Articles
Nov 14, 2012
How to Get Kids Reading Books
While there are countless different ways to get kids reading books, there are three vital constants that you need to provide your child to ensure they become the most effective reader – access to good books, an effective reading program, and making reading as enjoyable as possible. ## Access to Good Books Kids should have access to books even before they learn how to read, as an early familiarity with books is a big part of developing pre-literacy skills. In order to encourage kids reading books, in the classroom or at home, here are a few easy things you can...
Nov 14, 2012
Teaching Children Reading Online
Learning to read is one of, if not the most important educational milestone for a child. As such, the internet is now home to countless reading and literacy games, activities and programs that teach children reading online. So, are online reading resources effective? As with any reading program, the effectiveness of children reading online depends on the educational basis of the online program they are using. The conventional wisdom among early childhood educators seems to agree that effective literacy instruction needs to target five key areas: **phonemic awareness**, **phonics**, **fluency**, **vocabulary**, and **text comprehension**. The best reading programs, including online...
Nov 07, 2012
Teaching Reading to Kids
One of the most important things to teach a child is to read. Teaching reading to kids is essential to their development, giving them the skills necessary to further their education and set them up for future academic success. But how should one go about teaching reading to kids? Literacy instruction can be very different depending on the age of the child. A preschool child needs something very different to what school-aged children require. Teaching reading to preschoolers sometimes doesn’t look like reading at all, but educators have found that the more toddlers engage in pre-literacy activities, the better off...
Nov 06, 2012
How to Develop Phonics Reading Skills
One of the first literacy skills children need to acquire when learning to read is an understanding of phonics, that is, the ability to recognise letters and the sounds they make. For children to develop and apply phonics reading skills to the act of reading, effective phonics instruction is essential. ## Phonics reading skills Effective phonics instruction is always done for the benefit of reading meaningful text, rather than simply learning the sounds that letters make. When kids understand the alphabetic principle and use their phonics reading skills, they are able to decode words by breaking them apart and sounding...