Teaching Every Child To Read

Is there anything a parent wants more than happiness and success for their child?

In the modern world a key ingredient to a child’s happiness is his or her success at school. Nothing contributes more to that success than reading and writing skills. Here are three question many parents have regarding teaching their child to read:

Should parents give their child a head start in learning to read? A child’s chance at succeeding at school is low if his or her reading skills are poorly developed. Difficulties would accompany any reading deficiencies that your child might have.

• Is it enough to just hope for the best, i.e. is it risky to take a wait and see approach?
• Wouldn’t it make sense to take steps to ensure that your child can read at a level that allows him or her to concentrate on the many other demands of schooling?
• What is the best way of teaching children to read?

This article addresses the last question. Interestingly and unexpectedly, there is a sometimes-rowdy debate over which of two approaches to teaching a child to read is superior: Phonics verses Whole Language.

Phonics proponents believe that the best way of teaching children to read is to give them the skill to ’sound out’ a written word and thereby recognize it. They see the three letters in the word, cat, they know the sound each letter makes and so can discover, by stringing the sounds together that it is a word they know.

Whole Language is more difficult to describe. At its core, it focuses on meaning: making meaning when reading; expressing meaning when writing. It advocates a love of books, uses ‘guided reading’ and encourages group ‘read alouds’.

Fortunately the debate is less heated than it once was and there are few who sit squarely in one camp or the other. The most thoughtful compromise is a certain blending of the two methods: ‘Phonics within Whole Language’.

Long before any Phonics - Whole Language debate, parents and teachers used a gentle, simple technique for teaching children to read. It is still valid and even elegantly combines Phonics and Whole Language. That technique is simply to read aloud to your child while pointing at each word. Wonderful. But, it has two downsides:

• a significant time cost, an issue for busy parents
• it doesn’t fully utilize your child’s natural curiosity, energy and burning desire to learn

The Internet to the rescue. Now, there are web-based systems that help even very young children learn to read on their own. Of necessity, any computer-based system must focus on Phonics-based teaching because Whole Language instruction requires a patient and caring person to impart meaning and convey the joy of reading.

So, whether or not you choose computerized, web-based assistance to help your child learn to read, there is still room, even in the modern world, for you, as a parent, to contribute, the old-fashioned way: reading while pointing at words and sharing meaning and joy, to this exciting and crucial part of your child’s development.

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