9 Skills Your Child Is Working On Before Learning to Read

A question I’ve been asked even more than usual lately with all of the school and preschool disruptions is “what should I be doing to help my preschooler learn to read?”  The first answer I always give is simple- “Read to them!”  Kids learn to read by being exposed to books, so carving out time each day to read with your child really is the best advice.  But how is that helping?  What skills is your child acquiring in those preschool years that set them up to be readers? 

In the preschool years, kids are acquiring “pre-reading” skills, known as “phonological awareness” skills.  Exposing children to lots of books written explicitly for kids provides them with the opportunity to learn these skills even if you don’t go out of your way to teach them.  But what are these skills?   What can we do to support our kids in acquiring these skills?

Here are the 9 phonological awareness skills that children are developing in the years leading up to when they become capable readers themselves, and some ideas on how you can help your child to develop these skills:

1.       Rhyming- this is the skill of being able to tell that two words have the same ending (e.g. do cat and bat rhyme?)  Reading lots of books with rhyming words in them helps tune your child’s ear to these words.  After lots of exposures, your child may start to be able to generate rhyming words on their own (e.g. what rhymes with lake?)

2.       Breaking words into syllables- this is the skill of being able to tell how many “parts” a word has (E.g. being able to hear that bu-tter-fly has 3 parts).  You can help your child acquire this skill by playing around with identifying how many parts are in peoples’ names, object labels, etc (e.g. how many parts does Da-ddy have?  I hear 2!  How about Mu-mmy?  I hear 2 in that one as well!  What about E-ri-ca?  Your name has 3 parts!)

3.       Syllable blending- this skill builds on the one before.  Once kids get good at segmenting syllables, see if they can blend them back together to make a whole word (e.g. What word does it make if you put these pieces together: um- bre- lla.  Yes, umbrella!)

4.       Identifying words with the same beginning sound- this is the skill of being able to tell that words such as ‘boy’ and ‘ball’ have the same beginning sound.  Try challenging your child to find words on a page in a book that start with a certain sound (e.g. I see a dog.  Do you see any other words that start with the ‘d’ sound?).  Make sure that you’re talking about sounds and not letter names when doing this kind of activity so that your child can hear you say the sound you’re looking for.  If your child is struggling, try giving them a clue (e.g. I’m thinking of a word that starts with ‘d’ that is something you can open and shut.  Yes a door!)

5.       Identifying words with the same ending sound- this skill is a step up in complexity from the one above, but works the same way.  Challenge your child to find words that end with the same sound (e.g. I see a bug.  Can you see anything else that ends with ‘g’?  Yes, a dog!)

6.       Segmenting words into individual sounds-  this is the skill whereby your child can hear the individual sounds that go into a word (e.g. what sounds can you hear in cat?  C-a-t.  I hear 3 sounds!).   Start with words that have 2 or 3 sounds in them and help your child to hear each of them by leaving a short space between each as you say them.

7.       Blending sounds- this is the skill of putting words “back together” once you’ve segmented them into their individual parts.  (E.g. B-a-t.  What word does that make?  Bat!)

8.       Manipulating the sounds within words- this is the ability to add or take away sounds from a word to make new words (e.g. what does it say if I take ‘t’ off ‘boot’?  Boo!  What does it say if I take ‘c’ off ‘cat’?  At!)

9.       Learning letter sound correspondence- believe it or not, this skill is usually the last of the phonological awareness skill to develop.  This is the skill whereby your child will learn what each of the letter sounds says (e.g. knowing that the letter “B” says ‘b’).  This can be taught by pointing out letters in books and helping them to hear the sound they make.

And there you have it!  Those are the 9 phonological awareness skills your child is working on before they learn to read.  Make learning these skills a fun add on to the reading you are already doing.  My best advice if you want to help your preschooler learn to read is still the same- spend lots of time reading with them J.

Is your child struggling with reading?  Reach out for an assessment!