English language, early language development reading and writing.

Learning to read

there are different approaches to teaching children to read

the phonics approach.

*this approach involves looking at letters and letter combinations in terms of sounds (reading 'by ear') e.g. cow is seperated into the phnemes /c/ and /ow/. it means that children can sound out unfamiliar words.

*its useful for words like latch that are pronounced as they're written, but is less useful for words like through.

*this approach has also been critiscised because it just focuses on sounds and letters, rather than on the meanings of words.

the "look and say" approach

*this is also known as the whole word approach.  it involves recognising the words by sight alone, rather than breaking then down into seperate phonemes ( readinf 'by eye')

*it focuses on the meaning of words, and teaches children to recognise commin words like and, see, went etc

*however, relyig on this method requires children to memorise a large number of words, and doesnt give them the skills to work out of sound or meaning of unfamilliar words.

the psychollinguistics approach

*This approach sees reafing as a natural development that comes from being in environment where books are read, valued and available.

*its an active approach to reading, the reader is given responsibilty for working out what a word means, rather than just beign told a meaning.

*when children come across a word they cant read, they're encouraged to work out the meaning by looking at teh rest of the sentece and other clues like illustrations.

*the idea is to encourage children to focus on meaning, rather than just working out symbols. its also desigined make them aware of teh importance of context.

*however, the aproach has been critiscised because it leaves a lot to chance.

Teachers tend to use a combination of approached

over the past sixty years, theres been a lot of debate about which method for teaching is reading is best.

1) schools tend to use a combination of approaches rather than just rely on one. this is because some children repsond better to one method than another,

2) it also ensures that children decvelop a ranfge of skills, the phonices approach teaches them to recoginise symbols while the look and say amd pshycholinguistic approached teach teh impotance of meaning and context.

3) it also really important that…