Topic: Beginning Reading

Help your child practice language skills and understand ideas during everyday life.

Reading skills provide the foundation for academic success. From the beginning of school, students should be taught different ways of using language to help them learn and communicate about academic content. This brief discusses two areas of literacy development that students must learn so that they can do well in school: foundational reading skills and academic language.

Taking part in literacy experiences at home can develop your child’s reading ability, comprehension, and language skills.  Activities that you can engage in at home include: joint reading, drawing, singing, storytelling, reciting, game playing, and rhyming.  You can tailor activities to your child’s age and ability level, and can incorporate technology into your learning opportunities.

Effective reading instruction incorporates five components including phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. These five components of reading are all linked. Phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency and vocabulary all build up to reading comprehension, which is the goal of reading. 

The alphabetic principle is a critical skill that involves connecting letters with their sounds to read and write. Learning and applying the alphabetic principle takes time and is difficult for most children. Explicit phonics instruction and extensive practice are important when teaching children to learn the alphabetic principle.