Reading to your child is one of the most important things you can do to help foster a life-long love of reading. Studies show that reading to your child is an essential component in providing a future academic advantage. These reading tips will encourage children of all ages to love reading and become lifelong readers!

Research has identified five skills that are essential for learning to read:

1. Phonemic Awareness: Being able to notice, understand, and work with the sounds in words.
2. Phonics: A method of teaching reading, based on sounding out letters to read words.
3. Fluency: Being able to read accurately and quickly.
4. Vocabulary: Knowing what words mean when we hear and read them levitra cijena.
5. Text Comprehension: Truly understanding what is read.

As a parent or caregiver, you play a critical role in helping children not only learn to read but develop a life-long love of reading. You can make reading a part of your child’s life by clicking on the links below and following the tips that are just right for your child’s age.

Developed by leading educators based on research on how children learn to read, each session takes just 20 minutes or less. Discover how more than 3 million children are getting better grades

Learn to read new words
by watching the DVD.

Practice the new sound combinations in the workbook levitra cijena.

Put it all together with stories using words just learned.

The Complete Learn to Read
Package for Kids Age 3-8
Everything your child needs to succeed

• 8 DVDs & Workbooks, 36 Storybooks
• 4 Sets of Flashcards, 8 sets of stickers
• Full online access to my.hookedonphonics.com
• Storage and Display Box

Phonics is a method of teaching reading, based on sounding out letters to read words. Let’s say that you learn the letter i makes the /i/ sound, and that the letter t makes the /t/ sound. And when you read these sounds together, /i/ /t/, you have it. You’ve just used phonics to read the word it.

Rag Minibook Activity

Here’s an easy activity you can do with your child using our phonics teaching method. In just 20 minutes, your child will be able to read a book all by himself by playing an easy flash card game and creating our free Learn to Read Minibook.

How to get started:

1. Make one flash card for each of the letters: r, a, g, s, d, c, t, p, n, and w, for a total of 10 cards. You can use index cards or just cut up a piece of plain paper.
2. Lay them on the table.
3. Help your child to put the cards together that form the words rag, sad, cat, pat, can, and wag. Call out the name of each letter and the sound it makes as you push the cards together.
4. Do this a few times until your child can do it all by himself.

Then print out our free mini-book:

Learn to Read Minibook Printable

To Assemble the Minibook:

1. Cut each page in half by cutting on the dotted line.
2. Stack all of the pages together with the cover on the front, followed by page 1, page 2, etc., until all of the pages are in order. Do not include the instructions.
3. Staple along the left side of the pages.
4. Finish the book by tracing all of the words with dotted lines.
5. Have your child color all of the pages.
6. Your child has already learned to read each word by playing the flash card game, so he is ready to read the book he just made all by himself!

Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read is full of activities just like this one, plus story books, workbooks, online games, flashcards, and much, much more. Check it out here.

Although there are no quick ways to teach children to read…

…it doesn’t have to be a difficult task. We’ll outline the basic skills children must master in order to learn to read and reading activities that provide meaningful practice.

The National Reading Panel’s (NPR) 2000 report identified five areas of reading instruction that must be addressed in order to teach children to read:

1. Phonemic Awareness: Being able to notice, understand, and work with the sounds in words.
2. Phonics: A method of teaching reading, based on sounding out letters to read words.
3. Fluency: Being able to read accurately and quickly.
4. Vocabulary: Knowing what words mean when we hear and read them.
5. Text Comprehension: Truly understanding what is read.

Today, let’s focus first on reading activities to build phonemic awareness.

How can I help my child gain phonemic awareness?

There are many activities that can help parents accomplish this task. Here are two simple ones that you can do with your child without having to buy, make, or read anything (other than this post!).

NOTE: When you see a letter between slashes, /a/, it represents the sound of the letter. When you see a letter in bold, a, it represents the name of the letter.

Activity 1:

Parent: Listen to this word: cat. One more time: cat. /k/ /a/ /t/. Can you say the word?
Child: cat.
Parent: Good job! Now can you say the sounds? /k/ /a/ /t/.
(If your child makes an error, be positive–“Good try! That was pretty close! You almost got it!”–and ask him to try again.)
Child: /k/ /a/ /t/.
Parent: That was great! Now write each letter for the word cat. Write the letter that makes this sound /k/ (allow your child to write the letter c); /a/ (allow your child to write the letter a); /t/ (allow your child to write the letter t).
Child: /k/ (child writes letter c); /a/ (child writes letter a); /t/ (child writes letter t); cat.
Parent: You said AND wrote the word cat. You are so smart! (Now try more words like fan, sad, bat, pig, pen, and box.)

Activity 2:

Watch this video with your child. Listen to the narrator and follow the prompts:

Okay, a show of hands: How many of you remember the Hooked on Phonics commercial from the 90s? The one with the little red-headed kid chirping, “Hooked on Phonics worked for me!” Okay, now how many of you learned to READ using Hooked on Phonics? Do you remember sitting down with your cassettes and your tape player doing the lessons, workbook in hand? Or were you, like me, part of the older generation that grew up during the time of the dinosaurs and the 8-track tape players? (I know. I’m totally dating myself!)

I Had My Doubts

Though I was too old for Hooked on Phonics, I decided to use it with my little boy. At 5 1/2 he literally wasn’t able to sound out words at all.  I was skeptical at first because I was raised during the Whole-Language Approach toward reading and believed that the Phonetic Approach would make my kid a poor speller. (I was wrong. In 5th grade, he’s actually a terrific speller in addition to being a good reader.)

Like Mother, Like Daughter

I have to say, though, I was privileged to hear, first hand, an incredible story of Olga, a loving mother who was determined not to give up on her daughter, and a young girl who was determined not to give up on herself. For years, Olga reached out to us because she wanted others to benefit from her experiences. When we finally reached her, here is the story she shared with us:

Are you a grown-up Hooked on Phonics kid? Share your story with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

#TBTHookedonPhonics  #HookedonPhonicsWorkedforMe

While reading through the messages on the Hooked on Phonics Facebook page this morning, I came across this one from Lindsey about her 3-year-old son, Ben, who can read CHAPTER BOOKS. Yes, you read that right! Lindsey graciously agreed to let me share her Hooked on Phonics success story and this adorable video with you.

“I just wanted to let you know what an amazing program you have. My son successfully completed your Hooked on Phonics Pre-K through Second Grade Learn to Read program at 2 years old, just over one year ago. This program was so fun for my son, with learning the alphabet and letter sounds up to learning to read, with the program’s easy and straightforward progression.

“I started reading to my son from birth and he has loved reading ever since. His love of reading encouraged me to invest in this product and teach him to read shortly after he turned 1. He is now 3. He still loves to read and can read for hours all by himself, anything from simple books to beginning chapter books. I love watching his imagination expand as he reads aloud, smiling and learning. Thank you for a wonderful product that parents and children can share to learn and bond at an early age.

“Here are a few pictures of him reading and a short video. His name is Ben and he turned 3 in July. He finished the second grade learn to read in September 2014. Again thank you for such an amazing product.”

Happy Reading!

Hooked on Phonics was developed by literacy experts and has continually evolved through the years using current research on the most effective methods for teaching children how to read.

Becoming a Nation of Readers

In response to the National Institute of Education’s landmark report, Becoming a Nation of Readers: The Report of the National Commission on Reading, Hooked on Phonics took to heart the committee’s conclusions in creating its reading programs. Specifically, that:

1. 1. Parents play an important role in laying the foundations of learning to read.
   2. Parents have an obligation to support their children’s continued growth as readers.
   3. Kindergarten programs should stress oral language and writing as well as the beginning steps of reading.
   4. Phonics instruction improves children’s ability to identify words.
   5. Reading primers should be both interesting, comprehensible, and instructive.
   6. Both oral and silent reading are important for the beginner.

The Hooked on Phonics White Paper outlines the specific ways in which the Commissions’ recommendations were used to develop and refine Hooked on Phonics’ reading programs.

COMMON CORE

The reading programs from Hooked on Phonics also provide systematic instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness, aligning it with Common Core Reading Foundational Skills in use across the United States.

The specific Common Core Reading Skills Hooked on Phonics addresses are:

Print Concepts

Understanding the organization and basic features of print.

Phonological Awareness

Demonstrating an understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).

Phonics and Word Recognition

• The basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary sound or many of the most frequent sounds for each consonant.
• Being able to associate the long and short sounds with the common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels.
• Reading common high-frequency words by sight.
• Being able to distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying the sounds of the letters that differ.

National Institute of Education (1985), Becoming a Nation of Readers: The Report of the National Commission on Reading. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education

Parent-teacher conferences bring to mind images of leading my mom through the familiar halls of my school, introducing her to my teachers, waiting for the inevitable  report: “Julie’s doing well in school, but she’d do so much better if she didn’t TALK so much in class.” I was always puzzled. Wasn’t that what school was FOR? To share your feelings on the latest episode of the Brady Bunch and play Cat’s Cradle under your desk with your best friend while stuffing wads of Bubble Yum in your mouth?

Unlike parents nowadays, my parents didn’t have an email relationship with my teachers. Back in the “Stone Age,” parents relied on phone calls, face-to-face meetings, and hand-written notes pinned to our coats with straight pins (of all things!), which inevitably stabbed you in the cheek by the time the note reached its intended recipient.

It’s All About Me—I Mean—My Kid

Now, as a parent of two elementary-age children, parent-teacher conferences take on a whole new meaning for me. In some respects, I feel like my kids’ report card grades are a reflection of me and my husband (although he would probably disagree with that statement) and how we’re doing as parents. I know that’s ridiculous because children are their own people and it’s just my mommy guilt (okay, with a touch of narcissism) coming through. I do believe my job as a parent is to help my children learn to be responsible for themselves and take pride in doing a good job for its own sake, rather than to make someone else happy. But that’s often easier said than done, especially when your kids are little. And, of course, many times there are extenuating circumstances preventing your child from learning optimally.

Fortunately, our daughter has taken to reading like a fish to water. However, as much as I love her 3^rdgrade teacher, I think we all made a mistake. At the beginning of the year, she told Katie that she was the best reader in the class. While that made us proud, it also seemed to give Katie permission to take it easy and coast a bit. As a result, at Katie’s recent conference, her teacher told us that Katie was losing ground compared to her classmates and her grades went down. She’s also spending too much time “chit-chatting with her friends during class.” Hmmm . . . I wonder where she gets that?

Recently, I read about a study that showed that children who were praised for “working hard” did better in school than those who were praised for being “smart.” Researchers found that praising a child’s BEHAVIOR (studying, thinking, discussing, etc.) positively affects school outcomes more than telling children that they’re intelligent. It’s because being “smart” is looked at as a fixed characteristic—you either ARE or you AREN’T. It can’t be changed. So why bother studying?

After reading this research, and seeing it first hand with our daughter, my husband and I decided to start my daughter on the next Hooked on Phonics reading program, Master Reader. We’re hoping that this and the Reading Pro app will make it more fun for her to work on improving her fluency, comprehension, and flow. Now, all I have to do is figure out how to get her friends to come over and chit-chat about reading (instead of Pokemon) at the same time, then I’ll have the perfect solution. I’ve got it: a kids’ book club! As long as food and friends are part of the equation, it’s sure to work for me—I mean!—HER.

How did your child do on his last report card? What feelings did it bring up for you as a parent?

Updated July 2017: The Master Reader Program and Reading Pro app are no longer available for purchase.

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Wanikka from Sandviks Publishing on Vimeo.