Studying phonics helps students develop an understanding of the relationship between letters and sound, which helps them learn to spell and read. In many schools, students are heavily exposed to phonics study in Kindergarten through the second grade. Parents can encourage their students to get a head start on learning to read by helping them practice phonics at an early age. With encouragement, students can enter school already reading and ready to further strengthen their reading comprehension, spelling and writing skills in their classrooms.
Parents can get actively involved in teaching phonics with programs such as the Sing Spell Read and Write: Reading Program and Modern Curriculum Press’s Plaid Phonics. The Sing Spell Read and Write: Reading Program provides a teacher’s manual and audio to offer guidance for parents assisting their children in learning phonics through a variety of activities made possible by its kits’ contents, beginning with a preschool level program for developing reading readiness. Modern Curriculum Press’s Plaid Phonics packages include a Teacher Resource guide, and this program offers multisensory teaching options to help parents target their students’ learning styles.
Other learning programs focus on engaging students in self-guided learning. The Spectrum Phonics Workbooks are designed for students to use independently, with clear instructions and examples for them to follow bolstered with a repetition of vocabulary words and images to encourage the recognition of letters and their sounds. Core Skills Phonics from Steck-Vaughn is another reader that is accessible to children, and it offers practice pages and activities followed by self-assessment quizzes and reading comprehension questions.
Phonics Flash Cards and Phonics Practice Readers each work well on their own and as supplemental learning materials for the phonics programs administered at home or at school. Phonics Flash Cards are simple to use, lend themselves to a variety of activities, and help students memorize sounds in connection with letters, letter combinations, and word parts. Phonics Practice Readers are short books that encourage readers to complete entire books and check their understanding of what they have read with follow-up sequencing activities. These readers can entertain, build readers’ confidence, and provide opportunities for students to identify and revisit the concepts they find challenging to them as readers.
Parents and other educators who challenge themselves and their students to teach and learn phonics can give students a head start on developing valuable language skills. Phonics study materials and activities aid in the advancement of these skills by encouraging the connection of letters and letter combinations with sounds, increasing word recognition and vocabulary, developing reading comprehension, and so on, from an entire phonic program with increasingly challenging levels to a set of flash cards.
