Articles
Jul 17, 2012
How Reading Games Help
How Reading Games Help
The more enjoyable a task, the more likely it is that a kid will want to engage in and complete that task. What seems like commonsense has the weight of research backing it as well: Educators and researchers have found that a student’s enjoyment of learning activities directly relates to their desire and willingness to learn. The more enjoyable a learning activity is, the more likely that a student will engage in that activity. Mary Poppins was right: “In every job that must be done there is an element of fun. You find the fun and...
Jul 17, 2012
Phonics
Children learning to read must acquire a number of complex skills that enable them to make the necessary links between the sound that words make and the way that they appear on the page. Phonics is one of the five key areas in reading instruction, which also include **phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary,** and **text comprehension**. The main aim of phonics instruction is to help beginning readers understand that letters are linked to particular sounds. In English, there are 26 letters used to represent 44 speech sounds. Armed with the knowledge of how letters sound, beginning readers are able to then...
Jul 17, 2012
Kids Reading Tips
Getting kids reading is enormously significant to their entire education. Educators are very quick to stress that getting kids reading is the most important part of their schooling as literacy affects every part of a child’s learning, both in school as well as in later years. If a kid’s reading is strong, then they can use their literacy skills in other learning areas and better their chances of becoming strong students in subjects other than literacy. If they can read well, they can follow the seams of ideas and learning to their source, no matter the subject. It’s been found...
Jun 22, 2012
Synthetic Phonics – What is Synthetic Phonics?
Synthetic Phonics
What is synthetic phonics?
Synthetic phonics is a method of teaching where words are broken up into the smallest units of sound (phonemes). Children learn to make connections between the letters of written texts (graphemes, or letter symbols) and the sounds of spoken language. Synthetic phonics also teaches children how to identify all the phonemes in a word and match them to a letter in order to be able to spell correctly.
Children are taught how to break up words, or decode them, into individual sounds, and then blend all the way...