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For over a decade now, the teacher shortage, coupled with a recognized need to reduce class size, has been a problem for the school system in the US. This increases the need for tutoring and before- or after-class activities in small groups or one-to-one sessions. In response to this, we have created a special place for parents and teachers to network and help their children/students acquire phonics awareness and master their reading skills.

As most of the world’s knowledge are stored in the form of text, reading is a critical skill in order to access information. In fact, the prevalence of the internet in our daily lives appeared to have strengthened this dependence, despite pessimistic views to the contrary. In today’s search engine-oriented society, knowledge is literally at the tip of our fingertips all the time. But futurists claim that this period, which can be considered as a golden age for the written language, is but a transitory phase. The time will come when the written language and hence, reading, will be rendered obsolete.

The question expressed in the title of this article may seem easy to answer; for most of our lives, we are told at home and in school that reading is good for us and that it makes us smarter. However, there are some educational theorists like Frank Smith who would argue that literacy is overrated: “Literacy doesn’t generate finer feelings or higher values. It doesn’t even make anyone smarter.”

Reading and spelling are mirror skills— where reading requires decoding or the transposition of letters into spoken language, spelling involves encoding or the transposition of sounds into letters. Both reading and spelling build upon phonemic awareness, phonics, and word recognition. In an earlier post, we discussed why these abilities should be developed in kindergarten, as they play a crucial role in getting children ready for intensive reading instruction. In this article, we discuss how a background in phonics reading enhances a child’s spelling skills.

The process of reading is essentially a twofold activity: first comes decoding, which involves translating the code of written text to the sounds of the spoken language. The second activity is reading comprehension, which involves drawing the meaning from the text. While reading comprehension depends on the ability of the reader to process information and integrate it into the database of personal knowledge, decoding is a relatively simpler task which requires competency in the mechanics of reading.

Kindergarten is the ideal time for developing reading readiness in children, in preparation for the intensive reading instruction that they will receive from first grade onwards. By this time, children have already acquired logical and analytical thinking; they are also able to concentrate on a task for longer periods and can retain information better. Reading readiness builds upon the pre-reading skills acquired in preschool or Pre-K. During the kindergarten stage, there are three early-stage goals to master: phonemic awareness, phonics, and word recognition.

When it comes to developing acquired skills like reading, a child’s ability to think logically and analytically are determining factors for readiness. The brain has to be capable of logic and analytical thinking first before the mechanics of reading can be understood. According to child development experts, there are certain pre-reading skills that a preschool child needs to master in order to be ready to learn how to read. Although teachers will typically start reading lessons in kindergarten, the foundation for reading skills should be developed during preschool (or Pre-K).

Consistency has been found to be an important factor in improving performance. The adage “practice makes perfect” is founded on the fact that repetition and familiarity result in enhanced efficiency and accuracy. Take athletes as an example: they train religiously in order to achieve muscle memory, so that the body can effortlessly execute movements in proper form . The degree to which muscle memory can be developed corresponds to the degree to which the brain is freed to concentrate on strategy. Athletes who fail to maintain a consistent training regime lose responsiveness and suffer a corresponding decrease in performance.

Although reading is a cognitive rather than a physical task, consistency also plays a part in enhancing reading performance.

As a literate adult yourself, reading is something that you have grown to do automatically. For example, take the word ENOUGH. Your eyes just flicked over the word as it was printed on the screen and although the spelling of the word does not closely reflect how it is pronounced, you have seen this word enough times to know how it should be read. Identifying words through visual recall is the main principle of the whole language method.

But say I give you a word that you have never encountered before:

FLOCCINAUCINIHILIPILIFICATION

How did you read this?

Self- confidence is the perception that one’s ability is equal to the task at hand. Research shows that individuals who maintain a high level of self-confidence consistently perform better compared to those who doubt themselves. A child who has self-confidence is motivated to acquire new skills and tackle challenges, like learning how to read fluently.

Developing self-confidence is a crucial task that parents should wholeheartedly support because a confident child is more able to cope with the demands of acquiring literacy skills. In this article, we will discuss what parents can do to develop a child’s self-confidence in reading.