Learning to read is a complex, unnatural process that occurs at different stages for different children. While some may pick up reading automatically, others may require support. Some students may have a reading disorder, previously called Dyslexia.
Reading includes many parts, such as memory, language skills, and visual-spatial skills. Children need to be taught how to read and learning to read occurs in steps.
- The first step includes different areas. One is phonological awareness, which is a skill of identifying and manipulating sounds in oral language, one example is rhyming. The other area is phonemic awareness, which is the knowledge of the alphabet and that each letter (or letters) has their own sounds. It is also an understanding that words are made of sounds that can be used to create new words. In English, there are 26 letters in the alphabet, yet there are 44 phonemes (sounds).
- The next stage is phonics, wherein the student learns to sound out words. Phonics is used to “decode” or sound out words.
- The third stage is reading fluency, when the student learns to read whole sentences and passages quickly and accurately.
- The last stage is comprehension, meaning that the student can understand and remember what they have read. The ultimate purpose of reading is to access the meaning of the words and understand and make connections to what was read.
As such it is important to build word attack skills and a decent understanding of phonological and phonemic awareness. Once developed students can move to reading/decoding the words. Once a student starts to read the words, and reads more and more, reading speed is improved and reading comprehension develops.
In addition, the stages can develop at the same time. For example, a student can learn the letter sounds /c/, /a/, /t/ and quickly learn to read the word ‘cat’ while continuing to learn other letter sounds.
Tips for educators and parents
Below are some ideas to help develop reading skills. Typically, a mixture of methods, approach or programs may be required.
- Reading a variety of books with children is important for language and vocabulary development, even in different languages.
- There are many ways to help students improve phonological awareness and phonemic awareness. A few of our favorites are:
- Rhyming games and counting/clapping out syllables.
- Identifying sounds, for example “say the last sound in the word ‘that’, the first sound in the word ‘milk’”.
- Eliminating, changing or adding sounds in words, such as ‘change the /m/ sound in mop to a /b/ sound’ (mop changes to bop), ‘and now get rid of the /b/ sound’ (bop changes to op), ‘now add a /l/ sound in front of /op/’ (op changes to lop).
- Put each letter of the alphabet onto an individual card, and ask the student to say the sound of each letter and ‘collect’ the cards he/she knows the sound. The goal is to ‘own’ all the letters of the alphabet.
- For sounds the child does not know, ask the child to circle the words containing that sound in a paragraph.
- Play ‘I spy’ with sounds, for example during a walk ask the child to find objects that start with a /t/ sound (trees, trucks)
- Encourage independent reading and allow the child to pick the book whenever possible that is interesting and at the right reading skill. This is not a substitute for direct instruction, rather it helps to improve decoding, reading stamina and reading speed. The student also enjoys reading a book and feels successful. If the book is above the students reading level, the student could use a reading app, such as Overdrive, in which the book is read to the student while the student follows the words in the book.
- Studies have shown that learning is more effective when different senses are called upon. Learning to read can use three: sight (seeing the letters/words), touch (pointing to the words on the page while reading or clapping out sounds) and hear (reading aloud). Some or all these senses can be used when learning to read.
- Is the child stuck on a word? Try these tips!
Websites, Programs, and Apps we like:
- Reading Rockets is a great free website for teachers and parents to explore.
- teachyourmonstertoread.com is a great free resource for students learning the first stages of reading or needing extra bit of practice.
- Overdrive and Destiny Discover: Apps to get free digital books from your local city library or school library respectively.
- Beeline reader: Helps improve reading speed when reading online text.
- Immersive Reader: Is a free feature in Microsoft word that reads text aloud. It has many features, including adjusting the reading speed and voice tones, text size and line spacing can be changed, text can be translated into other languages, and there is a built in visual dictionary. The application “Office Lens” can be used to take a photo of printed text and send it directly into the immersive reader application in Microsoft Word. You can try the Immersive Reading program here.
- There are some paid programs, such as Lexia Learning Reading program and Orton-Gillingham Tutoring, that have helped students with reading.
The material above includes information from the Learning Disabilities Association of Ontario website, the National Association of School Psychologists website, and the Learning Disabilities Learning Manual.