by Dr. Patrick Groff
NRRF Board Member & Senior Advisor

Dr. Patrick Groff, Professor of Education Emeritus San Diego State University, has published over 325 books, monographs, and journal articles and is a nationally known expert in the field of reading instruction.

A common question of parents of preschool children is: What can I do to help my child become ready to learn phonics information before he/she enters school? Phonics rules are the generalizations about how letters in written words represent speech sounds in spoken words. For example, there are three phonics rules that govern how the letters s-i-t represent the speech sounds /s/ - /i/ - /t/.

Implicit in this question is parents' knowledge that students' acquisition of phonics skills is a fundamental goal for beginning readers to achieve. Experimental research consistently reveals that only beginning readers' (1) knowledge of letters, and (2) their phonemic awareness (conscious awareness of speech sounds) relates more closely to these children's later progress in learning to read.

Unfortunately, parents often are given the wrong answer to the above question. They frequently are advised that they should do nothing more than read aloud to their children. "Leave the rest of what children need to know to become readers for us to develop," educators regularly attempt to persuade parents.

It is true that parents' reading aloud to children forms a psychologically healthy bond between the two participants. In this procedure, children also usually learn that a book contains the content of what the parent is reading. Children may also come to realize that the strings of optical shapes separated by spaces in books are called words.

It has been well-established, however, that the amount that parents report they read aloud to children correlates only insignificantly with their children's later success in learning to read in school. The coefficients of correlation (statistical calculations of how close one factor relates to another) here are too low to have any predictive value. That is to say, the amount that parents read aloud to preschool children does not signify whether they will, or will not have difficulties learning to read in school.

If the correlations between these two factors are low, what actions taken by parents with preschool children do correlate relatively highly with school children's development of reading ability? For many years, it was found that correlations between preschool children's knowledge of letters, and their acquisition of reading skills in school, were high. The former predicted the latter better than did any other factor. It thus has been well-known for years that if parents make sure their boys and girls can identify letters, this knowledge will have a positive impact on their children's learning to read in school.

Teaching preschool children to recognize printed (manuscript) letters is an uncomplicated matter. All the material that is needed here is printed forms of individual letters, cutouts of them, or alphabet blocks. Unfortunately, most of this material that is available either is of upper-case letters, or presents lower- and upper-case letters in tandem. However, since almost all writing is in lower-case letters, it is imperative that recognition of small letter forms be mastered by children before they approach capital letters.

Thus, parents are faced with the task of finding individual lower-case letter materials only. A distinguishing mark should be made on the top of each small letter form so that a child can make sure it is right-side up when he/she looks at it. The learning of the alphabet is facilitated, as well, if the names of the letters are used when they are identified.

Step one in helping children recognize letters is to place two different ones alongside each other, and ask the child, Are these the same (or different)? In step two, the child picks out a letter from a display of them, that matches one the parent presents or names. In step three, the child matches letters in the correct order to those in printed words of increasing lengths.

Tracing their fingers over letters, in the order the letters are written, also improves children's recognition of them. Of further help is presenting letters to children at first that have great contrast, e.g., o-t, g-k, before presenting those that look alike, e.g., o-c, g-q, h-b.

Beginning in the 1970's, however, researchers discovered a linguistic factor that is more predictive of beginning readers' later success in reading than is their knowledge of letters. This phenomenon is called phonemic (or phonological) awareness.

Phonemic awareness (PA) refers to children's conscious knowledge that spoken words are made up of a series of discrete speech sounds. For example, the spoken word sit has three speech sounds, /s/, /i/, and /t/. Thus, children demonstrate that they are overtly aware of the three speech sounds in sit if they, for instance, can correctly count these sounds, repeat them, and manipulate them (remove the /s/ sound and name the word that results — it).

Children learn to speak in a natural, informal, effortless manner which does not require that they have any PA of the speech sounds in the words they speak. Humans inherit the ability to do so. To learn to read in the most effective way, however, children must develop PA so that they can acquire phonics skills. It is found that children's PA is developed best in a direct and systematic fashion.

Parents can foster the development of their preschool child's PA by carrying out the following activities. The activities are arranged in the order in which they should be conducted. Parents should make sure their child demonstrates competency with the task of a given activity before proceeding to the next one.

1. Say pairs of spoken words and have your child tell whether they rhyme.
2. Have your child count the number of speech sounds in short words you say aloud. Elongate the words by leaving one second between each sound.
3. Ask your child if two words (that have three speech sounds each) you speak begin with the same speech sound.
4. Do the same for final speech sounds in words.
5. Do the same for middle sounds in words.
6. Pronounce words that have three sounds, leaving a second between each sound. Have your child say the word.
7. Say to your child, When I add /r/ to /at/ I make rat. What word do I make if I add /l/ to /ap/?
8. Say, If I take away /m/ from meat, what word is left?
9. Say, When I change the /s/ in sat to /r/, what word do I make?
10. Continue with items 7,8, and 9 with speech sounds at the ends of words, and in the middle of words.
11. Say, Listen to this word (bad). Say it backward (dab).
12. Say, Listen to this word (pan). Put its last sound first, and its first sound last.
13. Say, Listen to this funny word (das). Say it backward to make it a real word (sad).
14. Say, Switch the first sounds in these two words to make a real word (ded rog = red dog).
15. Teach your child "Pig Latin." Here the first sound in a word is detached, placed at the end of a word, to which the sound () is added. For example, sit becomes itsay.

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