Language is the first and most important skill
Reading is basically a language skill.  Therefore you must make a commitment to immerse your children in every type of language possible, interacting with them, building their vocabularies, and exposing them to talk, songs, conversations, rhymes, book language, stories, riddles, jokes, counting, colours, shapes, complex words, and so on.  It is their ability to listen, speak and use their language well that bridges the gap between print on the page and their ability to read it.  Think of their language ability as the lubricant (the oil) for the wheels of their learning to read vehicle.  Without oil, the wheels will turn slowly and reluctantly.  Reading comes easily and naturally to children who can remember, are good listeners, fluent talkers, and clear speakers.

Activity

Materials

How to help them learn

Baby

Read suitable books to your children as early and as often as possible

A variety of durable textless picture books

Talk about what you see.  Point and name animals and objects and say what they are doing, and noises they make.  Talk about other features to help their language development such as colour and size.

Let baby handle books and learn to open and turn pages, look at the pictures, and get a feel for how books work.

Tough books made of cloth or card.

Help baby show what they know.  Show me the duck/doggy/etc.  Which is the big doggy?  Which one goes ‘woof, woof’?  Who is this?

Toddler

Read suitable books as early and as often as possible.

A variety of picture and simple story books

Talk about the animals, objects, characters, using number, colour, shape, size, actions, and position. 

Read suitable books daily.

Short, simple, interesting picture books, rhymes, stories, folk tales, and fables

Help children select their favorite books for you to read. 

Make it interesting for them.  Elaborate and emphasise where necessary.  Have fun!  Talk about the animals, objects, or characters, using whatever attributes of number, colour, shape, size, actions, relationships, or position is naturally appropriate at the time.

Repeat favorites as often as possible to encourage memorisation of rhymes and stories.

Children have opportunities to look through their favorite books, talking to themselves, and naming characters and events.

More complex picture books, rhymes, stories, folk tales, and fables

Keep books where children can reach them and read them.

Draw and write with and to your child.

Crayons and paper.  Work at a suitable place such as a desk or table where extra crayon marks are not going to damage anything.

Children’s drawing will progress from scribble to more control with experience and practice.  Show them how to move in different directions, hold the crayons, and how to make deliberate marks or shapes.  Without getting too far ahead of the child demonstrate things that the child can copy such as strokes or circles.  Progress to drawing objects and people and writing names.

Demonstrate the use of writing by writing and receiving notes, letters, and lists.  Label things.

A message board in the kitchen.  Notepad, stick-it pad, etc.  Labels for child’s room, name tags, etc

Find reasons to include your child in writing and reading notes.  For instance, ‘Let’s write a shopping list.’

Find opportunities to write the child’s name so that it becomes familiar.  Gradually label common things so that the child learns how words work.

Point as you read words to show them where you are looking.

Build up listening skills by teaching songs, rhymes, riddles, and giving instructions.

Books of rhyming games and activities, riddles, games to play in the car, and a list of all the relational terms to use.

Use your reading sessions to help you target these behaviours.  Build on these experiences to practice the saying and listening activities.  Make up your own rhyming games, make up riddles such as ‘Guess what can I see, it sound like log’; and later play  ‘I Spy’ or ‘Riddle Me Ree’ for alphabet sounds. 

Give instructions which include careful listening such as ‘Please get me the blue towel on the bottom shelf’.  Think of all the relational terms you could use such as under, underneath, below, on top, behind, in front of, at the back, in-between, and so on. 

Barrier games are good fun too.  Set up a barrier between two players with identical equipment and give instructions to build (or draw) something. Eg. I’m putting the long block on top of the red one.  Remove the barrier to see the result.

Build up memory for songs, rhymes, riddles, alphabet song, counting, colours, new terms, names of people, etc.

A variety of suitable books, toys and objects

Although this starts with reading books you must now continue to build memory without them.  Repetition is the best way.  Look for opportunities to play, say or sing together until the child can do it.  The alphabet song is quite long but will be learned in stages.  With counting start with three, then five, and build up to ten or more depending on the child’s progress.  Later the child will learn to also count and touch objects accurately while counting, but this is a new (different) learning experience which builds on the oral counting skill.

Colours can be learned using favorite toys or clothes.

Pre-school-ers

Read books which help your children learn about print.

Select appropriate books without too much text, but with clear print.  Check that the words and the pictures match up, or tell the same story. 

As you read demonstrate where you are looking by pointing to the print.  Show them that print flows from left to right; how to return to the line of print below and to the left at the end of a line; identify single words, short words, long words; show them what full stops, commas, and speech marks mean. Show the relationship between the words and the pictures by pointing out the word and the object it refers to.  Eg.  “Red Riding Hood ran to Granny’s house, and look, there it is. What a pretty house Granny has!”

Occasionally ask your child to point  as you read simple books. This activity helps you establish the extent of their knowledge about print. 

Simple picture story books with up to a paragraph of writing on each page.

This is not a test, and you must not make the child feel at all anxious.   You must accept whatever the child does because that is what they know.  For instance, at first the child will point to a word but will not move their finger to keep pace with you as you read.  Just keep reading and ask them to show you something else such as where to start the next page.  See the item above for more detail about what to show them. 

Use this activity to keep check on what they know, and what you need to show them next.   Keep on demonstrating, pointing, and discussing features of print as you read.  Their early writing experiences will also teach them about print. 

They must know about the flow of print before they try to learn to read, be able to point to separate words as you read, and also be able to recognise a few individual words.

Early Alphabet chart familiarity

Alphabet chart with letters and matching pictures of familiar objects

Carefully go through the pictures and make sure that the child has the correct word for each object.  For instance, it is a rabbit, not a bunny; it’s a van, not a car or a vroom vroom; and so on.

With practice the child should sing the alphabet and touch the letters without losing place.  Singing uses letter names.  Later activities will use their sounds. 

Practicing sounds

Alphabet chart with letters and matching pictures of familiar objects

Show how to say a, apple; b, ball; c, cat; d, dog; and so on.  A variation could be a,a,a,apple; b,b,b,ball; c,c,c,cat; d,d,d,dog; and so on.  Some use a for apple, b for ball, c for cat, and if this works for you, use it.

Find the object or letter

Alphabet chart with letters and matching pictures of familiar objects

Before the child can play this game they must be able to play ‘I Spy’ successfully, identifying (hearing) the initial sounds for spoken words. 

Go through asking the child to find various objects and check that the correct labels are used.  (van/car)

Now change it and play the game using the initial sound of the object. “Find me something that starts with a ‘b’.”

Later, ask for the sound as you point to each object and letter. 

Matching card game with letters and pictures

Two sets of cards, one with alphabet letters and the other with matching objects (use the alphabet chart objects and letters).

Select a few letters (up to six) that the child knows and the matching objects.  Mix the cards up and ask the child to match them, or find those that belong together.

As more letter names and/or sounds become recognized increase the difficulty of the task by increasing the number of cards.  Children soon learn that the letter ā represents (makes) an â sound at the beginning of words.

Show the child how to write their own first name

Drawing and writing equipment

Show the whole name first.  When it is recognized and well known show how to write it.  Have the child copy it and practice writing it until it can be done without copying.  At first you will get an imperfect copy but that is OK.  Praise and further practice will improve it until it is perfect.  It may take some time, but be patient.

Write the alphabet from memory

Copy of the alphabet chart with pictures of objects but no letters

This tests their ability to recall the letters and write them from memory, prompted by the object picture.

Much later you may expect them to be able to write the alphabet straight out, in the correct sequence without the aid of the chart.

Early daily writing

Drawing and writing equipment

Begin with the child drawing something of interest.  It is useful to recreate something central to the child such as a family activity so that the names remain the same but the activities change.

Beginning writers will do what they think is writing and this will progress over time from squiggles to lines, to shapes, to letters. Once the letters appear they will probably be the letters in the child’s name, in capitals.

Writing now progresses from random letters to letters in a line, to groups of letters which look like words.  Next we see the development of letters representing the initial sounds of words, with no spaces, and this grows to the beginnings of spelling with sentences and spaces such as, ystd wewt t becs  (yesterday we went to the beach). Spacing and spelling is irregular but you can see the development happening, based on what the child can hear.  This is called ‘Invented spelling’.  It is time to get really excited because you can now read your child’s writing!

Daily writing

Drawing and writing equipment, plus their own alphabet chart with pictures and letters

It is always best to start with drawing.  This gives you a chance to discuss the events with the child as a prelude to writing, so that you can make some decisions about the words that the child could use today.  You can then steer the child to write about those aspects by rehearsing the sentence(s).

Let the child write, only helping when asked.  Regardless of how the spelling or spacing is going, don’t interfere.  You will only get what the child knows how to do. 

If you want to improve their writing or spelling in some way do it later, so that the child doesn’t think that there is a problem.  Always accept their work, and praise the effort that went into it.  Display their writing for all to see, even though it isn’t yet perfect.

Check the writing and note what the child has yet to learn.  Set one thing as your next teaching task.

Early Reading

Simple books with pictures and text, and from one word to a short sentence which tells about the picture on that page.

Children begin reading using a combination of memory for the words and knowledge about what is happening.  They do not begin by recognizing words!  This will come in due course.

Your goal is for the child to feel that he/she has read successfully.   What you do before reading is the most important part.

Begin by exploring the book with the child first, going through it page by page discussing what is happening, what you see, who the characters are, and so on so that the child knows all about the book before you begin. Read it to the child many times until it is memorised, and then ask the child to read it. 

They should be able to point to the words as they read.  (If they won’t point and merely read by memorising the words you need to find out what they know about print.)

This is not the time to demand perfect accuracy.  If any help is needed gently encourage the child to recall the words by referring to the picture for more clues.  If this is not working reintroduce the book as above, (or change it) concentrating more on the child’s memorisation of the text.

Daily Reading

Books with matching pictures and up to a paragraph of text

As before, prepare the child for the reading of each new book by exploring and reading it together and discussing the story and characters so that the child has a good understanding of what to expect when reading. 

As the books get longer the child can rely less on memory and will be building up a store of remembered words (sight words).  Other skills to be developed are: using the pictures for clues, using initial (and other) letters of words, and using the flow of language to predict oncoming text.

‘Sounding out’ words (or decoding) may be used by this stage but should only ever be used very sparingly.  If you encourage sounding out as the main strategy you may damage the child’s ability to read with any speed. 

Listening to your children read

Any suitable books

First, always remember that your goal is that your child will read successfully, and leave the session feeling proud of his/her achievements.   Nothing less than this is acceptable.

Prepare them by introducing new books as described above.   As the child becomes more capable you can change the preparation to a rehearsal.  Just ask the child to practice the section that they are going to read to you, just as you would practice a difficult text before reading to an important audience.

It is a good idea to check that the child knows that you expect a good fast reading with perhaps a few minor changes (errors or miscues) which make sense or preserve the meaning.  This is normal and healthy.

If the child makes a mistake don’t jump in immediately to correct it.  It is the child’s task to detect errors and your job to help them do that.  So just wait a while and see if they go back to the error.  If they don’t it will be because it made sense and they didn’t hear it; or it didn’t make sense and they didn’t know what to do about it.  Praise them when they self-correct errors.

It is a really good idea to sit away from the reader and listen to the reading.  This forces you to listen to the sense of the text and not focus on minor, unimportant changes.  It also frees the child up to become more fluent by taking more risks and throwing their eyes further ahead of their voice.  The only things you should be saying are, “Did that make sense to you?”  Or “Please read that bit again because I didn’t quite understand it!” 

If you are concerned about their word knowledge you could test them by doing a word check when they have finished reading.

Sentence and vocabulary extension for early writers

Strips of cardboard, scissors, felt pens

Select something the child has said about an event, such as, “Dad and Mark went fishing.”  Write it out on a strip of card.  Read it, and ask the child to read it, pointing to the words.  When accurate, have the child cut it in two (cut off the people who went).  Mix the pieces up and get the child to arrange them as they were and read the sentence back.  Cut out the ‘went fishing’ words, mix them all up and repeat the task as before.  If the child is still managing this well, cut out the rest of the words and have the child rearrange them and read them back, touching each word. 

Next, turn over one word while the child looks away, and see if they can guess what that word is.  Eg.  Dad and mark ______ fishing.  “So you think its ‘went’’. Turn it over.  “How can you check if its ‘went’”?  Expect the child to focus on the spelling, especially the first letters.

Keep the sentence and revise it next day, checking that each word is known either in the sentence, or separately for more advanced learners.

You can extend this activity to quite complex sentences, and have a lot of fun and learning by rearranging the words to make up new sentences.

Try to include a few of the same core words every day (such as I, and, saw, went, Dad, Mum), so that the child gets to learn them through repetition.

Concentration game for sight vocabulary extension

Card, scissors, felt pens

Make up two cards for every new word to be learned, up to five pairs.   Begin by going through them looking at the features of each word, and rehearse saying and touching them.  Then lay them out and say words for the child to point to.  Next shuffle them and spread them out face down on the table.  Each player takes turns in turning over a card (leaving it in its place), saying the word, and then trying to locate its partner by turning over another card.  If successful the pair is kept and the player has another turn.  As you have your turn the child sees where the cards are and hears you say the word, and so their learning is reinforced.  The player with the most pairs wins.

Keep words in the pack until learned, and then gradually replace them with new words.  Using this method the child is never overwhelmed with too many to learn at once.   Use the words from the sentence activity above, or from their writing.   There are also lists of core vocabulary sight words that you may use.

Reading to themselves

Favourite, rehearsed books

Set aside a regular time each day for children to read to themselves.  You can start this as soon as the child is able to recall and tell the story.  At first this will be just a made up story from the pictures.  Next will come an approximate  retelling but as their skills grow and they begin to focus more on the print their real reading will emerge and these sessions will become valuable practice times.

Their first readings to themselves will be aloud, but as they become more skilled they will read silently.