Reading Skills

 Phonics - Phonics is the process of mapping the sounds in words to written letters. This is one of the earliest reading skills children should develop as it introduces them to the link between sounds. 

Phonemic Awareness - Children develop phonemic awareness by listening to sounds with syllables and words. Every word in the English language is made up of a combination of individual units of sound, known as phonemes. For example, the word ‘crab’ is made up of four individual units of sound; c/r/a/b. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify and manipulate these individual units of sound. It is one of the most fundamental skills children need to acquire in order to learn how to read. By playing word games, engaging in language play, rhyming, and simply listening to a parent read to them, your child can develop phonemic awareness from an early age.

Vocabulary - Having an ever-increasing vocabulary is a fundamental part of academic and reading success. The more words we know, the better we become at reading and understanding the texts that we read. Every child approaches reading with varying levels of ability. The larger a child’s speaking and listening vocabulary, the more words they will be able to add to their reading and writing vocabularies with relative ease. Some of the most fundamental words that a child will learn when starting to read are sight words. These high frequency sight words such as ‘on’,’i’,’the’,’is’, and ‘be’.

Fluency - There is a range of different skills that build reading fluency in young children. These include strong phonic decoding skills, an expanding bank of high frequency words recognised at sight, and the amount of time that children spend reading books at an appropriate level. The more children read, the better they are at understanding and reading with speed and accuracy.

Reading Comprehension - Great readers are deeply immersed in the stories they read. They visualise the characters, they hear the dialogue in their heads, and they imagine details beyond the borders of the page. Great readers think about what is happening in a story and share the emotional journey of the characters.In nonfiction books, great readers gain new information, increase their vocabulary, and link what they read with other sources of information in order to deepen their level of understanding of new concepts and topics.

Credit - https://readingeggs.co.nz/articles/2016/06/10/five-components-of-reading/