reading failure can bring tremendous long-term consequences for children’s self-confidence and motivation to learn as well as for their later school performance. Twenty percent of children in an average classroom struggle tremendously with reading. Reading failure does not start when kids start schools. Reading failure and success can be determined from infancy and early childhood. Parents are a child’s first teacher and it is critical that they know how to teach them and what rich experiences to give them.

The National Reading Panel issued a report in 2000 that responded to a Congressional mandate to help parents, teachers and policymakers identify key skills and methods central to reading achievement. This research is not only for schools and the educational field. Parents should be aware of this research and the important results in order to help their children learn to read.

The Findings of the National Reading Panel Report describe five areas of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension. Let me stop right now and say that I am a teacher and a parent. If I was not a teacher, I would not know about the five areas of reading, or the National Reading Panel or really anything about teaching children to read. However, I learned these things as a teacher and have used it endlessly as a parent. All parents should know about the five areas of reading instruction. Honestly, reading instruction starts from the first day a child is born. It starts in the songs you sing to your child, the games you play, the stories you read. So, please don’t think that the information in this article is just for teachers. Parents, keep reading to learn how you can help your child develop reading skills from infancy on.

1. Phonemic Awareness:

Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about and work with the individual sounds in spoken words. Before children learn to read print, they need to become aware of how the sounds in words work. They must understand that words are made up of speech sounds or phonemes. Little games that you can play to help develop phonemic awareness include:

• Making rhymes:

The pig has a (wig)

The sun is (fun)

• Identifying and working with syllables in spoken words:

“I can clap the parents in my name: An-drew.”

• Identifying and working with individual phonemes in spoken words:

“The first sound is sun is /S/.”

My daughter and I like to sing songs about letter sounds. One song we sing is: “/b/ is for Bella, /b/ is for Bella. Every letter makes a sound. /b/ is for Bella.” (we say the sound of b when it is written like this: /b/) We sing this song for Mommy and Daddy and all her other friends. She loves to make requests. Her favorite is “let’s do /g/ for grandma!” I got the idea of this song from similar tunes from Leapfrog toys. They have great toys that give phonemic awareness and phonics skills. Which leads us to the next area of reading- phonics!

2. Phonics:

Phonics instruction teaches children the relationships between written letters and the sounds those letters make.

Toys with letters on it are a great way to introduce this skill at an early age. Again, leap frog has some great toys to help this skill. My daughter knows her letter is B for Bella. She would often get her toys that has letters on it and ask “where’s mommy’s letter?” So, I would point out the M for Mommy. At this time, Bella is 27 months, and can already pick out 12 of the 26 letters. Those letters are all the letters that her closest family members and friends names begin with. It’s not something we sit down and I force her to do, it’s just something she enjoys. Exposing kids to letters at an early age and talking about them and the sounds they make will give them such a great head start. Many kids enter kindergarten without any knowledge of letters or sounds. It helps so much when they come with some background.

3. Fluency

Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately and quickly. Fluent readers sound natural as if they are speaking. They read aloud effortlessly and with expression. Readers who have not developed fluency read slowly, word by word and sound choppy. Songs and dance at an early age help children develop early skills for fluency. Repetitive books such as “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” by Bill Martin Jr., help develop fluency skills. Nursery rhymes can also help with fluency, because they learn to read them in a fluent and rhythmic way.

4. Vocabulary

Vocabulary refers to the words we must know to communicate effectively. Vocabulary is knowing the meaning of words. Vocabulary is also very important to reading comprehension. It is difficult for children to comprehend text when they do not understand the vocabulary in it.

Children learn word meanings indirectly in three ways:

A. They engage daily in oral language:

Talk to your kids about everything. Talk to them about the shapes of objects you see, the color of their shirt, the sound the airplane makes as it flies overhead. Use a variety of words and details as you talk. Take them to the zoo, and point out all the different animals, what the animals are doing, what they are eating, even what country they may be from. Just talk about the world, and your children will have a great vocabulary from listening to you and talking to you.

B. They listen to adults read to them:

Read to your child a lot! I recommend at least a half hour a day. Put books everywhere; their bedroom, the family room, the bathroom, etc. They will pick them up and ask you to read to them. I can’t tell you how much my daughter has learned from the books that we read to her.

C. They read extensively on their own:

Children can read by themselves, before they can actually read words. Just looking through books, looking at the pictures, making up their own stories, or trying to repeat the words that they heard you read, all help in this area.

5. Text Comprehension:

Comprehension is the reason for reading. If a reader can read the words but does not understand what they are reading, they are not really reading. At an early age, text comprehension can be developed by asking them questions about books you read. Ask questions such as “What is he/she doing? Why is he doing that? How does he feel? What’s going to happen next?” Also, talk about a book after you read it, and summarize it in words they understand. Comprehension is a skill that will be developed more when they are older and in school, but vocabulary that you give them as a young child will also help incredibly to improve their comprehension.

Well, that’s it folks. -The five areas of reading, and what you can do from infancy to age five to help them be great readers. Remember, you are their first and most important teacher and you give them the building blocks for the rest of their lives. The experiences you provide them with, the songs you sing, the words you speak, and the books you read all shape how well they will learn and develop in school and throughout their life. Most importantly, have fun and enjoy exploring the world with them!

Leslie Tanck has a Bachelors degree in Interpersonal and Organizational Communication, a minor in Pyschology and a Special Education Credential. She has been teaching for four years, and absolutely loves it! She has been married to her husband Jeremy, for four years, has a two year old daughter, Isabella, and another girl on the way. She has a special interest in child development, behavioral and cognitive psychology and overall issues in education. She is from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but currently resides in Tulare, California. Leslie has a blog where she posts and writes articles about child development issues. Her blog can be found at http://leslieschildrelatedarticles.blogspot.com/

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* Click to enlarge image. For more images, go to the review page at my bookshop.

Our review:
I love how you can slide out the top part of the book. The cover is the picture of a bus. When you slide the top out, it shows you the children in the bus. The next page has a picture of a school bag. Slide the top out and it’s a teddy bear that’s in the bag. The colours are bright and some parts are shiny too. The story is all about going to school: packing your bag, reading time, play time, recess time, going home time. A wonderful interactive book that toddlers will love. I know my son loves it.

Currently available at Value Bookshop for RM18.90. Only 1 copy available. Hurry over there and grab it quick!

Image via Wikipedia

Besides Chinese, other languages regarded as “critical languages” are Arabic, Russian, Hindi and Farsi. However, it is reported that Chinese is the most popular because of the booming business in China. The U.S. Education Department encourages teaching of these languages even at kindergarten level and has allocated $26 million in grants to communities around the country.

The reason why this article caught my attention is because I am impressed that the U.S. education department has not only realized the value of learning languages like Chinese but has also taken active steps to make sure the schools provide the learning opportunity to the children.

Here in Malaysia, more and more parents also see the great value and advantage of learning chinese. I’m not just talking about the chinese people. Even the other races (Malays, Indians, “dan lain lain”) in Malaysia acknowledge the benefits of learning this language. Unfortunately, what seems to be the best option is packing our children into Chinese schools. Seeing that there is an exploding interest in learning Chinese, I wish our education department would also take active steps in providing this language development to our children in national schools.

Let’s take a quick look at this business of learning Mandarin in Malaysia. Like just mentioned, many believe the best way is for children to attend a Chinese school. However, Chinese school’s are also famous for their endless stream of homework. Listening to parents talk about their children doing homework till 11pm and losing out on their childhood is heartbreaking indeed. And unlike this school in Fairfax where children play Jeopardy to learn the language, I don’t think anyone has enthusiastically commented how fun it is to learn chinese in our schools. Let’s not forget how crowded it is getting too. One teacher to 50 students is far from ideal. Some parents like the idea of discipline in chinese schools. Unfortunately, it is the same “discipline” that is killing their creative natures.

So, it is really sad to me that Chinese schools are considered the best option for our children to acquire the chinese language. I, for one, believe there must be a better way.

Complaining will get us no where. Finding solutions is better use of our energy. Therefore, I’m calling all parents out there to put on their thinking cap and tell me, what do you think is a good way for our children to learn Mandarin?

Let me start the ball rolling:
1. Give children a choice to learn it in national schools like the P.O.L. (People’s Own Language) classes. My daughter attends a school which is 99.9% malay. The option of learning mandarin is not available to her. However, if mandarin was an option, like part of the school syllabus, I am sure many non-chinese will want to learn too.
2. Play groups. Not those high paying tuition or enrichment centres. Just mothers getting their children together to learn conversational skills, story telling and children songs.

Okay, I would like to hear your ideas now.

So I decided to do some reinforcing today by playing 2 card games. First, I recycled a cereal box and cut out tiny squares to make the cards. On it I wrote numbers and the names of the numbers (in B.M.).

Game 1: Memory Game
Shuffle and then lay out the cards face down. Open two at a time. If they number matches the word, he gets to keep the cards. If not, turn them over and then try again.
Before I started the game, I had him write on a piece of paper:

1 - satu
2 - dua
3 - tiga… (until 10 - sepuluh).

After a few games, I could see that KokoD was getting better at remembering the names of the numbers. I could tell because he didn’t have to refer to his paper much after awhile.

Game 2: Snap!
You could say it is similar to the traditional card game Snap! I divided the cards into two piles - numbers & words.
I took one pile, he took the other pile. We would simultaneously open one card from our pile. If they matched, you have to put your hand on the cards and say “Snap!” The person who is fastest gets to keep the cards.
Of course KokoD would not stand a chance against me when playing this game. I understand that he is just learning and would not have that speed yet. So, I gave him win a few times. Have to give some encouragement right?

Well, as usual, these games are very versatile. You can use these games to teach other concepts e.g colors and shape. You can also use it to build vocabulary in any language. Just use a little imagination and I’m sure your kid will have lots of fun playing err… I mean learning