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Learning to read is a difficult process. Success in reading is based on developing language and literacy skills at a very early age. Children need to be involved in reading from the first days of life. Children need to be engaged in reading through nursery rhymes, storybooks and writing activities. By giving children these experiences, they learn the purpose of reading and at the same time they begin to develop a joy of books and reading. Parents of young children need to understand the importance of vocabulary development. They need to understand the importance of verbal interaction and how this enhances grammar, sentence structure and verbal reasoning.
Preschool children should begin to learn the letters of the alphabet. As they are learning the names of the letters, they should learn to discriminate one letter from another. They should begin to print the letters and spell words that they recognize. As we introduce our children to print, they learn the purpose of reading and writing and thus their awareness of print increases.
Reading aloud to children is a proven acitivity for developing vocabulary growth and language acquisition. It helps to develop both receptive and expressive language. Reading aloud also enhances the child's background knowledge and helps the child learn new concepts. These concepts appear in both oral and written language. Reading aloud is necessary but not the only thing necessary to teach reading.
As the child moves into kindergarten, the child will be exposed to phonological awareness instruction, phonics skills, the development of spelling and orthographic skills. Here he will develop the prerequiste skills in these areas. Children should acquire both upper and lowercase letters with ease and accuracy, develop familiarity with the basic purposes and mechanisms of reading and writing and develop age-appropriate language comprehension skills.
Parents should continue to work on the same skills as the teachers when the student moves into kindergarten increasing the rate of reading success. Parents should continue reading aloud, play games involving phonological awareness such as rhyming games. Parents should encourage writing skills with the use of clay, paint, stringing beads, pencils, markers and scissors. All of these implements strengthen the small muscles, thus improving their fine motor control.
Sufficient time should be given to phonemic awareness skills (rhyming), phonics skills (sounds/letters), the development of spelling and orthographic skills (writing), the development of reading fluency (blending sounds) and the development of reading comprehension strategies.(reasoning, answering questions). All of these components are necessary to learn to read. Parents should begin at a very early age to give literacy experiences to their children and continue throughout the primary grades.
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