![]() ![]() ![]() Well, you might think you should switch to giving them lists of words to memorize, but that's not the answer. What if preschoolers struggle to sound out words? What if we're trying to start with sounding out, but they can't quite do it. ![]() Well, I don't share those books anymore because I've learned that three-cueing, something I learned to use in college and graduate school, is a major problem and is not something we should be teaching beginning readers to use. I thought they could just memorize the repeated sight word and use the pictures to read the rest and that would be fine, that they would be learning to read. In fact, because I believed this, I created a huge set of sight word books for preschoolers to learn to read, and these books required them to use the pictures to solve most of the words, but those sight words were repeated over and over. I used to think that they should learn sight words first, because it seems easier sometimes to memorize a few words than to sound them out. We want to teach them to blend sounds into words. Notice, I did not say we should teach them sight words. We're talking about the actual sound.įinally, do they have an interest in learning to read? Do they enjoy being read to? Do they ask you to read to them? Do they pretend to read? These pre-reading skills are important and when they're in place or at least we're on a good path toward establishing them, then we should teach preschoolers to sound out words. So if you say, "Put these sounds together to make a word, /f/ /ĭ/ /sh/," can they tell you the word is "fish?" Can they take the word "fish" and break it up into its sounds, /f/ /ĭ/ /sh/? Can they identify the first and last sound in a word? We're not talking about letters. What's most important is the phonemic awareness piece, and that is that they can put sounds together to make a word and separate a word into its sounds. I think it's important that they can rhyme, but if they can't, you can still get started with reading. They can count words in a sentence, they can count syllables. ![]() You want them to be able to have a concept of word. You can still learn to read without being able to rhyme, but it's certainly helpful because if you think about it, it's actually a form of phonemic awareness - you're substituting that initial phoneme. So there is debate about whether or not rhyming is necessary for learning to read. Phonological and phonemic awareness is another important pre-reading skill. If that's the approach you're taking, they don't have to know the whole alphabet, but you want to make sure, of course, that they are able to get started with that. So with some reading programs you teach maybe five letters at a time and then you teach children to sound out words using those letters. They can name each letter sound or a number of them. They don't have to know the whole alphabet, but it does make it easier. They should recognize the letters of the alphabet, or at least a few if you're going to teach just a few at a time and then teach them to sound out words, that's one option. They engage with stories as you read to them, and they can answer very simple questions about a story. So they should be able to retell a familiar story in their own words, even if it's very, very basic. They hold books correctly, turn the pages in the right direction, they know that each word on a page represents a spoken word, and they understand that text is read from left to right. They need five important pre-reading skills. We'll get to that in a minute, but first we need to talk about what preschoolers, or really any child, should know before they learn to read. Obviously, readers need to know high frequency words, but how they learn these high frequency words matters. These are the most commonly used words in printed text. It's probably best to speak in terms of high frequency words. Therefore, all beginning readers have a different sight word vocabulary, because they all know a different set of words by sight. According to researchers, sight words are words that a reader recognizes instantly without needing to sound out or guess. Some people will tell you that sight words are words that cannot be sounded out, but the researchers' definition of sight words is different. Okay, first of all, let's clarify what sight words are. They're all good questions, but I think we need to back up and ask this question first: should we teach sight words in preschool? We'll get into it right after the intro. How should I introduce sight words to preschoolers? What's a good sight word list for preschoolers? Where can I find preschool sight word worksheets? These are all questions I've heard from parents who are eager to get their children on the right path when it comes to learning to read. ![]()
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