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Reading

How I taught my preschoolers to read, write, and spell

Sandra Elam

When my children were preschoolers, I heard Charles Sykes, author of Dumbing Down Our Kids, explain why many kids can’t read or spell. He recommended reading Why Johnny Can’t Read by Rudolph Flesch. So I did.

Until reading this book, it never entered my mind that some people guess at new words and don’t know how to sound them out. Now I learned that most American public schools stopped teaching phonics (the 44 sounds in the English language and the 70 common ways to spell those sounds) back in the 1920’s and that millions of kids have been taught to memorize whole words rather than sound them out.

Pictographic languages such as Chinese use a picture to stand for each word. Learning to read and write is arduous. You have to memorize 10,000 pictures in order to learn 10,000 words. But since you can never memorize every picture, you can never be 100% literate in a pictographic language.

In contrast, English—in fact, any language with an alphabet—uses letters to represent sounds. So instead of memorizing thousands of words like you do in Chinese, you simply learn the 44 sounds and the 70 most common ways to spell those sounds and presto—you can read and write anything.

I checked out all 26 books on phonics from the library. I read every one. The best one was Phonics Pathways by Dolores Hiskes, which I’ve used and recommended for many years. I also bought and used Hooked on Phonics, which originally was a great product (it’s been watered down since).

Determined that my children would be good readers, I began teaching phonics to my 5-year-old daughter Becca while we sat at the kitchen table. I remember her 3-1/2 year old brother Kevin standing nearby, intently following the lesson and watching his sister.

I recall Kevin said, “I don’t need to learn this.”

I answered, “Well, now that you mention it—I think you can learn this stuff.”

So I tried an experiment. Could a 3-year-old really learn to read? I sat Kevin next to his big sister and continued with the phonics lessons. Every day for at least an hour—using Hooked on Phonics or Phonics Pathways—I taught them the sounds of letters and guided their hands as they wrote shaky letters on preschool tablet paper.

Each day, they learned a new sound such as short /a/, which sounds like a as in apple. Then I would dictate a few random words from the lesson for them to spell (such as cat, hat, tap, ran), which reinforced what they had just learned.

In this way, they learned to write while they learned to read. The two processes are different sides of the same coin: reading is decoding sounds from the page, while writing is encoding sounds to the page.

Sure enough, within six weeks, they both were reading and writing. At age 5, Becca had enough hand coordination for her writing skills to keep pace with her reading. Kevin’s writing skills lagged a bit behind his reading skills, because hand coordination at age 3-1/2 is pretty limited. But still I was impressed!

Now I was convinced of one truth—that phonics knowledge is essential to reading—and slowly, my mind opened to the possibility that there might be other “truths” out there.

While researching reading programs, I found Bob Sweet, founder of The National Right to Read Foundation (NRRF), a pro-phonics educational organization. He pointed me to additional valuable phonics resources. First through his actions and later with words, Bob also planted the seeds of the Christian faith in me.

I wanted to help with the foundation’s mission, so I volunteered to create the original NRRF website. I also worked for several years updating the website and reviewing reading programs. Although Bob passed away a few years ago and his foundation is no longer active, I consider it a blessing to have worked with him and his sweet wife Joy. They were beautiful Christian witnesses who dedicated many years to helping desperate parents teach their children to read.

I developed two resources which were posted for many years on the NRRF website. I revised and reposted them below as resources for parents or teachers who want to learn how to teach reading quickly and effectively using phonics.