Teaching phonics at home is a fantastic idea. You’re taking control and teaching phonics to ensure that your child learns the skills to read at a proficient level. According to the National Reading Panel, phonics is the best way to teach a child to read. Unfortunately, the majority of schools do not use phonics to teach reading skills, so many children do struggle to read, write and spell. This puts them at risk of reading failure. In fact, students who are unable to read at a proficient level by the third grade are far less likely to graduate high school. This makes learning to read absolutely crucial.
What does it take to teach phonics from home? Fortunately, not too much. Teaching phonics at home is very doable with the right tools and some time.
Practice Phonics Through An App or Program
Phonics is a system that teaches reading skills. It covers topics such as:
If you’d like to read more about these terms and topics, please click on the links. We have posts that explain exactly what these topics are in the phonics system. And, if you don’t know what these terms are, you’re not alone! Phonics has its roots in reading science. As a result, many teachers and parents alike may not be familiar with its intricacies. That’s OK! In fact, you don’t need to know absolutely everything about phonics to know that it works. Reading apps and programs do all the hard work for you to make teaching phonics at home doable.
For example, at Professor Pup’s Academy, we offer three different programs.
- Professor Pup’s Phoneme Farm
- Pup’s Quest for Phonics
- Pup’s Quest for Phonics 2: Emerging Reader
Each program has specific learning goals. Then, each lesson helps students reach those goals in smaller steps. The programs are also designed to be kid-friendly for easy navigation and use. All you need to do is download the program onto a tablet or smartphone and hand it over to your child.
Just how does your child learn how to read using apps? We take things bit by bit. This way, children are never overwhelmed or burdened by the learning experience. Instead, they enjoy their time with Professor Pup.
First, children practice their phonemes, learning the individual sounds that make up words. Then, they learn to recognize graphemes, or the letters used to represent these sounds. Next, they practice linking sounds in speech to the letters in print. This process is called decoding. After, they learn to blend and segment. This is when children learn to “sound out” words.
While this might seem overwhelming, we designed our lessons to be short, effective and engaging. Our apps work well for children. In fact, Professor Pup and his friends accompany children through each and every lesson, providing directions and encouragement every step of the way. We include energizing music, colorful graphics and friendly characters to make each experience special.
When teaching phonics at home through apps, we recommend limiting screen time to one lesson per day. This allows children to always enjoy their time with Professor Pup and never see it as work.
Teaching Phonics At Home Includes Building Phonemic Awareness
In order to round out your home curriculum, it’s important to take time to read to your child as well. Even just 15 minutes a day helps your child build phonemic awareness, which is essential to learning to read. Those with strong phonemic awareness are 90 percent more likely to succeed as readers, writers and spellers. Phonemic awareness is the ability to recognize sounds and patterns in words and sentences.
Fortunately, developing phonemic awareness simply takes time and practice. And, because it’s a skill based on sound alone, there are plenty of things we can do to help children develop phonemic awareness while teaching phonics at home.
Take time to read to your child. Let them pick our their favorite book and hold it while you read aloud to them, following each word with your finger or pointer. Also, take turns. Let your kids try to read, too. When they spend time linking sound to text, they grow more familiar with the process, piecing together different puzzle parts.
- Speak and sing together
Speaking with your child is so vital. It gives your child the chance to think, build opinions and form sentences. He or she might stumble and fumble for the right words in the correct order, but this type of practice is so good for them! Let your child participate in conversations. Struggle as they may, the time they have to practice building and speaking sentences is essential.
When we allow children to hear us speak, they slowly pick up on speech patterns and rhythm, so they can also mimic these patterns for themselves.
In short, when teaching phonics at home we want to increase the amount of time children spend with intelligent sounds. To do this:
- Use complete sentences
- Speak clearly
- Introduce new vocabulary words
- Gently correct improper pronunciation
- Sing songs, nursery rhymes and lullabies
Your child may favor one activity over another. In order to keep learning fun and interesting, let them explore their interests. For example, if your child loves animals, find age-appropriate books featuring the animals they love most. Or, if your child loves to sing, create a playlist of karaoke songs where they can follow along with the words on the TV screen. Just be sure to support these activities with phonics training.
Work With Professor Pup and Teach Phonics At Home
At Professor Pup’s Academy, we want every single child to succeed as readers, which is why our programs are built just for them.
If you want a simple and effective way to teaching phonics at home, try Professor Pup’s Academy. We offer the first five lessons for free, so you can see for yourself just how well it works. You can download Professor Pup’s Phoneme Farm in the App Store – or visit our website!