Are you one of those parents who often complains to yourself, “Why is my child having such a hard time reading?” You may not know it, but almost 40% of children face the same problem. The reasons are many and varied. Sometimes children have a disability that makes it hard for them to learn to read. Others arrive at school without the basic literacy background they need to become proficient readers.
With early help, most reading problems can be resolved, but many parents don’t realize it or choose to ignore it altogether. This would suggest that by enrolling the child in a primary school, the parents have absolved themselves of any additional responsibility for the child’s academic progress.
This turns out to be counterproductive and unfortunate. Few people know that a child is ready to learn to read when he begins to speak. And this window of opportunity is so short that if a child is not given the proper opportunity and cannot read at any proficiency level by grade 3, in most cases, the chances of catching up will be non-existent. According to the landmark study by Hart and Risley, there is a well-established correlation between prior knowledge and reading comprehension. Students who have it, succeed. Students who don’t simply fail, and the differences are identifiable from the age of 3.
This often results in a loss of self-esteem and behavioral problems. As children grow older, many of them drop out of school, and of those who do manage to graduate from high school, only 2% of students gain admission to a four-year course at university.
Nearly a decade after Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act with the goal of achieving 100% proficiency in Math and Reading, most states have achieved less than 30% proficiency. Not surprisingly, 68% of all 8th graders couldn’t even meet their grade level reading standards.
This is why the importance of early childhood education is steadily gaining recognition under the Obama administration. And, as a result, many public and private schools are offering pre-kindergarten (preschool) as part of the elementary school experience. However, this has yet to alter the fact that more than 1.2 million students will drop out of school this year. This gives an average of 6,000 children who simply say “No” to higher education each school day.
Of course, you do not want to be part of this scenario. In other words, regardless of time or money constraints, you’ve set your sights high and will do what’s best for your child.
So where and when should a parent start developing preschool reading tutoring skills and teaching the child how to learn to read? For starters, have you considered that once your baby is old enough you can put him on your lap and start reading nursery rhymes to him? At this stage the child is very receptive; a book is like a toy and listening to you read, a way of learning.
The next step is to educate yourself personally to put your child on the right learning path. Fortunately, this will cost you little in terms of time and money.
With English being a widely spoken language, hundreds of research studies from around the world will show you that phonics is the best way to teach children to read. This covers people with dyslexia (a problem identifying alphabets) and other learning disabilities.
By the way, English is a phonetic language. Since children learn to speak by imitating sounds and combining them to form words, learning to read through phonetics has given excellent results. Phonemes, the smallest units that make up spoken language, combine to form words and syllables, and phonemic awareness is the foundation of spelling and word recognition skills.
Today, all countries that have a phonetic language teach reading through phonetics. The one exception is the US, which adopted the whole word approach to teaching reading eighty years ago. This method relies more on memorizing words (and some guesswork) than on what the words actually sound like. Although in the early days this may have had its merit; in the current context it is a disaster.
With higher expectations of new entrants to school than curricula suggest, and a workforce that is 80% teachers ill-equipped to give your children the opportunity they deserve, your only option is to pick a good reading manual and give it give your child a safe start by teaching him at home.
Remember, no matter how indifferent or full of holes a system may be, it’s up to you to protect your child. In your future lie all your hopes and aspirations.