The best way to teach reading

The Best Way to Teach Reading: Start with Phonics at Home

by Mary Follin

learn the best way to teach reading

Is Phonics the Best Way to Teach Reading? 

As a parent of a young learner, you may have heard that phonics is the best way to teach reading. But what exactly is phonics and why is it important for your child’s reading success? Read on to learn about the best way to teach reading and unlock the keys to success with phonics.

Phonics is an essential tool for teaching children to read, and with the right guidance and strategies, parents and caregivers can successfully teach their children how to read at home. Phonics helps children decode words by understanding the sounds that each letter makes. It’s an effective learning method as it uses a combination of letters and their associated sounds to create words.

Successful phonics instruction involves understanding the different patterns and rules of phonics and helping children apply these rules when reading or writing. But don’t worry! You don’t need to know phonics to teach phonics. After all, if a small child can learn phonics, you can certainly learn how to teach it. All you need is a simple phonics program to guide you. (More on that later.)

Read Mary Follin’s Review of 5 Top Phonics Reading Programs!

What is Phonics?

Phonics is a method of teaching reading that helps children understand the sounds that letters make and how those sounds combine to form words. The goal of phonics instruction is to enable children to decode words so they can not only read words they know but can also decipher words they don’t know.

Phonics instruction starts with the basics, teaching children the sounds of each letter in the alphabet. Then it progresses to teaching them the different patterns and rules of phonics, such as recognizing long and short vowel sounds and silent letters. Finally, it moves on to teaching children how to combine the sounds they’ve learned to actually read.

​Phonics can be taught through activities such as rhyming games, sorting objects by the beginning sounds they make, and writing or drawing pictures of words that begin with a certain letter sound. It’s important to find ways to make learning phonics fun for your child! You can do this by providing fun activities that involve listening, speaking, reading, and as your child progresses, you will want to include writing as well.

Learn how you can teach your child to read at home with Teach Your Child to Read!

 

Why is Phonics the Best Way to Teach Reading?

 Learning phonics is important because it helps children recognize the sounds in words and understand how to read them. This understanding can help children read with accuracy, fluency, and the ability to read out loud, which is essential for overall reading success. Being able to sound out and read words correctly helps children understand text, comprehend what they’re reading, and also improves their spelling skills.

​Furthermore, phonics instruction can help children become independent readers, as they’ll be able to read words on their own without needing to constantly check in with you on what a particular word is. Learning phonics also helps children learn how to spell words correctly, which builds a strong foundation for writing. Knowing the sounds associated with each letter can help children write words accurately and with more confidence. In other words, learning phonics is an essential step in a child’s literacy development.

The Best Way to Teach Reading: Prepare Your Child to Learn Phonics

To prepare your child for phonics instruction, it’s important to help them develop the necessary skills beforehand. These skills include letter recognition, sound recognition, and phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify, blend, and manipulate the individual sounds in words. All of these skills are necessary for successful phonics instruction.

You can help your child develop these skills by providing activities such as rhyming games, pointing out sounds in words, and having them repeat individual sounds. You can also provide activities such as sorting objects by the initial sound they make and having them identify the sounds that letters make. These activities can help your child become ready to learn phonics and set them up for success.

Now that we’ve established that phonics is the best way to teach reading, follow these instructions to start teaching phonics at home. You can actually start teaching your child to read for free! And if you really want to make it easy on yourself, take advantage of our 7-Day Free Trial of Teach Your Child to Read. It’s easy to use, fun for your child, and most importantly, it works!

Photo Credits: Pexels, Unsplash

 

The Best Way to Teach Reading is with Phonics.

Start teaching your child to read with phonics today. Check out Teach Your Child to Read for free!

Founder and creator Mary Follin started her career as a systems engineer with IBM. In that capacity, she wrote software manuals to help make complex systems easy to understand and use. Over the course of her career, she has worked in product development, product innovation, market research, and marketing consulting.

Beyond creating Teach Your Child to Read, she is also the author of Ethyr, winner of the Moonbeam Children’s Book Award and the Gertrude Warner Book Award, and a regular contributor to DailyMom.com on the subject of children’s literacy. ​Mary also writes, along with Erika Guerrero, a feature column in Fredericksburg Parent & Family. Titled ASK MOM, the column offers parenting advice and was recognized by the Parenting Media Association with a 2021 award. ​​