Articles
Sep 12, 2012
Learning Phonics
Because literacy is so important to a child’s educational and intellectual life, it’s no wonder that there’s more emphasis than ever on kids learning phonics. While phonics once used to be a popular means of instruction, it fell out of favour for a while in education circles because of a tendency to focus on phonics instruction instead of reading real texts. In some cases, kids seemed to spend more time memorising words and spellings than they did on actually reading real texts. After spending a few years kicked out of the classroom and wandering the proverbial halls, phonics is back....
Sep 12, 2012
Learn to Read Tips
The importance of literacy in a child’s educational development and achievement cannot be emphasised enough. It’s a well-known fact that when kids learn to read, they acquire skills that lead to success in school, community and their eventual working life. The ability to read and understand a wide array of texts is essential to any educational pursuit. Students who meet with achievement and success early in their literacy journey are more likely to continue to make steady progress toward the desired end, which is fluency in reading. The importance of literacy remains in no doubt, but what has become more...
Sep 12, 2012
Phonics Activities
Phonics instruction has received a lot of attention in education circles of late. It is making a much-needed return to literacy instruction after falling out of favour for a time. The particular kind of phonics instruction that has been criticised is the analytic approach to phonics that encouraged rote learning. This method attempted to force-feed whole words to kids learning to read, rather than teach them how to approach words in their more manageable bite-sized parts. Phonics is simply the understanding of how letters are linked to sounds (also called phonemes). It’s the knowledge of how letters and sounds relate...
Aug 29, 2012
Teach Your Child to Read
Reading is the most important skill that kids can have in their educational ‘toolbox’. However kids don’t just ‘pick-up’ reading, they have to be taught it. Learning to read is a complex art, one that requires kids to learn a series of skills in order to both recognise text and understand it. Educators have found that the most effective learning programs that teach your child to read do so in a systematic and organised way that addresses five key literacy skills or areas: * **Phonemic awareness** * **Phonics** * **Fluency** * **Vocabulary** * **Text comprehension** ### Phonemic Awareness Phonemic awareness...