So you are teaching your four-year-old to read. She can duplicate the 40+ sounds of the English language. She can recognize many of those sounds at the beginnings of some words.
Now it is time to pair letter sounds with a handful of letters and to form words. Your child might not be able to recognize all the sounds yet, but as long as she can recognize some of them, she can begin to learn words.
Most phonics programs start with three letter words using the vowel sound of “short a” and easily recognizable consonant sounds such as “b,” “h,” “m,” “t” and “s.” You could just as readily start with the vowel sound of “short o” and other consonant sounds. Choose one short vowel sound and four or five consonant sounds which you think the child knows.
I recommend you use letter tiles. If you can find lower case letter tiles, great, but if not, use capital letter tiles.
Show the child a letter tile and ask the child to name its sound. If the child is not sure of that letter sound, don’t use that letter tile yet. Choose a different one.
Lay out three letter tiles which form a word, such as “h,” “a,” and “t.” Separate the tiles by an inch or two. Say the sound represented by each letter as you point to the letter. Ask the child to do the same. Now, slowly move the letter tiles closer together while pointing and saying the letter sounds until you are saying “hat.”
Try to make this a game. Reward the child with a high-five when she is able to say the word as you are moving the letter tiles closer and closer. Then try another word. If you keep the vowel and ending consonant the same at first, all the child needs to concentrate on is the first letter. So after “hat,” you might try “bat,” “mat,” and “sat.” Review each word several times.
What your child is learning is called phonics, or the forming of words from letter sounds. Some children will pick it up quickly and others will take many lessons using just those same half dozen letters. Don’t rush the child. Keep the learning time as game-like as possible. Aim for short lessons of ten minutes here and there rather than a half hour at a time, especially if your child is a young four-year-old or is resistant.
When the child knows the handful of words ending with “t,” change the ending letter to one of the other consonants, such as “m.” Go through the process again, moving the letter tiles closer and closer until the child can hear the words “ham,” Sam,” and “bam.” When you are sure she knows how to recognize and pronounce the words ending in “m,” alternate words ending in “m” with the already learned words ending in “t.”
These three-letter words are sometimes referred to as CVC for consonant, vowel, consonant.
Resist the urge to move quickly. You want your child to build confidence about reading. To reinforce her confidence, you could start a phone or computer document listing all the words she knows. Or you could hang such a document on the refrigerator. As she sees the list growing, she will feel proud.
When children learn to read using a phonics method, they start by learning that each sound has a one-to-one relationship with a letter. This makes reading seem logical to little children. See a B and say “b.” As teachers we don’t muddy beginning readers’ thinking by telling new readers that some letters mean more than one sound or that some letters, when paired with other letters, make totally different sounds or that some sounds can be represented by multiple groupings of letters. We save that for later, after children have “mastered” the concept of CVC words and blends.
comicphonics for early readers 