How to help your child learn to read

If your child has recently started school, you might be wondering how you can help them learn to read at home, or perhaps you are interested in knowing a bit more about what they are learning at school. Most parents of young children were taught to read using a different strategy to the one used today, which is why it can be hard to know what to do for the best.

Synthetic phonics is a method of teaching reading and writing in which words are broken up into their smallest units of sound or ‘phonemes’. Children learn to associate a written letter or group of letters, known as ‘graphemes’, with each phoneme. Sounds are then joined or ‘blended’ together into words for reading or, conversely, whole words are broken down or ‘segmented’ into their sounds for writing. It is the UK’s most preferred method of teaching phonics. Sounds are taught in a prescribed order starting with s, a, t, p, i, n, as this allows for the most words to be made from the start. Such as ‘sat,’ ‘tap’ and ‘pin.

For quite a lot of letters, there is the temptation to put an "er" on the end, "h", "j", "t" being a few examples. It's really important though that you keep the sounds really short, because if you think about it, when children are blending (which means putting the sounds together to make words), it won't work if all the letters end with an "er" sound. Think of "cat", with the way I was taught it when I was a child it would make sense to pronounce it "ceratter", whereas with the short whispered sounds it's far easier to blend the letters. The vowel sounds (a, e, i, u and o) can be taught as you normally say them (a as in apple, e as in elephant, i as in igloo, u as in under, o as in orange), however there are some exceptions (e.g. child) but these will be addressed in school later on. There is also a list of tricky words that do not follow the normal pronunciation of other words.

What differs now from when most of us were children, is the very short sounds that letters make. You may remember being taught "t" as a "ter" sound, now it has a very short and snappy "t" - if you whisper it, it's easier to make the sound. The two you may find particularly tricky to pronounce are I and n. With the "I" sound, pronounce as you would at the end of "Hull", more of an "ul" sound. With "n", don't be tempted to say "ner", it's very much a "n" on its own, like in "Euan". Another tricky one is "r", not "rer" as you might think, but more of a growling "rrr" sound. When you say a letter, think how it actually sounds in a word, for example "f" might come out as "fer" but in a word has a very short "f" sound, like in "fluff", if you think that "f" is said "fer" then this word would become "ferluffer".

How to help with your reading at home