Early Reading.

When I decide I’m into something, I go way into it. As a kid, my dad drilled into me that anything worth doing is worth doing right. So before diving in, I want to know everything there is to know about a topic.

This is certainly true when considering teaching my kid to read. I’ll preface this with the fact that she’s only 3 and I am in no way, shape, or form forcing reading lessons down her throat. However, I am gearing up with lots of tools in my toolbox to best help her as her interest is blossoming.

I’ve read a lot of things and have dabbled with a couple already as well. I do have a master’s degree in early education, but shamefully, as I’m sure most can relate, you lose it if you don’t use it. AKA, a lot of that stuff is gone from this noggin. I also never taught early elementary, so my focus has never been the small building blocks of reading with my students. I know lots of parents teach their kids to read with no educational background or formal plan, and it is totally possible. That’s just not me.

I’ve noticed a conversation surrounding this significant shift in reading education across the board in America to the Science of Reading. Through research and discussions with old colleagues, I’ve been wrapping my mind around this change. Essentially, it’s returning to the basics and focusing on phonemic awareness (letter sounds).

In closely examining this shift, I feel cheated as a student by the education I received. I think of myself pretty highly and proclaim I’m a smart cookie. But this crayon would be even brighter had my reading education looked different. I was raised and taught in the balanced literacy era. There were sight words and independent reading. We were told to look at words, guess, and use pictures for clues. These things aren’t “bad,” but there’s a better way to do it.

Here I am, learning new things about phonemes and reading at 29 as I prepare to teach my child. It’s embarrassing to admit, but there are times when I am circling repeatedly to make sure I understand a sound well enough to teach it. Despite how intelligent I’d argue I am, I have always been a terrible speller. That 100% goes back to my phonemic awareness and the lack of instruction I received as a kid. I just learned that each syllable in a word has a vowel sound. For me, that’s groundbreaking. How much easier would it be to figure out the spelling of a word using that knowledge? I can remember counting syllables as a kid in early elementary but not using it as a tool in my reading or writing later.

In The Science of Reading in Action by Malia Hollowell, she states data shows the depth of phonemic awareness is a better predictor of later reading achievement than an IQ test or verbal reasoning skills and that phonemic awareness is the most common factor in upper-level struggling readers. After all my research, following the Science of Reading and focusing heavily on phonemic awareness is a no-brainer.

I started our reading journey using a book called Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I like it, there’s a lot of good in it. We did maybe the first 10 lessons or so. She knew a handful of letter sounds and could even read a few words. This is an excellent resource because it’s scripted, it tells exactly what the teacher and student should be saying, and even how to immediately correct any mistakes. The lessons are also concise, which is fantastic for young, early learners. My main issue with this resource is how busy the page looks. The kid and the teacher share the same book the whole time, and all the words could distract the young reader. I will still pull from this book because I think it is a wonderful tool, and we quickly saw a lot of success when using it.

I have followed Toddlers Can Read on Instagram and TikTok, and Spencer is incredible. In following along with his posts, I couldn’t resist supporting him and continuing our journey using his sound flashcards. Thea is obsessed. We have been using those to do quick practices multiple times a day whenever she feels up to it. Then I add 2 more each time she has mastered her stack. There’s slightly conflicting information on the order to introduce letter sounds. I have taken some and left others based on the resources I’m using, but we started with m, p, s. Then, I added t and short a. We are now up to m, p, s, short a, t, b, c, h, and short o.

From what I’ve learned through the Science of Reading, I will continue to focus on phonemic awareness and put most of my energy into mastering letter sounds. But we will also spend time clapping out syllables so she connects that words have multiple sounds within them. In Teach Your Kid to Read, there are different activities where you have the kid say words slowly and then fast. Really honing in on smaller parts coming together to make one word. We will also work on rhyming with rhyming books and silly games because rhyming helps identify common word patterns and sounds. Malia Hollowell also suggested having young readers count the words in a sentence before you read aloud to them, adding to their awareness that letters and words combine to make sounds and tell stories.

This exploration also led to a search for decodable books. Decodable books are small, simple books that target a specific grapheme-phoneme skill the student is working on. This allows the reader to practice the new phoneme with tunnel vision and boosts their reading confidence as they gain the ability to recognize words. I went with Half-Pint Kids decodable books, which is totally free online with books, teaching guides, and extra activities. Nothing is a more significant motivator than success. These decodables will allow Thea to read a whole book by herself early on, making her thirst for reading unquenchable.

So that’s me and us and where we’re at in our learning-to-read journey. I know I’ve done some things right so far, and mistakes have been and will continue to be made. But our eyes and ears will remain open, and hopefully, we have a lot of fun along the way.