View Full Version : Tips for parents to help children read & write English in Tenerife
A quick guide for parents who need to help their child develop reading skills.
I wrote these articles for a local newspaper a couple of years ago, and have them on our website for parents to share.
Please contact me if you have any questions as I would be happy to help :D
I am bringing this set of articles to your notice again to support new parents.
Reading Help
Let’s start at the very beginning – the tools of any language are the shapes that are used to code the sounds made with our mouths, into symbols on paper.
The English alphabet uses 26 shapes we call letters, but to read and write we need more sound codes than we have letters, so we have to learn combinations of letters we call ‘blends’.
Children learning their letters in a Spanish school have an advantage in that once they have learnt each Spanish letter sound, the codes in Spanish mainly stays the same for shape & letter.
But children learning to read in English, need to be helped to learn the phonics system, that is necessary to read their natural language. Some children are lucky and they seem to learn to read without any input at all, but for most children, it is a skill that needs to be taught.
Before children go to school, many parents teach them to say their alphabet. You could make that learning more effective by helping your child identify each letter shape individually e,g by pointing at it or handing you a plastic letter, as they learn the alphabet. That way each word becomes linked with the correct shape. Some experts say learn the shape with the sound (phonics) and others like to teach the name of each letter first. The UK schools are going all out for a phonic approach, but every child is different and many techniques can be used. The difficulty is in finding the one that works best for your child. Sometimes a specialist teacher may help you to overcome any long term difficulties.
Letter shapes are everywhere, and children will need to know that there are different shapes for the same letter, and although using lower case letters for beginner readers is good, they do need to know about the various styles of print. Playing ‘I-spy’ letters from their names on adverts and in books, is a good way, or making a collection of a single letter from magazines & newspapers and sticking them onto a page. An alphabet book could be made in this way.
Knowing the right order of the alphabet will be an important part of the skills a child needs all through his life – as adults, we use it for finding information from directories & storing information. For instance our mobile phone will have contact details stored alphabetically, so it’s a skill that will always be useful. Play games, asking which letter comes next or in front of a certain letter. This helps a child ‘know’ where a letter is in the alphabet without having to recite the whole thing to find it! Get some magnetic letters and get the child to put them in order – good fun to race the clock and see how fast it can be done! Match the lowercase with the capitals and there is another race!
Tricky vowels!
a e i o u – these five letters – the vowels – are a main key to reading and writing English. Most words contain one or more of these letters, in various combinations and patterns, and they all have rules which tell you how they should sound when you pronounce the words. Unfortunately there are about as many rules as there are combinations!
The first thing to be sure of is that the child knows the shape and the names of every letter of the alphabet, as well as the sound it usually makes. If you are not sure of the correct sound, there are many sites on the web, books like Jolly Phonics or Letterland, or you could ask for help from an Early Years teacher.
The vowels can easily get muddled up when they are being learnt. I can particularly testify to that, now I am learning Spanish, because the vowels are ‘back to front’ as far as I am concerned! The letters don’t ‘say’ what I am expecting them to, so I am on a relearning curve!
Many children with learning and spelling difficulties in later life did not fully learn these letter sounds in their first lessons. They may have been ill, missed school for some reason or just not understood fully – and then they never quite ‘get it’ later. The ‘phonic’ strategy is just learning how to use an agreed code to put the combination of sounds onto a page as in writing, and to decode that same information by reading, instead of transferring the information by voice.
When I complete an assessment of reading progress with anybody, I always check to see if the student has these basic understandings. I see if they know that the alphabet is split into two main groups - ‘vowels’ and ‘consonants’ (all the letters that are not vowels).
As parents you may have seen the initials CVC when studying information about children’s reading skills. CVC refers to the three letter words that are made up with simple sounds – consonant – vowel – consonant – like c-a-t; m-a-n. Each letter is sounded out singly and then they are blended together. Early development of such ‘word building’ strategies is a huge part of the work involved in learning to read and children do need to understand that there are three parts to these early words – a first (initial) sound; a last (final) sound, and a middle (medial) sound. (Later on they will use this skill to build bigger words.)
Because of understanding about first, second and last, it is important that children learn about reading direction, as many children learning to read will start from a letter they recognise anywhere in the word! Check that your child knows that reading starts from the left hand side and travels across the page to the right hand side. It seems obvious to anyone who already knows, but without this major piece of information, the idea of letters coming first, middle or last does not make sense! It is not a ‘natural’ skill or every language would start in the same place and use the same reading direction – unlike, for example Arabic or Chinese, which have different reading direction rules!
Sight Words
When children start to learn to read in school in the UK they are usually taught phonics - how letters sound - alongside a set of high frequency words. This first set of 45 words are the ones that everyone uses the most and include the ‘little words’ and words that defy attempts to build them. The children are expected to learn to recognise them as soon as they see them, and flash cards are a useful tool for developing this instant ‘sight recognition’. I often explain to the children that it is like taking a photo of the word with their minds and being able to instantly remember what the picture ‘says’.
This is the list of the 45 High Frequency words that children are asked to recognise by the time they have reached the end of their first year in school.
I, a, am, at, go, he, is, it, in, me, my, no, of, on, to, up, we, all, and, are, big, cat, can, dad, day, dog, for, get, mum, see, she, the, was, yes, you, away, come, like, look, play, said, they, this, went, going.
You could write each word on a separate piece of card or paper, and help the child to recognise each one as quickly as possible. This is usually done with a few words each time until all the words can be ‘seen’ & ‘said’ instantly. Some of the words are easier to remember than others e.g. mum or dad, because they have a picture to associate them with in your mind. In fact, many longer & more complicated words are actually easier to remember because the mind can ‘see’ what the word represents. Lots of even very young children can soon recognise a word like ‘elephant’ because they can ‘see’ it in their mind. The little words are particularly tricky as it is so easy to read them in the wrong direction or to muddle up their meaning eg me / my. You could make two or more sets of the words on the list and play a game of snap with the words, or pin the words to your fridge with magnets. Another game you could play, is a kind of treasure hunt, where you hide a few words around the room and then give the child a duplicate word and ask them to find the matching word. A small reward (for me it would be chocolate – but you would know what’s best) could be given for each correct match!
Older children might like to work for a reward at the end of the task of learning the list of words, and could earn points along the way for each word you were certain they knew. The treat does not have to be expensive but something discussed between parent & child. As the children gain confidence the High Frequency word list grows with the addition of another 159 words. Apparently we all use these words nearly all the time, and with this set under our belts we can manage to understand a great deal of the written world around us. There are many strategies that are used to get the meaning of the marks on the page into the minds of the reader, and even when children can decode the words – they can’t always make sense of them.
Reading for Meaning.
Once we can decode the letters and make all the right sounds, it doesn’t mean that we are reading! Understanding what the combined sounds mean is the next step in the process. Comprehension of language is another complex skill and begins with understanding the language that we hear – being able to follow instructions, listening to what another person has to say and using facial and verbal clues to ‘read’ the situation correctly to help us make sense of what they are saying. Once the words are on paper there are other ways in which we can learn to understand what has been written.
We are helped in our reading by knowing the rules of GRAMMAR, SPELLING & PUNCTUATION. We also know that what is being talked about – the CONTEXT - can alter the meaning of a word. GRAMMAR is the term given to the rules that we use to organise language to help us make sense of it. Many parents & grandparents had less training in grammar than children get today from a very early age, and so it needs some explanation.
A SENTENCE is a group of words that make sense, and contains at least one verb. The main rules in English give us a structure where there is a subject of the sentence – who or what is being talked about, then an action word to tell the reader what is happening, followed by more information about the subject or the action. NOUNS are the names of people, animals, places and things. These are the labels that identify the world for us.
Special nouns, such as names of people or places are given CAPITAL LETTERS.
VERBS are the words we use for actions, to tell everyone what is happening. The tense of a verb tells us if the event happened in the PAST, is happening in the PRESENT, or will be happening in the FUTURE.
ADJECTIVES make the world a more interesting place by giving more information about the nouns. SPELLING does make a difference to accurate communication, because many words sound the same but mean something completely different, depending on how they are spelt.
PUNCTUATION is the use of special marks which help to make sure that the words on the paper are actually saying what we meant to write! Full stops, exclamation and question marks show where a sentence ends. A capital letter is used to show the beginning of the next sentence. Commas are often used to split a sentence up, acting as a pause to help when reading out loud. Once a writer wants to use more complicated sentences, then there are more punctuation marks to learn about, to give the writer a chance to communicate even more effectively. CONTEXT CLUES help us to understand meaning because we know what the writer is telling us about and that helps us to make sense of the writing more quickly. Very often when an unfamiliar word pops up in a sentence, the reader can work it out from the words around it.
A quick guide for parents who need to help their child develop reading skills.
I wrote these articles for a local newspaper a couple of years ago, and have them on our website for parents to share.
Please contact me if you have any questions as I would be happy to help :D
Suggest you'd do as well with a course for the parents!!
Added after 7 minutes:
Brilliant thread. We'll use a lot of these to aid us in teaching the twins, as they go to Spanish school and we supplement that with english and Spanish in the house, but we're convinced that as they grow up the English will be more of a challenge than Spanish, if anything simply because it is moredifficult to learn. The rules in Spanish are simpler and have fewer exceptions.
Keep posting MrsTT
Margaretta
30-08-2011, 21:56
Mrs TT this is brilliant and so necessary!
If I may, I would like to go back even further as maybe you have done elsewhere. The thing is, when I was expecting my baby we went on a course which taught us all about contractions, the birth canal, nappies and feeding but nothing about educating your baby! Babies and toddlers learn very quickly; I think they are like sponges and soak up so much at that age! Smiling a lot at your baby will teach him to smile and it's partly a reflex action too. Showing babies pictures e.g. of a rabbit, a ball etc and repeating the names slowly and carefully night after night will awaken them to names and then having a short word below each one will begin the familiarity of picture clues. We found that our daughter loved her bath books and wanted us to go through one each night with her until she could say the name of the picture then predict the picture on the next page. When familiar we would buy her a slightly more difficult one and so on. At the age of three and a half she was copying the letters for 'hen' and 'cat' in the bath bubbles, on a sandy beach, with pastry and on a Magnadoodle (remember them?) No computers at the time and I honestly don't think it's the best way to learn at this early stage but that is a personal opinion.
When we were out we would look at signs such as ASDA, TESCO, STOP and I would just say the words and point. No I wasn't at all a pushy Mum but it is important to talk to babies and toddlers, show them things, say the names and......... repetition is all!
When you read the picture book or simple story make sure your little one can see the pages and tell him or her about them. Toddlers like to touch the pages and tactile books are really useful for developing the sense of touch and a feeling for shapes. Do discard the book if your toddler is not enjoying it. When able let them select and remember that the attention span is very short. My daughter couldn't read when she started school but she did recognise some words and was ready to read. Within the first term, with all the things suggested by Mrs. TT she had mastered a number of two and three-letter words and read a three word sentence, the beginnings of reading!
Comma Capers!
You will remember that I told you that PUNCTUATION is the use of special marks which help to make sure that the words on the paper are actually saying what we meant to write! Full stops, exclamation and question marks show where a sentence ends. A capital letter is used to show the beginning of the next sentence. Commas are often used to split a sentence up, acting as a pause to help when reading out loud.
The comma is the name we give to the shape that looks a bit like a tadpole! It sits on the writing line at the end of a word, and can show where the writer intended the reader to pause and take breath. The comma is also used when describing things and writing things in a list. A beautiful,new, red car will have commas separating the adjectives that describe the car. Not, you will notice, after the last one in the list. (This use of two commas adds words to the sentence as if they were in brackets.)
But the comma shape is used in other punctuation and moves up in the world! To show that it is doing different jobs, it is given new names.
APOSTROPHE is the name given to a single flying comma inserted at the level of the tallest letters. It is used to show that something belongs to someone. e.g. The toy belongs to the girl – it is the girl’s toy.If the thing belongs to more than one person then the apostrophe is placed after the s – e.g. The toys belong to the girls - they are the girls’ toys.
It is NEVER used when talking about PLURAL NOUNS.
(More about SINGULAR & PLURAL in a future article.)
The apostrophe is also used when we want to shorten words. It is called a contraction. So I am = I’m, I will = I’ll, do not = don’t, they will = they’ll. Notice how the punctuation mark used for the apostrophe does not sit on the writing line, but the commas used to separate the list do.
The comma shape has one last trick to perform as a punctuation mark. It doubles up, copies itself and then turns upside down! Then it is used to show the reader what someone is actually saying in the text they are reading, and becomes known as SPEECH MARKS.
In school I was taught to remember 66 and 99 - 66 in the air at the start of what was said and 99 at the end to let you know they had finished speaking. e.g. “Hello everybody,” said Tenerife Teddy. The speech marks tell you exactly what the character said. In modern printing you will see that the shape is more like a couple of slanted lines than the curly comma shapes I was taught to write.
When a piece of text is quoted and rewritten, a single QUOTATION MARK is placed at each end to show that the material has come from elsewhere. e.g Winston Churchill said about the Battle of Britain that ‘ Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.’
When you are reading with your child, and a child has gained some confidence at decoding the words, it is useful to look out for the punctuation marks in the text, to help understand what the text is saying. See if you can spot the commas doing different jobs, and taking up special positions!
More about word building – syllables.
When children first begin to learn to read, the words are kept short and usually contain one syllable (chunk of sound). This is because the child needs to build up a phonic (sound) system to decode the shapes on the page, into words that can be spoken. Once they have developed the skill to use the phonic alphabet to build (encode) and read (decode) words with simple CVC (consonant – vowel – consonant) patterns, then strategies involving groups of letters can be introduced.
With an understanding of word patterns in their grasp, longer more complicated words can be introduced. This depends on the child knowing about the vowels, A E I O U and their importance to all words.
As I said earlier, syllables are chunks of sound - the beats to a word. So a single syllable word will have just one beat - like - it /cat/ house /planes – the number of letters in the word is not what we are looking at, it is the rhythm of the word.
A good exercise is to use familiar objects around the house and garden and listen and count the beats in each word.
Tel/e/vis/ion = four beats; ov/en = two beats; chair = one beat; or to use favourite animals like el/e/phant, cro/cod/ile and ty/ran/o/sau/rus. Even names can be a great source of fun when seeing who has the name with the most syllables in the whole family!
Every syllable contains one of the vowels or a Y, and a teacher friend of mine calls the chunks ‘vowel sandwiches’. By looking for the vowels, you can see where the breaks come for each syllable, and you can help your child to put in the break marks before attempting even the longest words ! This will not only help with reading these words, but also with spelling them!
Have a go at these: fundamental (4); hospital (3); butterfly (3); swimming (2); extraordinary(5). Remember to count the vowels and that tells you how many syllables there should be!
Thought it was the right time of year to dust this post off for any new parents out there!
- - - - - - - - - - merged double post - - - - - - - - - -
Suggest you'd do as well with a course for the parents!!
Added after 7 minutes:
Brilliant thread. We'll use a lot of these to aid us in teaching the twins, as they go to Spanish school and we supplement that with english and Spanish in the house, but we're convinced that as they grow up the English will be more of a challenge than Spanish, if anything simply because it is moredifficult to learn. The rules in Spanish are simpler and have fewer exceptions.
Keep posting MrsTT
Is there a demand for parental course? Now I have the centre it is a possibility if there were enough interest? I used to present evenings for parents on reading, writing and maths skills at the start of the new year in my schools in UK.
KirstyJay
16-08-2012, 20:53
Suggest you'd do as well with a course for the parents!!
Thought it was the right time of year to dust this post off for any new parents out there!
Is there a demand for parental course? Now I have the centre it is a possibility if there were enough interest? I used to present evenings for parents on reading, writing and maths skills at the start of the new year in my schools in UK.
The problem with most English people, let alone parents, is that grammar is not really taught 'to speak of' in British education any more, and as such, many Brits do not even understand how their own language functions in order to teach it.
Yes, we all speak it, but ask many parent to tell you the difference between the present perfect and the past simple, and they look at you with a blank, whereas the majority of 'foreign' language learners, learn the grammar as par for the course.
When I did my CELTA, the two foreign girls that were doing the course actually found the grammar section easier than us natives, because that was the way they learnt our language. I find it saddening that it's not taught that way any more.
Not only that, as a Brit learning Spanish, I find it a hell of a lot easier to learn and understand Spanish now, after studying my own grammar, knowing how my own language functions, as the grammar is not actually that dissimilar. ;)
We do our children a disservice in the UK by not teaching them the basics of their own language, and as adults, we become xenophobes, because we are not able (if willing) to learn other languages.
I agree with Kirsty. I certainly don't remember being taught grammar skills in my English lessons, not even in my grammar school. French, Latin & German grammar but not conjugating English verbs! Expressing and using the language but not how it was structured. At the end of the 1960s I think I thought that that was something that you studied at university.
The national curriculum has addressed a lot of holes since 1988 and children are taught more about the structure these days, in fact next year the SATs test at 11 will focus more heavily than ever on checking on the children's ability to use and knowledge of grammar, punctuation and spelling accuracy.
However, I was thinking more of showing parents how to help their children to learn, rather than teach them grammar. The new parents in my UK school where I was Head seemed to appreciate that when their children started in Reception, and often other parents would come along, to be able to help with their children's homework more effectively.
I hope that people continue to find these pages helpful.
TenerifeTeddy
14-08-2013, 12:02
I have recently been asked for information on helping children to learn to read and write in English so I have told them about this post here on the forum.
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