It’s story time in your class. Today’s book is Andrew’s Loose Tooth and you’ve just reached the point where little Andrew bites an apple and lets out a painful scream before begging his parents to help pull out his tooth, and you are faced with a choice. You can read it in a normal voice you know, just, plain — or you can ham it up, really let out a full barrelled yelp and sob the words, “Mommy, mommy please do something about this tooth! It hurts so much I can’t even eat my breakfast!”
Which do you choose?
If you’re the reserved type, you probably go for the first — the quiet, ‘read-the-words’ type of approach. And that’s okay. But while there is nothing inherently wrong with reading to children in this way, I would argue that the second option, the modesty-to-the-wolves, let-down-your-hair approach, can have a far reaching positive impact on children’s early literacy development.
In fact, there are three solid reasons why throwing propriety out the window and getting outright SILLY while reading to children will make a huge difference in their ability to read and write.
- Silly is fun, and fun is engaging.
- Silly is light, light is relaxed, relaxed is more successful.
- Silly is expressive, expressive is fluent, and fluent IS reading.
Let’s explore each in more detail.
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Reading specialists say that phonemic awareness is an ability to “hear and manipulate sounds in spoken language.” Okay, sure. But for most people this is a pretty cryptic definition. What does one do while “hearing and manipulating” phonemes? What, exactly, does that entail?
Below is a list of what many researchers agree are the 4 most important phonemic awareness skills. A child who can do each of these is well on his or her way to becoming an effective reader.
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Helping young children master literacy skills hinges on an ability to make those skills fun and relevant. If we can find ways to integrate teaching with something that children already love, the child’s enjoyment of the activity will do half the work for us.
This article discusses one of the best ways parents and I have discovered to integrate learning letters and sounds into daily home life: through cooking.
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Decoding is the act of systematically turning written words into spoken words by matching written letter or letter-clusters to oral sounds. Students must be able to decode unknown words while reading. There are several different ways to do this: letter-by-letter (phoneme) decoding, pattern decoding, and decoding by analogy. Although all three are powerful skills, none of them comes “naturally.” Decoding must be directly taught in order for students to learn how to read.
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