Articles
Nov 14, 2012
What can a Reading Assessment tell you?
Reading assessments form an important part of many reading programs, allowing parents and teachers to determine a child’s reading level, and to therefore cater lessons and activities to their reading ability. The most effective reading assessments help parents and teachers assess a child’s strengths and weaknesses, highlighting areas in which the child may require more help. Some key ways to assess a child’s reading ability include: ## Comprehension Skills Asking the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions are always a good way to both develop comprehension skills in children and determine how much of a text they understand....
Nov 14, 2012
Phonics Online
An understanding of phonics is one of the core literacy skills kids need to become fluent readers. As such there is a burgeoning resource of lessons, activities and games that teach kids phonics online. But what is phonics exactly? Phonics is the ability to link letters or combinations of letters to units of sounds, called phonemes. This is otherwise known as the Alphabetic Principle. There are two types of phonics instruction generally used in early education: * **Analytic Phonics** – is a form of inferential learning that teaches children to analyse a particular set of words and recognise the common...
Nov 14, 2012
Learn-to-Read Games make Learning Fun
Educators of young children recognise the great advantage of using play-based teaching techniques as a means of instruction. A child’s first language is play, and if educators use learn-to-read games in order to teach and instruct children, they find that the hard work of learning becomes far more enjoyable for kids. When they form part of a larger, systematic reading program, learn-to-read games can be very effective for teaching children literacy skills. Effective reading programs that feature such reading games generally provide instruction in five key literacy areas: **phonemic awareness**, **phonics**, **fluency**, **vocabulary**, and **text comprehension**. It is particularly easy...
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...