Introduction:
- Children with speech and language difficulties also often have reading difficulties.
- Unlike speaking and listening, reading is not a natural process.
- Learning to read consists of taking natural listening and speaking skills then mapping a symbol system into our knowledge of spoken words and their sounds.
Common misconceptions:
- Children will naturally learn how to read just by being exposed to print.
- Only children with learning disabilities might have trouble learning how to read.
Five pillars of reading:
- Alphabetic principle
- Proficient readers have accurate and automatic letter-sound correspondence
- Phonemic awareness
- Phonemic awareness is the ability to blend and segment sounds to form words
- Vocabulary
- Proficient readers need both semantic and syntactic knowledge: the knowledge of words and their meaning and the knowledge of how sentences are structured
- Fluency
- Proficient readers need to have automaticity, accuracy, and prosody
- Comprehension
- Comprehension comes from success in the other four pillars
Other helpful tips:
- Parents and educators reading to children help children build their vocabulary skills. Students will start school knowing some words and be able to make more sense of the text.
- Background knowledge is also hugely important because it gives the child a much better chance at understanding texts about the subject. This can be achieved through read-alouds and class discussions.
