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Teaching Early Reading and Spelling Skills: Frequently Asked Questions

There are so many good, evidence based programmes available now to support parents and educators in developing early reading and spelling skills.

These are based upon teaching phonics in a systematic, explicit manner.

If you don’t have the background knowledge about why a specific scope and sequence needs to be followed however, when things go ‘wrong’ (which they will invariably do for approximately 10% of children in any classroom), you won’t know how to adjust your teaching to ensure that all children learn and make steady progress.

Let us help by answering some of the most frequently asked questions about supporting children’s early reading and spelling skills when things don’t go as planned.

  1. What is the difference between phonological awareness and phonics?

Phonological Awareness: As we have mentioned in previous Chatterbox blogposts here ,  this term  refers to the ability to recognise and manipulate the sounds of spoken language, such as segmenting words into syllables, and identifying individual sounds (phonemes) within words. It’s a vital pre-reading skill that children require before they can then map ‘letters’ (also referred to as graphemes) to their speech sounds for the purposes of spelling and reading.

Phonics: Phonics, on the other hand, involves connecting these sounds (phonemes) to written letters (graphemes). It’s about learning the relationships between letters and the sounds they represent.

There is a difference between these two concepts and children need BOTH if they are to be successful in acquiring early literacy skills.

  1. What are the most important foundational phonological awareness skills to master?

Ideally, children will master the ability to segment words into syllables, identify sounds in various word positions and segment as well as blend sounds within words. If you had to pick the most important of these early developing skills of these to master, it would have to be the ability to segment (break words apart into component individual sounds) and blend (stretch these sounds back together to form a word) as these two skills link beautifully to spelling and reading.

So many children we meet have good awareness of individual speech sounds and the letters used to represent these (i.e. phonics), however without the phonemic awareness skills of segmentation and blending, they are unable to progress to spelling and reading simple words.

  • 3. How does speech link to literacy?

Speech and literacy are closely connected.

Reading and spelling essentially involves translating spoken language into written form.

Helping children to ‘crack the code’ involves showing them how their speech sounds map to the written form.

  1. How to help children read and spell words with less regular spellings

When encountering irregular or challenging words, so many of us are tempted to make comments such as “This is a tricky word.  You just need to remember it”.

Contrary to common belief…Very few words need be described in this way.

Sure, many words use less regular / common spellings of sounds but it is far more helpful to explain this to children with comments such as “This word has some tricky parts.  […]

2023-08-27T23:24:48+00:00
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Building Phonological Awareness Skills

Phonological awareness is the first building block in learning to read.

Children must gradually become aware of not just what words mean but of their component sounds.

Phonological awareness includes the awareness of how words can be broken down into smaller parts; into syllables and individual sounds.

The Education Department has made some helpful short videos to further define this concept if you are interested in learning more about Phonological Awareness

Why do we need to focus upon Phonological Awareness?

Well, it’s simple!

The level of a child’s phonological awareness skills in the first years of schooling is a strong predictor of later reading and spelling success.

Luckily, there is plenty we can do to build these skills in both the preschool and early school years:

  •  Expose your preschooler to songs that include lots of rhyme, alliteration and fun rhythms.  Talk about how the words sound?  Are they long words with lots of moving parts or syllables?  Do lots of words start with lip popping /p/ and /b/ sounds or do the words rhyme?
  •  Have some fun in front of the mirror exploring your ‘noise makers’ and how these move when you say different sounds together e.g. lips for p b m and w sounds, tongue tapping for t d and jumping at the back of the mouth for k and g, teeth together and lips protruding forward for sh
  •  Clap or tap out the syllables (beats) in long words; town names, vegetables, animals and the names of family and friends are great places to start.
  •  Some sounds are noisy (with our voice box turned on) like d b z v.  Have fun feeling your throat rumble with vibrations when you say these sounds
  •  Other sounds are nosy like m and n.  Feel the tickle in your nose as you say these sounds together
  • Other sounds don’t require the use of voice box at all and are quiet sounds.  We can feel air being puffed out onto our hand for the voiceless s f sh t and p sounds

Have fun ‘getting ready’ to say some words with your child.

See if you can detect the sound (not the letter) at the beginning of the word.

Focus on feeling, seeing and hearing the sound at the beginning of words.

HINT:  Starting with words that have ‘long’ sounds at the beginning will be a little easier to start with if your child is finding this concept tricky.  Try words like these:   shoe, Sam, sand, mine, zoo, four, farm, face and knee.

If your child shows an interest in learning more,

remember that our freely available Ready Readers Programme is available for you now!

This 8 week programme is full of extra fun, play-based activities to ensure that your child builds much needed phonological awareness skills for Kindergarten in readiness for early literacy development.

Enjoy nurturing an interest and early fascination in how words sound with your child and you will be setting them on the path for reading and spelling success! […]

2023-08-14T05:18:08+00:00
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Ways to Engage Your Reluctant Writer

Does your young child or a child your educate need assistance, not just with writing, but to find the ‘joy’ in writing?

This is a dilemma we face frequently particularly when working with school aged children who have struggled with speech and language skills since their preschool years.

They have often followed the trajectory of finding school work difficult.  Learning to read and spell has been hard going and the task of writing a narrative or expository text seems not only insurmountable but also just very unappealing.

It can be tricky to help these students.  We can only improve our writing by writing but how do you do this when the student is lacking in skill, motivation, confidence and interest?

Aaah…that last word….interest.  Harness their interest to find a spark and you might be surprised by how quickly a student can move from being disengaged to finding a love of writing.

Find what interests the child…what lights the fire in their belly?

For one of my students this Term, that fire has been all things Pokemon and Star Wars.  I can’t say that I know much at all about either of these topics but I am quickly learning.  It has not taken much digging to find a plethora of ideas out there to harness my student’s interest in these topics and to funnel this interest into a range of writing tasks.

We have had so much fun expanding our vocabulary and knowledge about these mythical creatures using resources freely available such as this beauty https://www.scribd.com/document/521042181/3

We have been able to look at foundational decoding skills by breaking the names into syllables to read accurately and to highlight the trickier spellings of consonants and vowel sounds.

We have also been able to use the names of Pokemon to target spelling with a focus upon mapping speech sounds to graphemes / letters.

Our Pokemon themed sessions have also provided plenty of ideas for planning narratives using these interesting characters.  Targeting oral and written narrative has so many far reaching benefits for all children but particularly for those who struggle with language and literacy.  Using scaffolds such as these Narrative Scaffolds Narrative Scaffolds with a Pokemon theme doesn’t feel like hard work at all for students who have a strong interest in these little critters.

If Star Wars is more your thing….

It only takes a quick Google and you will have so many fresh ideas to incorporate this interest into a writing task.  Whether it is a narrative, a description or information report, an opinion piece or any writing text you are targeting…there is an idea within the Star Wars theme that will work.

Remember that writing doesn’t have to be an all or nothing task either.  Why not help children who struggle to get started with writing to brainstorm all they know about a topic (and believe me..students who are interested in Star Wars know A LOT about this topic).  Encourage the students to write each idea or word on a single strip of paper.  At this stage, they […]

2023-05-30T04:58:51+00:00
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Does my child have Dyslexia?

I think my child might have Dyslexia.

What does this mean and where do I even start?

Gosh…we hear this so often when concerned parents contact us seeking help for their children. Dyslexia is one of those words that unfortunately has so many myths and misinformation associated with it.  Let’s try to clarify some of this for you and put your on the right path if you are concerned that your child may be showing signs of Dyslexia.

Most children learn to read, write and spell without too many major challenges.

Some children, despite the very best of intentions and instruction from both parents and teachers, will struggle over several years to acquire even the basics of literacy. These children may have a Specific Learning Disorder with impairment in reading (dyslexia).

Okay…so how do you find out if your child does or does not have dyslexia and what is it?

A Specific Learning Disorder (with dyslexia being the most commonly diagnosed) can be defined as a persistent difficulty in a specific area of academic achievement.  These disorders are as a result of a combination of genetic, environmental and cognitive factors.  The disability with reading persists even in the presence of terrific, appropriate instruction at school over a period of at least 6 months.

What can we do to help?

Firstly we need to have these children accurately assessed to understand what is the root of the learning difficulties they are experiencing.  Importantly, what those children who are then diagnosed with Dyslexia then need is a higher dose of a high quality, evidenced based reading instruction. Sure, we need to tweak interventions where possible to suit a child’s learning preferences but these children do not require anything inherently different to the other children in the class when it comes to learning how to read.  They just need more of it!  Much more.    More time.   More repetition….but more of appropriate evidenced based interventions for Dyslexia in a later follow up Chatterbox blog post!

Let’s start with assessment.

How do you get your child diagnosed with dyslexia if you think this is what might be holding your child back from learning?

Firstly, it is important for us all to understand what dyslexia is. This Specific Learning Disorder is characterised by difficulties in accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling abilities.  These difficulties are often unexpectedin relation to the child’s other cognitive abilities and in realtion to the amount of effective classroom instruction that has been provided.

Possible signs of dyslexia may include:

  • Difficulties in learning letter sounds and names in the early years of schooling
  • Poor phonemic awareness i.e. ability to reflect upon the individual units of sound within words
  • Trouble in decoding /sounding out new words in text
  • Poor reading fluency in the high school years
  • Slow and inaccurate word recognition
  • Slow and laboured reading

If you have concerns, it is always best to start by speaking with your child’s classroom teacher who will have reading records and data from classroom […]

2022-12-21T22:30:43+00:00
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