How to teach my child to read and write

 Literacy is the child's first contact with formal education. In the process, she learns that studying is a stimulating and rewarding task, or, depending on the methods and explanations adopted by her educators, she learns that studying can also be a tiring, boring and unproductive task.

For this reason, it is very important that you, father, mother, or educator, know the correct methodology for literacy and organize your classes based on the right principles.

If you are looking for complete literacy material, check out our Training 1 (click here): didactic material specially developed for teaching reading and writing.

How to begin?

First, try to understand the perspective of the illiterate child. What does she think and feel when she sees a text? You can get a rough idea by doing the following exercise:

Can you say what the title of this newspaper headline is about?

Probably not. To begin to understand, someone may have to show you a related image and explain what each symbol means. The way the illiterate child sees a text is very similar. For her, initially, letters, words, and phrases are just meaningless symbols.

With that in mind, we will now present the necessary steps for complete literacy.

1) Explain the difference between letters, drawings, and symbols

At this stage, the idea is to show that letters are not the same as drawings and symbols:

Explain to the child that the letters were chosen to record our speech. Everything we want to talk about can also be written.

2) Show the reading order: from left to right

You can pick up a children's storybook and tell the child by swiping your finger over the text as you read. This will help you to realize that reading is always done from left to right.

3) Teach the alphabet and the initial letters of the words

Now that the child has a general idea of ​​what letters are and the order of reading, it's time to start teaching the alphabet. There are many activities, on the internet and in textbooks, for assembling the alphabet. Below we suggest one of them:

It is important that you place the alphabet in a place frequented by the child: the daily visualization will facilitate the memorization of the letters and the game "which word begins with ..." can be repeated several times from this visual stimulus.

Obviously, the child will not learn the 26 letters overnight. This is a slow but continuous process, always fueled by questions such as:

"The word ____ starts with what letter?"

"What word starts with the letter _____?"

The ideal is to always maintain this relationship between letter and word. Examples: “M for apple”, “E for elephant”, “C for home”. Clearly emphasize the sound of the initial letter and point to its written form whenever reading a word to the child. You can also use the video below specially prepared so that you can teach and practice the sound of each letter with your child:

4) Teach vowels and phonemes logically

The fourth step is to present the vowels (A, E, I, O, U) from games and educational activities and then join these vowels in simple syllables (consonant + vowel).

Try to start with syllables that have consonants that are easy to pronounce: “F, L, M, and S” are good examples.

Explain to the child:

When we join the letters "F" and "A", we form "FA". If we join "F" with "E", we form "FE", and so on:

FA

FAITH

FI

FO

FU

Present words formed by these syllables (KNIFE, FOCUS, PHOTO ...) and explore them through games, written and oral exercises. When reading words, always make the sound of each letter clear and request the repetition of these sounds and the writing of the corresponding letters. In this way, the child will understand that the objective of the syllables is to serve as the basis of "blocks" for the formation of words.

5) Teach the writing of the name

Even if the child's name is not so easy to write, it is important that he learns, because it is a very deep meaning: his identity.

The child at this point will feel confident that he can not only speak but write his own name.

6) Continue teaching words in texts and separately

A good activity at this stage of education is to cut the syllables the child has already learned into a paper and put them together to form words:

For example: "DA-DO", DE-DO "," LU-A "," FO-FO "," LA-DO "," FA-DA "," BE-LA "," BI-FE ", “LO-BO”, “FI-O”, “DI-A”, etc.

Show the words learned in texts and work with rhymes. You can also encourage your child to write simple sentences.

7) Teach the child to write and read the parents' names

The next step is to know how to read and write the parents' names, as these are words that also have a lot of meaning for her.

It is also interesting to teach how to read and write the name of a friend close to the child. It is a way to encourage your child to find pleasure in reading and writing, as he will be seeing, in practice, their usefulness.

8) Continue the process of forming syllables and words, slowly increasing the degree of difficulty

Gradually, you can teach more difficult combinations and longer words. At this point, always try to combine literacy learning with reading children's books.

Example of syllables and complex combinations:

TRA, TRE, TRI, TRO, TRU;

PRA, PRE, PRI, PRO, PRU;

FRA, FRE, FRI, FRO, FRU;

AN, EN, IN, ON;

AM, EM, IM, OM;

GUA, GUE, GUI.

9) Tell stories and have the child read aloud

Telling stories to the child is something you can do every day, as every child likes to hear stories.

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