Why Your Child Needs Phonics Instruction
Whether you are home schooling or have your child in a traditional school, you need to make sure that your child is being taught using a phonics based approach to reading instruction. There are many proven benefits to teaching a child how to read with phonics. If your child is not learning reading with phonics, you need to take steps to make sure that this happens.
How Phonics Helps
Phonics helps children by given them a system to use to read. Instead of having to memorize all of the words in the language, they just have to learn the sounds that letters make. This is far more doable for most children, especially those with reading disabilities.
When you consider the fact that there are nearly 1 million words in the English language, you will understand why it is so difficult for many children to learn to read by memorizing each word individually. In comparison, phonics requires children to learn 44 sounds, or phonemes. This is something most children, if not all, can accomplish. While we do eventually come to a point where we recognize individual words, phonics is the starting point that children need to begin tackling words they do not know.
Phonics works for all children, no matter what their individual struggles may be. Children who are never read to at home may have a more difficult time learning to read, but they can do it with phonics instruction. Also, teaching children with learning disabilities becomes much easier when phonics is used, as it gives the children the