Smart Readers

How to Make Your Child Phonics-smart

7 Well-kept Secrets Make Your Child Phonics-smart.

Find the best ways to teach your children. Read the methods phonics experts use that help children learn quickly and easily.

Schools usually expect to take four years or more to teach a child to read independently. You can speed this up by following the tips on this page, as used in Funnix learning-to-read software.

How to Make Your Child Smart with Phonics
Simple Step 1: Avoid Confusion
Teach letter sounds of letters and letter combinations in a sequence that avoids confusion. Don't, for example, teach the letter-names and sounds of the letters b and d in the same lesson. Not only do they sound similar, they look similar. Probably the worst thing you can do is to introduce letters in alphabetical order.

How This Will Help Your Child Read.
This secret alone will actually trim many hours off the task of learning to read. Children who learn without confusion make few mistakes. That means they learn faster than others. A parent or teacher does not waste a lot of time correcting mistakes caused by avoidable confusion.

Simple Step 2: Start With the Most Useful Sounds of Letters

Introduce the most useful phonic letter-sounds early. As you can guess, sounds such as /m/ and /s/ are more useful than those for /q/ and /x/ because /m/ and /s/ are more common in the words children use. The best thing about these common sounds of letters is that your child can USE them soon and often in reading real books.

How This Will Help Your Child Read.
This is the secret that will keep your child highly motivated. Almost straight away, your child can use what he or she learned. The phonics sounds are connected to the child's "real world." This helps him remember what he's learning. He wants to learn more.

Simple Step 3: Build up Fluency on the Letter Sounds Your Child Has Just Learned
Remember to practice the letter sounds you've already done while you teach new ones. New learning soon pushes old learning to the back of children's minds. It gets forgotten. If the child does not use and practise last week's sounds, she thinks those letter sounds are no longer important. Children only remember the phonics sounds that they keep on using over and over again.

How This Will Help Your Child Read.
Simple review keeps your child's knowledge sharp. The phonics stay on the tip of her tongue. Therefore, new phonics sounds do not crowd out what she knows already. That means she will not waste countless hours relearning what you think "she should already know."

Simple Step 4: Start With Sounds of Letters
Teach phonics of isolated letters. Don't teach this way: - Show a whole word. Break the word into parts (word chunks). Then break the chunk into individual sounds. This whole word context not only distracts, but confuses the child who is learning phonics.

No. Instead, let your child focus on isolated letters first. For example, practice the letter-sound for m for several lessons before introducing words containing m, such as mat or ham.

How This Will Help Your Child Read.
This secret greatly lightens the learning load for your child. The child is not faced with a jumble of words, but simply with single sounds of isolated letters.Next, she sees the letters in the context of individual words and finally in story context. Each of the steps to reading is a small, achievable step for her.

Simple Step 5: Introduce Only Words Made Up Of Known Letter-Sounds
Before introducing a new word, check you have already taught ALL the letter-sounds heard in that word. (In regular words, each letter makes its regular phonics sound.) For example, check that you have taught the sounds for /a/, /m/, /n/ and /s/ before introducing the words, Sam and man.

How This Will Help Your Child Read.
This is another secret to building confidence. Your child will approach each new word boldly. For your son or daughter, word reading is simply using what he or she already knows about the sounds of letters.

Simple Step 6: Build From The Simple To The Complex
Move from short, simple word types (e.g., words such as fin) to more complex words, such as finish, then finishing.

How This Will Help Your Child Read.
This suits your child's memory. As she gets better at the simple word types, she is able to remember bigger "chunks" of what she's learned. She then uses these bigger chunks to read more complex words. There is no strain on her memory, making her a happy learner. Her "building blocks" for words have simply become larger. This is where you see her go ahead in leaps and bounds.

Simple Step 7: Early On, Introduce Words That Don't Follow The Rules
Teach some phonics irregular words early on. (In irregular words, some letters do not make their usual phonics sound.) Teach words that are used frequently in children's books, such as was or come. If children know early on that one phonics strategy by itself does help them to read all words, they do not get frustrated later.

But, do point out the regular parts of irregular words. For example, in the word come, c and m both make their usual phonics sounds. Children can approach even irregular words with confidence.

How This Will Help Your Child Read.
Your child will not get discouraged by words that do not fit phonics rules well. He will have a method for reading these words too.

If you want to know more about the computer-based Funnix Reading Programmes, click on this link:

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Douglas Corin
Funnix NZ
18 Thornton Place
Hamilton
New Zealand
Hours (New Zealand time=GMT +12): 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. Monday - Friday

Phone From in New Zealand: (07) 843-9802