Everyday Phonics for Reading Success.

My previous article dealt with the importance of games in teaching, now I shall deal with the equally important issue of continuity and persistence.

Hello again, if you are working alongside me with your child, congratulations, you are taking him or her along the first steps to reading. More importantly, you are easing his path at school.

It is a fact of life, of biology, that our children arrive when we are young ourselves. They arrive when our futures, whether intellectual or technical are being cemented in the tough world of competition. We are moving from trainee to establishing ourselves on that greasy pole of promotion. Time is the enemy, sleep and dogged commitment, critical for continuous development in out field of choice.

And then comes baby. His needs are now, and his needs are vital. We carefully fulfil the love, protection, food, housing and clothing requirements but frequently pay scant attention to his intellectual development, other than pointing out, that’s a horse, that’s Aunty Jane and here’s your teddy bear.

Now, having read my first three articles, you know it is perfectly loving, caring and responsible to add, that’s an ‘a’ . You also know it is important to put your child’s learning into games. The next step is to understand that the most important developmental factor in this game playing is consistency. Reading is EVERY DAY.

Think of what the house looks like if you clean it spasmodically, or what your desk is like if you are away from work for a couple of days. Continuity in learning is vital both for cementing new knowledge into the long-term memory and for gradual reading success.

Time, when it is your least available commodity, is vital to your child’s learning. Time must be set aside EVERY DAY, just ten minutes will do, as long as it is consistent.

Time must be considered in another sense. If the two-year-old next door learns his twenty-six letters in a fortnight while your three-year-old is still unsure of the first four letters, don’t panic. Neither child is brighter or slower than the other. Each child is learning at his own pace and that is his entitlement. Remember the hare and the tortoise. Fast learners are great, they’re easy to teach and a help in the classroom later on. Slow learners however, are often deep thinkers, frequently they’re lateral thinkers and if not discouraged in their very early years, will, I have found, catch up with their faster peers. All children, both fast and slow learners must receive equal praise, equal encouragement and be valued for whatever they achieve.

The demon word ‘work’, a case of semantics. Never call a reading lesson ‘work’. Not ‘homework’ or ‘schoolwork’ nothing with the word ‘work’ attached. If your are like me, you complain about the housework, it makes your tired, you can’t be bothered, it gets in the way of more enjoyable things. Or you complain about having to go back to work, or that work is getting you down. So many household conversations involving the word are in every way negative. If you then talk about ‘homework’ or ‘schoolwork’ those same negative perceptions are immediately attached. By age four your child will complain about learning a word or a sound or tracing around a number because it is school homework. The word should be abolished from all schools in favour of ‘prep’, a harmless little word that does not raise the hackles of tiny children.

In conclusion, all reading whether it is an eighteen month old child saying ‘a’ ‘c’ or a school age child with home reading, must read aloud every day. Remove those collective barriers you both erect , television, tiredness, meals to prepare, friends to play with, nothing supersedes your child’s progress.

Above all PRAISE, PRAISE, PRAISE!