If your kindergartener is learning to read, you’ll probably hear a lot of terms and acronyms that you haven’t heard since you learned to read. Phonics, science of reading, CVC, blending, decodable texts – what does it all mean? It can be daunting, especially as you want to help your child learn to read, but don’t know how to support them.
The good news is, the best way to support your child on their literacy journey is by reading to them, and letting them practice reading to you. If your child is struggling with their reading, there are really easy at-home phonics practice activities you can do. But first and foremost, the best way to improve reading is by reading.
Phonics Terms to Understand
One term you’ll hear when your child’s teacher is discussing their reading progress is whether or not they are able to read CVC words. So, what is a CVC word? Simply put, it is a three-letter word comprised of a consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC). The vowel sound in CVC words is always the common short vowel sound for the letter.
Examples of CVC words are words like hop, cat, bit, got. In the examples, the words are three letters that follow the specific consonant-vowel-consonant pattern, AND can be sounded out using phonemic awareness of the short vowel and primary letter sounds.
Not all three letter words are CVC words. Some three letter words may even follow the CVC pattern, but due to the uncommon sounds used in the word, they are not CVC words. They have an irregular pronunciation. “Ate” is not a CVC word, it is a VCV word, and the vowel sound is long, with a silent e. “New” is also not a CVC word. While it follows the CVC pattern, the “e” sound is not the typical short vowel sound.
If a child is struggling with blending CVC words, it will be difficult for them to move on to trickier words. They need to be able to master basic phonemic awareness of short vowel and primary letter sounds before they can begin learning the irregular sounds. The English language is made up of 26 letters, but 44 phonetic sounds. It is a complicated language, so it is important to build foundational literacy skills, and grow from there.
Teaching Reading With Phonics
You may have heard the terms phonics and science of reading thrown around a lot lately. Phonics is defined as “correlating sounds with letters or groups of letters in an alphabetic writing system.” Basically, that means a letter has a sound, or sounds, and you use those sounds to make words. The simplest explanation of the science of reading is that it is a research-backed method of teaching reading using phonics.
Learning to read follows a basic pattern. First your child learns letters and sounds. Next, they learn to put two or more sounds together. Finally, they learn to make words and meaning out of these combined sounds. Once they learn the basics, they learn the secondary letter sounds, blends, digraphs, trigraphs, multisyllabic words etc. Simple, right? Of course not.
Each step needs to be explicitly taught, and new readers must master one skill before moving on to the next. You probably can already guess how difficult it must be for one teacher to teach 25 or more students the steps so that they all can progress together. It doesn’t happen. Some kids move ahead on their own, and some kids fall behind. The good news is, if you notice your child is falling behind, there are ways you can help them develop their foundational literacy skills so that they can catch up.
You don’t need to be a reading teacher to support your child with reading. There are so many easy, free phonics activities you can do at home. I have several posts on at-home practice you can do with your child, so feel free to dig around for some free, easy-to-do phonics and literacy tips. You can also check out my shop for affordable curriculum if your child needs more targeted literacy support.
Tips to Support Your New Reader
(As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.)
If you notice your child is struggling with their foundational literacy skills, return to the basics. Reading instruction isn’t exactly linear. We usually introduce one or two vowels and two or three consonants at a time to practice blending.
For this post, I’m sharing a linear structure to simplify the process. It will take longer on the front end, as your child will need to know all of the letter sounds before moving to blending. You can also select two or three letter sounds at a time and repeat the steps for each new group of letters. If you want a more complete phonics resource, you can check out my complete early reading curriculum on Amazon.
- Vowel Letter Sounds. Do they know all five short vowel sounds (a, e, i, o, u)? Can they identify the accompanying sound without reminders? If not, start there. Introduce one vowel at a time, and get to the point where they don’t need to see a picture of an apple to remember the short a sound. Only introduce short vowel sounds at first. It can be too overwhelming to learn both long and short vowel sounds at the same time. And in case you’re wondering, for the purpose of early reading instruction, we don’t address “sometimes y” in the early stages of reading instruction. Y is a consonant that appears at the beginning of the word – think yes versus baby. Once your child has mastered basic reading skills, “y” can be introduced as a sometimes vowel.
- Consonant Letter Sounds. Next, check their knowledge of primary consonant sounds. What do I mean by primary? For the letter “c,” initially, they only need to know the hard c sound, like cat, not the soft sound, like cycle. Why? Because the soft c sound is only expressed when the vowel that follows it is an e, i, y. It’s complicated, and best taught once your child already has the literacy foundational skills.
- Blend. Now it’s time to blend sounds. I like to draw three boxes on a whiteboard or piece of paper. I write a vowel in the middle box. I then have a stack of post-its with one consonant written on each one. I place a consonant in the first box, and a consonant in the third box and have the child first make all three sounds. If they need help, I point to the first box, ask for the sound, then the second, then the third. Once they’ve made all three sounds, I tell them we’re going to blend them together. So, c-a-t becomes cat. If they’re struggling with three letters, start with just two boxes, a consonant and a vowel. You can make it more interactive by having your child select the consonants.
- Check their Knowledge. If you aren’t sure whether your child is actually reading the words, or has memorized words, you can check their knowledge. If a child truly knows the letter sounds, and how to blend them, they should be able to “read” nonsense words. They may have memorized “not,” but can they read “zop?” They can if they know the sounds and how to blend them!
Now that you have a better understanding of CVC words, and how they’re used, you can help your early reader practice at home. The more time your child spends reading, the better they will become at reading. Watching YouTube videos, or playing on a phonics app won’t get them to the next level. Actually reading will. As I always tell my students, if you want to get better at shooting free throws in basketball, you need to actually practice shooting free throws on the court. No amount of YouTube videos will make you better at basketball until you actually do it yourself. The same goes for reading.
Do you need tools to help your child with early reading? Check out my Products page for sound cards, decodable readers, and printable phonics worksheets.
Need more reading support for your child? Check out out my workbook that I use with my students in my classroom!
Leave a Reply