There should be a balanced approach when teaching children to read.
There are five areas of reading instruction to hit in order to successfully teach children to read. They are phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and text comprehension.
What is phonemic awareness?
Phonemic awareness is the ability to recognize the individual sounds in spoken words. Children show this ability by recognizing the beginning or ending sounds of words and by combining or blending separate sounds in a word. For example /c/, /a/, /t/ =cat
What is phonics?
Phonics teaches the relationships between the letters of the written language and the individual sounds of the spoken language. There are many critics of phonics who argue that the English spellings are too irregular for phonics instruction to really help children learn to read. This is why there is why there needs to be a balanced approach.
Fluency
Fluency is the ability to read accurately and quickly. You can help children with fluency by reading the same book over and over so the children recognize words automatically. Students can also do choral reading or read with a more fluent partner.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary refers to the words we must know to communicate effectively. To improve student’s vocabulary adults should read to children daily, have children read on their own and engage children daily in conversations so they can hear adults use new and interesting words.
Comprehension
Comprehension is understanding what you are reading. This is what makes reading purposeful. To help children comprehend what they read you should ask questions during reading, have them generate their own questions, have them recognize settings, endings, main characters and practice retelling what they have read.
