Skills Children Need to Be Readers By Third Grade

#1 Phonemic Awareness
By Christianne Meneses Jacobs


Your child will hear thousand of words before they see those words in print. Every word is a series of sounds that we put together to make a word. The concept of knowing the sounds in spoken words is called phonemic awareness.

Parents can start working with phonemic awareness when the child is a baby. Say the word cat. Say it again slowly. Stretch each sound so your child can hear it. C- A –T. Your child will be on his/her way to become a good reader when they can tell all those sounds apart. They need to hear that the sounds go together to make a word.

Then play another game by substituting the beginning sounds: cat, bat, fat, hat, rat, sat. All of these words sound the same, only the beginning sounds is different and that one letter makes a big difference when they see the words printed on a page.

Play with the sounds in all parts of a word: beginning, middle and end. For example, how are these words different? Job, joy and jog. Only the ending sound is different. Listen to rhyming words in songs, poems and rap music.

These exercises do not take a lot of time but make a huge difference in the success your child will have in school.