From decades of research about how young children can best learn to read, we know that there are core skills and cognitive processes that need to be taught. In this basic overview, you’ll find concrete strategies to help children build a solid foundation for reading.
The Committee for the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children has compiled detailed lists of literacy accomplishments for children of different ages. Find out what the typical child can do in kindergarten.
Identifying a reading problem is a challenge without a sense for what typical literacy development looks like. Find out what language accomplishments are typical for most children at the age of three to four.
In this special Reading Rockets video series, reading expert Linda Farrell works one-on-one with students in grades K-3 to help ensure that they master the skills they need to become proficient readers.
Phoneme awareness is the ability to identify phonemes, the vocal gestures from which words are constructed, when they are found in their natural context as spoken words. Children need phoneme awareness to learn to read because letters represent phonemes in words.
Creating a word family chart with the whole class or a small group builds phonemic awareness, a key to success in reading. Students will see how words look alike at the end if they sound alike at the end — a valuable discovery about our alphabetic writing system. They’ll also see that one little chunk (in this case “-an”) can unlock lots of words!
Nursery rhymes are important for young children because they help develop an ear for our language. Both rhyme and rhythm help kids hear the sounds and syllables in words, which helps kids learn to read! Here are some activities and recommended poetry books to aid your child’s developing poetry, rhyming, and rhythm skills.
The term “onset-rime” refers to the division of a syllable into two parts: the onset and the rime. The onset is the initial consonant sound, blend, or digraph, and the rime is the following vowel and all subsequent sounds in the syllable. Understanding onset and rime is fundamental in phonological awareness.
Activities that stimulate phonemic awareness in preschool and elementary school children are one sure way to get a child ready for reading! Here are eight of them from expert Marilyn Jager Adams.
An informal assessment of phonemic awareness, including what the assessment measures, when is should be assessed, examples of questions, and the age or grade at which the assessment should be mastered.
Alphabetics is a term for the letter-sound elements of learning to read, including phonemic awareness and phonics. In this summary, find out what practices for teaching alphabetics have been proven effective by research.
Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify, hear, and manipulate the individual sounds in spoken words. Manipulating the sounds in words includes blending, stretching, or otherwise changing words.
These short video clips give you the chance to watch and learn effective phonemic awareness activities. Many of the video clips are from Reading Rockets’ PBS television series Launching Young Readers.
Research shows that the very notion that spoken language is made up of sequences of little sounds does not come naturally or easily to human beings. The small units of speech that correspond to letters of an alphabetic writing system are called phonemes. Thus, the awareness that language is composed of these small sounds is termed phonemic awareness.
Phonological and phonemic awareness are important pre-reading skills, related to the ability to hear, identify, and play with the sounds in spoken language — including rhymes, syllables, and the smallest units of sound (phonemes). Strong phonological awareness skills continue to support reading development in second grade and beyond.
Phonological awareness is a set of critical pre-reading skills: the ability to hear, identify, and play with the sounds in spoken language — including rhymes, syllables, and phonemes. Children with strong phonological awareness skills are ready to become readers.
Phonological and phonemic awareness are important pre-reading skills, related to the ability to hear, identify, and play with the sounds in spoken language — including rhymes, syllables, and the smallest units of sound (phonemes). Children with strong phonological awareness skills are ready to become readers.
