My Preschool Diary

  3 Types of readers in children Whether you are a parent or teacher, working with children and helping them learn to read is rewarding. I had the opportunity to teach 6 year olds this past year and I have observed that there are three types of students: strong readers, emerging readers and weak readers. Strong readers have good phonemic awareness and are excellent decoders. (Please refer to my introduction to phonemic awareness and decoding words) Emerging readers are on the way and are expanding their knowledge of phonics sounds and applying it to decode familiar and unfamiliar words. Weak readers need frequent prompts for segmenting and blending the sounds together. In severe cases, they may even struggle to remember letters and consonant sounds. HOW DOES THE BRAIN PROCESS WORDS? ·          Through Phonological awareness (i.e learning the sounds of words) and orthography (spelling of words). Skilled readers were able to pr...

How children learn to read ·          Phonemic awareness is developing children’s ability to decode words. A child will learn to recognise letter sounds on print and see the relation to the sounds in speech. Teaching it requires a systematic and instructional approach. Thus, phonics is one recommended way to explicitly teach children to segment and sound the word.   ·          Children pick up the skill of reading through decoding words and reading comprehension. Decoding words is the ability to look and sound the alphabets when they are placed together in a word. This requires children to blend letter sounds and read words. Children who learn the sounds in words will be able to put these sounds together to blend words and read whole words.   ·          Reading is a mix of decoding words and reading comprehension Reading comprehension is unde...

How do children learn to read? ·        Phonemic awareness is developing children’s ability to decode words. A child will learn to recognise letter sounds on print and see the relation to the sounds in speech. Teaching it requires a systematic and instructional approach. Thus, phonics is one recommended way to explicitly teach children to segment and sound the word. Children pick up the skill of reading through decoding words and reading comprehension. Decoding words is the ability to look and sound the alphabets when they are placed together in a word. This requires children to blend letter sounds and read words. Children who learn the sounds in words will be able to put these sounds together to blend words and read whole words.   ·        Reading is a mix of decoding words and reading comprehension Reading comprehension is understanding the meaning of written language. To improve reading comprehension requi...

I have recently embarked on a mission to provide parents of my students (6-year-olds) with some phonics materials to help supplement their child's learning over the term break. Phonics is one approach to learning to read. I hope both parent and teacher can use these fun activities to help their child to develop this skill. Why teach phonics? Phonics is one approach to reading instruction that teaches students the principles of letter-sound relationships, how to sound out words. When children learn reading through phonics they can use their knowledge of these sounds to decode words. Decoding is the ability to apply your knowledge of letter-sound relationships, including knowledge of letter patterns, to correctly pronounce written words. Studies have shown that children that have proper phonics instruction are more likely to pick up reading faster and with success. As a preschool teacher to 6-year-olds (in Kindergarten), I have noticed that the weak readers usually have the following...

It is very important to help your child know the Letter sounds and names by heart. Knowing letter names will help him/her to spell words. Whereas knowing letter sounds will help him/her in blending and decoding words when reading. The bottom line is recognition of letter names and sounds form the base for reading and writing. Here are some exercises you can do with your child to help him/her learn the letter names. Step 1: Teach Lowercase letter names first. The reason is that most of the letters in a text appear in lowercase. Secondly, the names of letters are constant and do not change, unlike letter sounds. 1) Print out the Lowercase letter chart   2) Progress to Uppercase letter chart after.  3) Sing the ABC Song with your child and point to the letters. Then get your child to sing and point on his/her own. * Make sure that he/she points to the correct letter while singing. Step 2: Teach the Lowercase letter sounds Your child can learn letter sounds with this video  ...

Reading. An important skill to develop in early learners. Some children pick it up faster, while others may take a longer time or even struggle to read. If you want your child to have a head start at reading, it is important to instil the love of books and stories from the start. Read to your child and cultivate the love of books at a young age. I cannot stress this enough (that even a baby is not too young to read). A baby learning to read? Well, not literally. But when he hears your voice, a lot of things are taking place. The baby learns to decipher the tones in your voice. They also piece the words they hear and the pictures together thereby acquiring vocabulary used in speech as they grow. Introducing books to your child from the beginning helps him develop Print Awareness. Print Awareness 1. It is the knowledge of how to handle a book. For example, text is read from left to right and top to bottom. 2. To identify the front and back cover as well as the spine of the book. 3. To id...