Learning Skills

• Phonics Skills
  • Phonics Skills

    Before they can read independently, children must learn the relationship of letters to their sounds and be able to distinguish individual sounds, or phonemes, within words. Phonics skills help children sounds out new words (If I can read "pot", then I can read "hot" and "spot").

• Word Building
  • Word Building

    To read and write, children must understand how individual letter sounds blend together to make words. Experimenting with building words, such as changing mat to cat to rat, helps with reading and spelling.

• Word Recognition
  • Word Recognition

    As children learn to read, they must be able to "decode" the words they don't know- to translate strings of letters into words. Eventually they can recognize common words that can't be sounded out (the, said, she).

• Phonological Awareness
  • Phonological Awareness

    Along with learning language and letters, phonological awareness - the ability to pick out and play with sounds in words (such as syllables and rhymes)- is essential for learning to read.

• The Alphabet
  • The Alphabet

    Knowing the letters of the alphabet is one of the first steps toward learning to read and write. Introducing letters to young children helps them learn to recognize the different shapes and names - an early indicator for reading achievement.

• Consonants
  • Consonants

    There are more consonants sounds than there are consonants in the alphabet. A consonant digraph is a pair of consonants that stand for a single sound (ch, sh, th, wh).

• Plurals, Tense and Contractions
  • Plurals, Tense and Contractions

    Children pick up plurals and contractions before they correctly learn the different tenses of words.

• Sight Words and Homophones
  • Sight Words and Homophones

    Sight words are words that can't be sounded out and so must be learned by sight (the, he, she , was, and so on). Homophones are words that sound the same but are pronounced differently, such as to, too, and two.

• Vowels
  • Vowels

    Spelling begins with regular short vowel sounds (cap) and long vowel sounds (with silent e, cap becomes cape). Finally, children learn the rules and patterns of vowel pairs (ee), digraphs (ai in train), dipthongs (oi in boil) and r-controlled vowels (farm, bird).

• Word Parts
  • Word Parts

    Once children know all the sounds of our language they learn how some words have parts in common. A good understanding of word parts allows children to spell multisyllabic words, compound words and words with prefixes and suffixes.