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What does learning to read involve?

Reading is a natural skill – MYTH

Reading comes easily to all children – MYTH

Reading is a complex task with many skills to master – TRUTH

Reading a Book

For some children reading DOES come naturally, but for many it does not. Understanding the different skills needed and which ones your child struggles with is key to understanding how to help them. Children will be ‘reading’ at school in many different ways but you, as their parents, can have a HUGE impact on their reading development.

The Key Skills

· Sound manipulation

· Decoding

· Phonological awareness

· Blending & Segmenting

· Word recognition

· Fluency

· Reading for meaning

· Reading for pleasure

· Vocabulary

· Working memory

· Links to writing

Phew! Those are some interesting words and phrases there, right? Don't panic if some of them are new to you; we've got you covered. Keep reading!

Reading in a Bookstore
Reading on a Hammock

Fancy Words... Explained!

  • Decoding                                 

This is an essential skill whereby children use their letter sound knowledge to sound out unfamiliar words. In order to do this they need phonological awareness.

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  • Phonological awareness    

Each letter makes a sound. Phonemic awareness is when children can hear those individual sounds and allows them to play with sounds and decode words.

                              

  • Blending & Segmenting  

A vital part of decoding and phonological awareness.                                                   Blending—sounding out each letter in a word and putting them together                                      Segmenting—hearing a word and being able to break it down into individual sounds.

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  • Word recognition            

Not all words can be ‘sounded out’. Children must learn to read some words by sight.

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  • Fluency  

Being able to read at a good pace and to read words in groups so they have meaning

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  • Vocabulary   

Children need to build their vocabulary through talking. You have to be reading vocabulary rich books to your child so they can access a higher level than they could read themselves.

Reading a Book
Reading in Tent

  • Reading for meaning        

Children need to understand what they are reading. It is Important that they don’t just learn to read the words on the page quickly but that they develop good comprehension skills too. We need children to learn to read so that they can read to learn.

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  • Reading for pleasure       

Ultimately we want our children to ENJOY reading and we want to nurture a love of reading! This can be achieved through modelling reading, creating a lovely space in which to read, sharing books, playing games and above all, not pressurizing our children

                              

As you can see, there are a lot of skills to learn. Each one needs to be learnt individually and then joined together.

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Imagine a tree with only one branch...it would look odd, we would be worried it wasn’t formed correctly and would be questioning what it needed. It is just the same for our little readers!

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They need encouragement, time and practice;

We need patience, time and an understanding of which skills they are mastering and which they need help with.

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Alongside all of the reading skills, children need to develop a working memory to support this.

When kids read, attention allows them to take in information from the text. Working memory allows them to hold on to that information and use it to gain meaning and build knowledge from what they’re reading.

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