How to teach a child to read: 10 tips

Most children love books and are happy to immerse themselves in the world of fairy tales and adventures. But for this you need at least to be able to read. How to do it? What techniques should I use? How to organize the learning process correctly? We will tell you about this below. 

Learning to read: when to start?Fans of early development advise teaching a child to read from the age of 1.5.

Of course, we are not talking about full-fledged reading, but about working with Doman cards. These are pictures that depict and sign various items. The kid looks at the picture and sees not only the drawing, but also the text, visually remembers it, so it is believed that after studying with cards, he will master reading more quickly.

Speech therapists and speech pathologists insist that it is necessary to introduce children to letters only after they begin to speak confidently in sentences — that is, not earlier than 3 years. And if the child has speech therapy problems, the melody and rhythm of speech are disturbed, then it is worth postponing classes until he begins to speak correctly. 

Read also: Information hygiene for parents: how and why to filter contentFor confident and fast reading, a child should have developed phonemic hearing — the ability to recognize sounds.

He should be well oriented in space, not to confuse the concepts of "left-right". Also, do not rush to teach reading to restless children, even if it is only a type of temperament, and not a diagnosis of ADHD made by specialists. 

It is not recommended to forcibly teach a child to read: force him to sit with a book, scold for mispronouncing words. If the baby does not show interest in this activity yet, just take a break. Sooner or later he will get tired of looking at the illustrations, and he himself will want to understand what is written in the book. 

Watch Dmitry Karpachev's video and learn about the main parental mistakes when raising an active child:Should a first grader be able to read?

This question is a stumbling block for many parents.

There are two camps — those who teach their child to read very early, and those who rely on the work of a teacher in the first grade — they say, they will teach everything at school. Any of these options carries risks:

✓ children who are already fluent in reading by the first grade will simply get bored in class. They will not be interested in following classmates who are just learning the alphabet and trying to read by syllables;

✓ children who can't read by school yet will still learn — only when? The standard school curriculum provides for testing reading techniques at the end of the first half of the year — before the winter holidays. The reading rate is 25-30 words per minute. And what if the child does not pass the test, because he has not been able to make friends with the book in these few months? Of course, nothing terrible will happen, but disappointment and demotivation for a first-grader who cannot read are provided.

The optimal middle option is to start actively learning to read a year before school. The child will have enough time to learn letters, syllables, learn how to connect them into words. And all this at a calm pace, without competition and evaluation from the outside. And already at school, even if the reading skill is not yet fully mastered, the laid base will serve as a springboard for fast and effective study.

Methods of teaching readingWe have already mentioned Doman cards as one of the popular techniques of early development and learning to read.

Let's focus on other author's methods that have already been tested by hundreds of thousands of children around the world.

Zaitsev 's methodNikolay Zaitsev's manuals on child development have been approved by specialists in various fields: psychologists, defectologists, physiologists.

The uniqueness of his methodology lies in the use of such didactic principles:

• the material is presented systematically — from simple to complex, from general to particular;
• the visibility of the studied material is ensured: not pictures and letters are drawn on Zaitsev's cubes, but syllables from which children put words together;
• the learning process is based on the visualization of words;
• the physiological features of the educational process in children aged 4-6 years are taken into account.

To learn to read according to the Zaitsev method, the child will need only 15-20 hours. At home, a month of classes is enough, and in a preschool it takes from 3 to 6 months. 

The technique of teaching reading by Zaitsev gives excellent results in children with alalia, autism, neurological diagnoses, as well as with visual and hearing impairments. 

The Montessori methodItalian teacher and doctor Maria Montessori believed that a child should learn to read and write no earlier than he turns 6 years old.

Her technique is based on tactile memorization of letter elements. For example: a letter cut out of rough cardboard is pasted on a smooth sheet of paper. The child touches this sticker with his fingers and remembers the outlines. Then he easily names and writes a letter, relying on muscle memory. 

In Montessori lessons, children use not only the muscular mechanism, but also vision and touch. A large number of auxiliary elements are used: blocks, cards, coins. They bring an element of play to classes, so children are very willing to get involved in the learning process. 

Olga Soboleva 's methodologyThe system is based on the principle of bi-hemispheric brain work.

Namely, the study of letters through associations with recognizable images or characters. Classes are conducted in a playful way and are generally unlike a standard lesson, because mechanical memorization (memorization) is minimized. 

As a result, children do not just learn to read, but significantly expand their vocabulary, they have an interest in creativity, and creative thinking develops. 

Soboleva's technique is truly universal, because it: 

• applicable at any age;
• adapted for children with different types of perception — audials, visuals, kinesthetics;
• it does not have the usual system (task → execution → evaluation), so it can be applied point-by-point, with breaks and rollbacks for better assimilation of the material.

10 tips on how to teach a child to readIf you want to teach your child to read, use these 10 tips to properly organize the learning process and achieve your goal as quickly as possible:

Start learning when the child is interested in the book.

1. It is not necessary to force him or impose the opinion that the book is the best friend. It is unlikely that a child in his 5-6 years will catch the meaning of this phrase. Let him have a lot of colorful books with an exciting plot. A lively interest is the best motivation for studying. 
2. Stock up on manuals: buy cubes with letters, a primer, prescriptions and draw sticks, circles and other elements of letters in them — it is better to master writing and reading at the same time. 
3. Practice regularly (once every 1-2 days), but not for long. Even a 30-minute lesson can tire a child. Therefore, if you see that he is losing concentration, take a break or return to the lesson the next day.
4. Draw and cut out letters from colored cardboard. Let the vowels be blue and the consonants be red. The color contrast will help the child learn to distinguish between vowels and consonants in order to understand the principle of word formation. 
5. Arrange cubes or cards with letters around the apartment — for objects that begin with these letters. In a few days, the child will easily learn the alphabet by association: a - album, b - loaf, c - vase, etc.
6. Buy or draw tables with syllables yourself. They can be used both for memorizing the most common syllables and for word formation. Show the child one syllable, and then another, and let him make a word out of them. 
7. The easiest way to read words in which syllables are repeated: dad, mom, baba. Further complicate the task by choosing words from two different syllables: kosh-ka, za-bo, ne-bo. Then move on to longer words: so-ba-ka, ra-du-ga, po-pu-gai. 
8. While reading, make sure that the child pronounces the words correctly, stresses correctly, does not "swallow" the endings, does not skip conjunctions and prepositions. If a mistake is made, do not move on to the next word until the child reads correctly.
9. Do not force the child to pronounce the whole word. Let him first learn to read by syllables. And sound-letter analysis will help to correctly break words into syllables. Later, this skill will be useful for writing (when hyphenating words).
10. Develop meaningful reading: the child should understand every phrase read. Then interest in the context will become an additional motivation. 

*****

Whatever method of teaching reading you choose, it is important to create an atmosphere of positivity, lively interest, and involvement of the child in the process during the lesson. Then he will be happy to absorb knowledge and will soon please you with the first successes.