Teaching Reading

XCrissCrossX

What's your best advice for teaching reading?

barnwife

Are you talking about for your 3 (almost 4 yo) yo?

If so, I'd just start talking about letters and words at every opportunity. Talk about the fact that letters makes sounds just like animals  Once LO knows the most common sound for each letter (short vowel sound for vowels and the consonant sounds), then you can start teaching CVC words

Here is a list of various phonics/beginning reading curriuculums. The National Right to Read Foundation used to have an amazing primer, but I wasn't smart enough to save it. They've redesigned the website and I can't find it now.

We will use the Veritas Press Phonics Museum. Other contenders are Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 easy lessons, Phonics Pathways, and more.

I hope some of this helps.

ETA: If you can't tell, I am a believer in using phonics to teach reading, rather than sight words/whole words. If you would prefer a whole words approach, perhaps someone else can help.

wifeofadam

I second PP advice.

We start with letter sounds first.  Then move to CVC words.  Then I introduce the difference between long and short vowels.  Then we start with a phonics program.  I've been using Lippincot Phonics workbooks with my boys and love them.  We got them at an elementary school closing sale for next to nothing and they are perfect.

We do some sight word memorization for things that don't exactly make sense phonetically and are used frequently.  I have packs of blank notecards and when those tricky words come up and are confusing my kid, I make a card for them and add them to the stack.

XCrissCrossX

I am talking about my 3yo. See, moving on to CVC words would never have occurred to me. Thank you! He has mastered most of the consonant sounds (Thanks mostly to Leap Frog's Phonics Farm) and I wasn't sure where to go next.

Mama-Bear

Barnwife, I'm also not a fan of sight word reading.  DS1 just finished K in PS and we're now pulling him to HS.  I don't feel that learning a bunch of sight words gave him a strong foundation so we're actually starting from the beginning with BJU K5 at an accelerated pace.  I don't care if we don't really start 1st grade until January, I believe that a strong foundation in reading is the foundation for all learning, if you can read, you can learn absolutely anything.

Mei&Mei

I'm teach kiddos to read every day and the most effective way I have found is a balanced approach of phonics (if basic letter sounds have been mastered but kiddo seems not quite ready for CVC words, you can do things like rhyming sounds, word families (just change the first letter hat, bat, cat, mat, rat, etc,) beginning letters to objects by sound, ending sounds, etc, ) and sight words of the very common words that can not just be sounded out. See, I, like, me, my, love, you, the, a, etc. are some good ones to start with because kiddos like to use them in their own writing early on. Find some 'emergent readers' and you'll see some focus on phonics and some on a sight word pattern. I tend to think exposure to both is important.

CiderWench

We taught my son how to read using The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading by Jessie Wise and Sarah Buffington, with a combination of Bob Books, McGuffey Readers, and the Explode the Code series.