This year, I decided to teach my son to read. He is 5 years old, in Senior Kindergarten. Friends who know me well aren’t surprised by this; I am task-oriented, organized and just a bit competitive ☺ I am also a certified teacher. I want to make one point very clear though: these are not the attributes that have led to my son’s reading success, or to my success when working with him. The reason we have been so successful is because of the program I am using, and the quality time we have spent together.
Have you ever thought about teaching your child to read? It is a daunting task. Do you start at the letter A? How do you teach vowel sounds? How do you teach homonyms…what are those again? How do you explain that sometimes the letter c says /s/, and other times it says /k/? So many questions. Where do we even start?
The program I am using addresses all of these questions. In fact, it tells the parent which words to say in order to teach their child to read! It teaches children necessary pre-reading skills such as rhyming, blending, and sound-symbol correspondences before teaching them to read words and stories. It teaches them that the letters th together make a different sound than t and h do separately. It teaches the final-e rule. And the best part? Each lesson is 20 minutes spent with your child.
If you have been following Cori for more than a minute, you’ll know that children thrive with structure, routine and predictability. Knowing what to expect and what is expected of them leads children to behave positively. This reading program turns learning to read into a success-based task that parents and children will succeed at together. It is based on taking small, predictable steps frequently over time. The child masters skills before learning new ones. They are successful in each lesson you do together. Each lesson follows the same format, which leads to confidence in reading. When a child feels confident, they are more likely to take risks to extend their skill set. For example, my son loves animals. He is reading well enough now that I have started writing a new animal fact for him each day. His motivation to learn and his confidence in reading led him to attempt to read the word crepuscular to learn about rabbits’ sleep/wake cycles. He could not yet read this word accurately, but was not deterred by his errors. He has a strong letter-sound base, and confidence in his skills and his learning. I was equally as proud of him for trying such a difficult word as I was about his self-regulation and attitude when he stumbled on such a tricky word.
Teaching him to read has an added behavioural perk: building the capacity to work at something that is not necessarily a preferred activity. Working through these lessons with success and confidence will contribute to a positive attitude towards school and school-related tasks to be completed at home. In my job, I speak to a lot of parents for whom homework is a considerable source of conflict and frustration. With this reading program, I am laying the groundwork for a constructive approach to working together and completing academic tasks in the future.
There are several rumours indicating that it is possible our children are entering a kindergarten system that may not have a certified O.C.T. teacher in the classroom. Our children may lose the classroom caps placed in the primary years. Learning to read is a skill that is imperative for success in the early years of school, and a lack of strong reading skills will have ramifications for life.
Alana Silver,
Academic Specialist & Consultant
Angus Lloyd Associates
Angus Lloyd Associates will be running workshops on how to implement this learn-to-read program on the dates below. We feel so strongly about this program that we want to teach parents how to use it with their own children. Please be in touch with us to sign up for this workshop.
We are offering the following training dates (located in mid-town Toronto):
Monday April 8: 7:00-9:00pm
Friday May 10: 12:30-2:30pm
Thursday June 6: 7:00-9:00pm
Connect with us!
Website: https://www.anguslloyd.com/teach-your-child-to-read
Email: alanna@anguslloyd.com