• Start when your child is young by thoughtfully using phonemic awareness skills daily. Nursery rhymes and silly songs are actually powerful teaching tools. Focus on speaking and listening as a foundation for growing a strong reader.
• Move at your child’s pace. They will show you when they’re ready for the next skill⁠— child readiness is key to successfully teaching anything!
• Use post-it notes to label common items around your home to help your child begin to connect the words spoken with the word written.
• Read for pleasure with your child. Storytime helps children link books with good feelings and that increases their motivation to want to learn to read.
• Use books or written text to help you answer questions – even if you know the answer. Talk through your thought process for example, “I want to make banana bread today. I think I’ll check our recipe book for recipes.” This allows your child inside your head and they can begin to see how books and text help to solve problems and answer questions.
• Show your child that you enjoy reading. Let them see you reading a new recipe, the newspaper, a book, a magazine, street signs, restaurant menus – anything! This lets your child begin to understand that they can use reading for just about anything in life.
• Have lots of fun experiences then learn more about it through a book or switch it and read a great book together then try something out. This helps build comprehension.

• By the end of their fifth year-I’m being clear because kids get 12 months to be 5 years old- children should be able to read simple CVC words (cat, pin, met, cot, hug, etc.) and have a sight word/high-frequency word vocabulary of 50 words. Now because I’ve worked in various countries I want to be clear, this is for children in their mother tongue. Things get a bit more complex if a child speaks more than one language at home. They tend to start off a bit slower however they pick up very quickly and are fine with their peers.

The best method for teaching reading is an approach that is science-based and fun. At the end of the day, children need to be given the tools to be able to read new words – that’s where phonics comes into play. However, they also need to have reading fluency and understand that our words don’t always follow rules (well rules they don’t need to know right now because they are too complex) -that’s where sight words/high-frequency words come into play. A balance between phonics and whole language is what has worked in my classrooms around the world with both native English speaking kids as well as kids learning English as a second or third language

There are loads of fun ways to teach reading. I love hands-on games, like file folder games, card games, board games, outdoor games, or word hunt games just to name a few. Using technology is also a great way to break up the learning. My students loved Leap Frog’s Letter Factory and Starfall.com. Another fun way to teach reading is by linking it with what kids already love. I once used frogs to teach my kids how to read. Why? It was our class obsession at the time (yes there’s a whole story there for another time).

The basic reading skills are phonemic awareness, phonics, sight words/high-frequency words, reading vocabulary, reading fluency, and reading comprehension. The table above gives a simple definition of each.

Phonics is a great tool for children to have as they learn how to read but it is not the best way. A balanced approach that teaches all the reading skills is the best way.