How To Teach A Child To Read
Couple of years ago, I wrote 5 Tips in Teaching Your child the ABC. That tips and techniques that I shared there are based on my personal experience with my son, Matt. Those exact same techniques are still timely and applicable to day. With that, how can we teach a child to read? Check the tips and others in the rest of this post.
Like I said, the same old tips still applies:
- Start early
- Use props and posters
- Use video or other educational DVDs
- Repetition
- Rewards and complements
The tips above are guaranteed to work because I used them myself. For use to teach our child to read, we must introduce them to the alphabet and the sound of the individual letters that will make up the words.
Teaching Alphabet Letter Sounds
How to teach a child to read? Before a toddler can read, every child must know the sounds of the alphabet letters. He must be able to recall them quickly – he sees the letter and says the sound without hesitation.
- First thing’s first, teach your child to read the ABC. Point to each letter and ask your child to, “Tell me what this letter says.”
- You can create (help him) his own alphabet book. I usually buy my toddler some notebooks and pencils and he’ll scribble the alphabet for long hours. Staple some pieces of paper together and ask your child to draw pictures of items that begin with the sound of each alphabet letter.
- When you are teaching a letter sound, be careful not to add an “uh” sound at the end of the letter. For example, letter s should sound like a snake hissing, with no throat sound. Letter s says ’sss,’ not ’suh.’ If your child learns letters ‘c’, ‘a’, ‘t’ as sounding ‘kuh,’ ‘aah,’ and ‘tuh,’ those sounds will not come together to say cat!
Children have different learning rates. Your child may need lots of direct instruction to learn the alphabet sounds. Don’t forget, he will learn letter sounds more quickly with a short daily review.
