The Importance of Reading to Your Child

We are going to have a new voice on the blog over the next few months.  Ruth is an experience SE teacher and leader and she will be brining us some thoughts and tips on how to work with your exceptional child at home. Thanks Ruth!

Ruth's Reflections:

Few children learn to read books by themselves.  Someone has to lure them into the wonderful world of the written word; someone has to show them the way.

Orville Prescott, A Father Reads to His Children

Did you know...

• ·      Reading to children is important.
• ·      Reading a bedtime story teaches a child something.
• ·      Reading to a child is important, even after the child is beyond kindergarten.

Why??

·      Because the problems a child experiences when learning to read are often not related to the child’s ability to learn, but to his/her phonological awareness; the ability to “hear” the English language and an exposure to the English alphabet.

·      Because children who have not been read to before they are of school age may not have experienced listening to rhythms and sounds.  Once their ears “hear” those sounds, children are prepared to learn to read.

·      Because a failure to notice that spoken words can be broken into phonemes is a major cause of a profound reading disability.

·      Phonological awareness is the ability to hear individual sounds that make up words in spoken language.  It is the bridge that allows us to “see” spoken language as a collection of words and sounds.  For example

Ø  Hearing the sounds that make up words (the sounds d-o-g in dog)

Ø  Recognizing words that rhyme (ball, fall, call)

Ø  Deciding whether words begin with the same sounds (bat, bell, boy)

I encourage you to continue to “lure” your children into the magnificent world of literature.