KINDERGARTEN children SHOULD BE exposed to and actively involved in:
- Learning Phonological Awareness activities (such as rhyme, syllabification, compound words, onset and rime)
- Learning Nursery rhymes
- Hearing fairy-tales and joining in the chants
KINDERGARTEN SHOULD NOT be given:
- readers (as they do not yet understand the alphabet code and how sounds work)
- sight words to learn
PRE-PRIMARY children SHOULD be :
- Taught Phonological Awareness skills.
- Taught Phonics (sounds ONLY when learning the initial code).
- Provided with DECODABLE readers ONLY.
- Taught how to decode and blend sounds to make words
PRE-PRIMARY children SHOULD NOT :
- Be given predictable texts (this teaches the children to guess words rather than sound them out).
- Be taught the letter names until they are proficient in knowing the sounds the letters make and can write the sounds fluently.
- Be taught to look at the picture and guess what the word might be (TOTALLY INEFFECTIVE AND THERE IS NO PURPOSE).
- Be given sight words (EVERY WORD can be sounded out).
Year 1 and Year 2 children SHOULD BE:
- Provided with DECODABLE readers.
- TAUGHT the extended code using a synthetic phonics approach.
- TAUGHT to sound out each word and blend the sounds together.
- Taught Phonological Awareness skills.
Year 1 and Year 2 children SHOULD NOT :
- Be given predictable texts (this teaches the children to guess words rather than sound them out).
- Be given sight words (EVERY WORD can be sounded out).
- Be taught to look at the picture and guess what the word might be (TOTALLY INEFFECTIVE AND THERE IS NO PURPOSE).
- Be taught to look at the first sound and guess what the word may be.
- Be taught to keep reading and guess what the word might be.