If a child is having trouble reading, what is the most likely cause?
- Reliance on pictures for meaning?
- Guessing?
- Weak word recognition skills?
- Reliance on context word clues?
Weak word recognition skills is the mostly likely cause, and because of that, students guess at words or search for clues from pictures and other words.
Weak word recognition skills means an inability to sound out the letters which form words. If a child comes upon a new word—for example, “trek”—and the child cannot sound out the individual letters, the child cannot read the word.
Since 2000 we have known that the most effective way to teach reading is through a system of associating sounds with letters and combining those letters to form words—in other words, a phonics-based approach. A National Reading Panel authorized and funded by Congress assessed scientific research on reading. The Panel’s goal was to determine the most efficient way children learn to read. The Panel concluded in 2000 that to read well, children should associate sounds of English (phonemes) with letters or letter pairs and to combine the letter-sounds into words.
The word “it,” for example, has two sounds, each of which is associated with a letter. The word “shop” has three sounds with “sh” corresponding to a single sound.
By deconstructing words into their basic sounds, children learn to sound out words. Without guessing, without context clues, without pictures, children can figure out how to read words. Even though there are some words which defy this sounding-out system (words like “one” and “two”), the vast majority of words in English can be sounded out.
The problem is, even though we know what works best, teachers are still asking children to guess at words, to look at pictures to figure out what words mean, to read other words nearby and use those context clues to figure out words, and to memorize the look of a word. In other words, some teachers are not teaching phonics as the primary way to learn to read. They are relying on methods which research shows do not work as well as phonics.
When I went to first grade, I was taught to read using a memorization approach. The first page of my first reader had the word ”look” under a picture. The next page had the words “Oh, look” with a different picture. The next page had “See, see, see” with another picture. It wasn’t until fourth grade that my teacher, Sister James Bernard, CSJ, offered lesson after lesson on phonics. What a revelation!
If your child hasn’t learned phonics, teach him or her. If your child is guessing at words, make him sound out each letter or each syllable. No guessing allowed! This is the surest way to create a strong reader.
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I suggest you give your child a pretest to see what reading skills your child has learned well, and what ones he has not yet grasped.
The words on this pretest are more or less divided into four kinds of words in this order:
1. Short (closed) vowel, one-syllable words. These include one- and two-letter words, words beginning or ending with blends and digraphs (black, church) words which end in twin consonants (fell, jazz), words which end in “ck,” and words to which an “s” can be added to make plural words or certain verbs (maps, runs).
2. Long (open) vowel, one-syllable words. These include words ending with silent “e,” words with double vowels which have only one vowel pronounced (goes, pear), and certain letter combinations (ild, old). They also include words with “oi,” “oy,” “ow” and “ou” letters.
3. Two– and three-syllable words which follow the above rules (catnip, deplete) and two- and three-syllable words which don’t follow the above rules but which follow a pattern (light, yield). These words include words with certain suffixes (le, ies) and words with a single consonant between two vowels (robin, motel).
4. Exceptions. These include words with silent letters (gnaw, lamb), words from other languages (debris, cello), and words which fit no pattern (business).
Ask your child to read the words in the pretest below. Each row across tests a particular phonics skill. If you child hesitates at all, that is the place to begin teaching him or her phonics. I will talk more about how to teach these four groups of phonics skills in my next blog.
Phonics assessment
bad, hem, fit, don, pug, am, if, lass, jazz
lock, Mick, bills, cliffs, mitts, catnip, Batman
grand, stent, frisk, stomp, stuck
chuck, shun, them, branch, brush, tenth
star, fern, birds, fork, purr, actor, doctor, victor
muffin, kitten, collect, pepper, gallon
complex, helmet, falcon, napkin, after
tantrum, muskrat, constant, fulcrum, ostrich
skate, bike, Jude, mole, dare, shore, tire, pure
need, cheer, aim, hair, bay, pie, boat, oar, Joe, low, soul
fruit, few, child, blind, fold, colt, roll, light, high
earn, worm, rook, pool
fault, claw, all, chalk, Walt
boil, so, pound, down
comet, dragon, liver, salad, denim
total, ever, student, basic, demon, vital
apron, elude, Ethan, Owen, ideal, usurp
inside, nearly, absent, unicorn, degrade, tripod
advance, offense, fence
gripped, planned, melted, batted, handed
sweeping, boiling, thinning, flopping, biking, dating
rapper, saddest, finer, bluest, funnier, silliest
easily, busily, massive, active, arrive, wives
keys, monkeys, armies, carried
action, section, musician, racial, crucial, nuptials
brittle, pickle, carbon, dormer
parcel, decent, gem, urge, badge
lose, sugar, nature, sure
graph, Phil, then, moth
bomb, thumb, gnat, gnome, high, sign
whip, whirl, echo, ghoul, knee, knob
could, calf, folk, hustle, listen, wrist
alone, bread, bear, chief, young, squaw, swan, waltz, word
decision, exposure, gigantic, polarize, occupant, quarantine
If you want to help your child learn to read, one of the best things you can do is not to let him guess. Most words can be deciphered if the student has a phonics background.
Also, don’t let your child depend on pictures for meaning once the child starts to read. Most adult reading material is not accompanied by graphics. Students must learn to gain meaning from the text alone.
If you have decided to help your child read this summer, good for you. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to help your child read better. Years of research show that the best way to teach reading is to start with letter sounds (phonemes) and then to combine those letter sounds into words (phonics). If you do this in a systematic way, such as following the four-part sequence I describe above, your child will learn to read.
What two printed letters are the hardest for children to distinguish?
In order to learn to read, do children need to recite and/or recognize the ABC’s in alphabetical order?
comicphonics for early readers 