Reading For Sure
THE 'PROVEN SYSTEM' FOR READING ENGLISH
The most important thing about literacy teaching is that its beginning does not coincide with the first day in Grade 1.
There are many steps to learning to read and they begin in the womb when the unborn child hears the sounds of the human voice. The child learns to repeat speech sounds that are used in the alphabet of their mother tongue. The next stage is joining the sounds that belong to letter shapes to make the words we speak.
This is where many children get stuck They know the sound for 'c' and for 'a' and for 't' but they cannot combine them into a continuous sound which says the word 'cat'.
If we don't help children over this sticking point by the time they are six, they are likely to simply guess words. And if they are not good at guessing? They just look at pictures or find every excuse in the book for avoiding reading! So they are unlikely to learn to read.
There is a simple way of preventing the risk of reading difficulty and to actually increase the chances for good reading skill in the non-problematic reader. By the time the child is six we can begin to teach reading by connecting the printed letter to the sounds in speech.
The Reading for Sure method has shown that children can learn to read without pictures by introducing the pupil to the excitement of each alphabet letter on its own and then in combination with other letters to make the words we speak. The phonics primer FAT CAT SAM does this in the simplest way by joining each consonant with only the one vowel to make a word. Words soon become sentences which are woven into a story about a delightful ginger cat. It is the gate to real reading.
Find out more about FAT CAT SAM and what to do if your child is not ready for reading by clicking on PRODUCTS.
The phonics primer