The Ages and Stages of Learning to Read
Do you remember how you learned to read? As a reader, you have built a dictionary in your brain of anywhere from 20,000 to over 50,000 words. You certainly did not memorize all those words, so how did you learn to read them?
Learning to read begins with hearing sounds, and that happens even before birth. Before a child is born, their mom’s voice echoes through her body and surrounds them in a way that is unique from the other voices and sounds they hear. That is why a newborn finds her voice so comforting, when she holds them in her arms and talks to them.
The key to learning to read is hearing sounds and connecting those sounds to letter shapes in words on the page.
Children are surrounded by speech, so learning to talk happens naturally. Talking with your child helps them learn to talk.
Listening and talking are critical steps towards learning to read.
However, reading does not come naturally. To become a reader, you have to learn the alphabetic code for the language you want to read. Alphabetic codes are invented technologies, so they have to be learned.
Building Oral Language and Background Knowledge
Reading involves essentially two processes, decoding words and understanding what those words mean. That’s why strong oral language and a broad range of life experiences that build background knowledge are so important for helping your child understand what they are reading.
The following tips will help your child develop strong oral language skills and build background knowledge in the sounds and meaning of language.
In Utero
Pregnancy is an exciting journey filled with many life changes. Being mindful of your physical and mental health will give your unborn baby a peaceful, healthy place to develop.
In utero, a child can hear sounds near the end of the 2nd trimester. As their hearing continues to develop, sounds become easier to hear although they are muffled by the amniotic fluid.
Your voice is special because it echoes through your body and surrounds them with a familiar comforting sound. Before your baby is born, you can talk, hum, sing, and read books out loud to them.
Hearing the sounds of speech before they are born will help tune your baby’s ear to the sounds of speaking and reading.
Babbling Babies
If your child is still in the babbling phase, here are some ways you can encourage them to develop strong language skills, which are the foundation for reading.
Look at your baby’s face and talk, hum, and sing to them. This helps them stay engaged and see the movements your lips and mouth make. Singing is important because we stretch out words and emphasize vowel sounds when we sing.
Even though your baby can’t speak yet, wait for a kick, wiggle, or coo response. This helps your baby learn that conversation is a back and forth experience.
Babies love to explore books and hear them read aloud. Read books with high contrast images, patterns, and textures. Choose durable books that they can enjoy looking at on their own. Turning pages helps them develop fine motor skills which are helpful for learning to write.
Give your baby lots of opportunities to develop core body strength through tummy time, rolling, reaching, and eventually crawling and walking. Provide playthings that strengthen small muscles and build fine motor skills. These include blocks, stacking and nesting toys, shape fitting toys, puzzles, and musical instruments.
Toys also provide opportunities for talking about size, shape, and color. These conversations expand vocabulary and build background knowledge.
Terrific Toddlers
It’s important to speak to your child in complete sentences as if you were having a conversation with anyone else in your life. To expand their vocabulary, use bigger words and then translate them into simpler words that your child can easily understand.
You can help them learn to speak in complete sentences by repeating what they said in sentence form. For example, if they say “want drink”, you can say “Oh I see you are thirsty. Say, I need a drink, please.”
Build background knowledge and expand vocabulary by visiting interesting places and having conversations about what you are seeing and doing. Read fiction and nonfiction books and point out letters and words so your child begins to realize that books have pictures we look at and text we can read.
This is a great age for helping your child hear the sounds in speech by stretching out words into individual sounds. With guidance, they will begin to hear and say letter sounds and connect those sounds to letter shapes. Alphabites Game Pack is a great way to introduce your child to letter shapes and sounds through playful games and bite size learning that keeps toddlers engaged.
Provide lots of opportunities for your toddler to scribble, paint, draw, and write. This helps them develop motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and fluid movements that will make learning to handwrite easier. Use a variety of tools, materials, and surfaces to keep these activities engaging and enjoyable. Help them connect words to their artwork by writing down their words and descriptions.
Precious Pre-Kindergarten
At this age, your child will be learning that books have words that represent speech. They might even pretend to read books they have memorized, point out letters they recognize, and read words. Decodable books can help them practice familiar words that are easy to read.
When you are reading together, point to words as you say them. Get them to finish rhyming sentences or repetitive phrases. Draw their attention to letters and words on signs, buildings, and clothing.
Play games with words. Make strings of rhyming words, ask them what sound they hear first in a word, and stretch out words into sounds, using your fingers to count the sounds. Say individual sounds and show them how you blend the sounds into words by saying them quickly.
All of these activities help your child understand that a stream of speech sounds can be broken into individual sounds and written down on paper as letters.
Help them learn to write their name using upper case for the first letter and lower case for the rest of the letters. It’s more about the process at this stage than it is about neatness or legibility, which will improve with time and practice.
Kindergarten Plus
Kindergarten is an exciting time when oral language, life experiences, knowledge of letter sounds and shapes, and enjoyment of shared reading lay the foundation for becoming a strong reader. At this age, your child should be practicing blending sounds to make words and segmenting words into sounds, counting syllables, and making rhymes.
Comprehension and fluency are keys to reading with ease and understanding. It’s important to continue to build background knowledge and expand vocabulary through talking about unique experiences and how we share thoughts and ideas through writing and reading.
Even when children can read on their own, they still enjoy being read to and sharing reading time with others. This creates an opportunity to learn together and discuss the messages, ideas, and information shared by the author. Take turns reading out loud to build fluency and automaticity.
Studies show that children who grow up in homes where oral language, reading, and enriching experiences are valued, develop strong and enduring literacy, language, and cognitive skills.
Conclusion
Learning to read begins with listening and speaking the language your child hears every day.
Talk comes naturally, but reading does not! The alphabet is an invented code for recording the sounds we hear. In order to read, your child needs to learn the alphabetic code which tells them how to connect the sounds they hear to the squiggles they see on the page. Building background knowledge through talking, reading, and life experiences helps them bring meaning to those squiggles.
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