Reading Isn’t as Simple as A-B-C by Aviva Stern

Reading Isn’t as Simple as A-B-C

By Aviva Stern

As camp season ends, many of us are forced to think about back to school. This often means heading out to buy uniforms and shoes, and many (many!) trips to stores for school supplies. As parents, we wonder what the school year might look like for our children and if their teachers will be a good match for each of them. Perhaps, if you are the parent of a youngster heading to pre-1A or first grade, you may think about what it will be like for your children about to enter their first academic experience. You may wonder if they will find success when they begin their reading journey.

Learning how to read is an incredibly empowering time in a child’s life. It is one of the first times that children can attain mastery of a skill. They can become somewhat independent and fill downtime in a productive way. They can feel successful and “grown up” – except when they don’t and the required skills don’t come easily to them. Instead of feeling on top of the world, early feelings of failure and inadequacy can, unfortunately, develop.

To those not in the education field, learning how to read may seem like a somewhat straightforward process. After all, most kids we know can sing their ABCs. Many view it as a simple task of learning the letter names and their corresponding sounds.

The real truth is that “reading” is really comprised of a subset of many different skills. For children to effectively learn how to read, they must first have a strong command of what is referred to as “phonemic awareness,” or the sounds that they are able to hear. For example, they would need to be able to properly differentiate between many similar, often tricky sounds such as the vowels. Try mouthing the short sounds of a and e, like those at the beginning of the words “apple” or “egg.” It’s not as easy as it seems at first glance. The children need to be able to hear the different sounds in words, such as the b-a- t as three separate sounds in the word bat – what we call segmentation – and be able to synthesize them back to one whole word, which is known as blending.

As a child learns the “alphabetic principle” – or what’s commonly known as letter sound correspondence – he learns to recognize the sounds as having a physical representation in the letters that we see. Through text experience, children begin to understand that the words that we read and write follow this code. Some children learn this effortlessly, while others need additional modalities to be able to fully

retain this information. Many schools choose a curriculum that gives a “keyword” to each letter, such as apple for “a,” which goes a long way in helping a child retain this ever so important skill.

The primary classroom should provide the children with a print-rich environment, a means of writing, and the opportunity to listen to good quality literature. All of these aspects help contribute to the child becoming literate.

So what is your role, as parents, in supporting your emerging readers? While usually it is most beneficial to leave the official instruction to the teachers and professionals at school, there are many activities that are easy to implement at home and can help children find success in this area. You can play sound games when you are in a long car ride and ask children questions like “what do you hear in the word ‘dog?’” and have them point out each sound separately such as d/o/g. You can practice some rhyming words while you read them a bedtime story. Have them find simple sight words that they have learned in a book that you are reading. You can even make simple decoding practice a part of your nightly

routine by providing your own simple sentence (we love whiteboards for this purpose!) or by using one of the many resources that are available.

There are lots of programs and apps which aim to do just this. Some great ones include Nessy, Graphogame, and EBLIreads.com. If you are looking for decodable books that the children can actually read without too many tricky words, I personally recommend the Flyleaf series. These are books that early readers can decode on their own and are free online for the upcoming school year at flyleafpublishing.com.

What happens when, even with all this literary input, the teacher or principal approaches you with concerns about your child’s progress in developing those essential skills needed to become an independent reader?

As a professional who has worked in many schools, I have found that most often the school is on target in their assessment of the situation. It is crucial to pay heed to the information presented by a teacher or principal and to not dismiss any concerns he/she may have. The school professionals are in a unique position, as they are able to see a cross section of many children of the same age and can easily notice when something may not seem developmentally appropriate.

If it is determined that it is best for your child to meet with a tutor outside of school hours, it is important to note that not all reading tutors are created equal. When hiring a tutor for a child having trouble with the actual reading and pronunciation of the words, it is important to try to find a tutor with a “structured literacy background” or someone trained in the Orton-Gillingham or Wilson based approach. These are not just current trends and recent buzz words in education. This training is actually imperative, as it provides the educator with a systematic approach to help struggling learners learn their letter sounds and skills. Even after obtaining a Master’s degree in Literacy, I found my skills greatly improve once I learned this specific approach. It is the only non- medicinal “prescription” that has the capacity to actually change the brain.

I hope your back-to-school shopping goes easily without too many repeat trips for the missing stapler or the one thing you forgot yesterday. I also hope that the skills needed to achieve reading success come easily to all new readers this school year. May we see much success from our young children and much nachas as well!

Children begin to understand that the words that we read and write follow this code.

Aviva Stern has a Master’s degree in Literacy as well as TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). She has worked as a reading specialist for 15 years and currently serves as a coach and consultant in local schools. She can be reached at avivastern4@gmail.com.