Preschool Phonics and Literacy Programme/ Preparation for Primary 1

Many of you have enquired about my phonics programme and here, I will be sharing with you the importance of learning phonics from young and how you can help your toddler become successful reader in no time. I will also share with you what I will be covering in my lessons.

What is phonics? Why is it important.

Phonics is a method of instruction whereby children make sense of the letters in a word and the understanding that these letters represent sounds. Children must have the knowledge and skills to blend the letters to decode words, in order to make meaning of them. They need to know the order of letters matters, because very often, it changes the meaning and/ or tenses of words. Example: eat and ate; receive and believe. Therefore, to be a fluent reader, one must be able to turn the words they see into sounds. Research has shown that reading will not happen if one does not grasp the concepts and relationship between letters and sounds. Very often, we see children struggle to read, for they lack the letter-sound knowledge and decoding skills.

Over the course of teaching, I have heard from many parents, "Last time I also didn't learn phonics, nobody taught me how to read. See? Now, I can still read well." Yes, you can read and you used the whole-word approach to teach yourself how to read. In this approach, one uses rote memory and visual ability to memorise the words he/she sees. Example: Nat the cat is fat. Nat the cat pats the hat. After a few rounds of repeated reading, you will realise one is able to memorise this sentence but when the word 'fat' appears in another context, one may not be able to recognise / associate the word. One will therefore not be able to make the link of the 'at' relationship (in this case) and will struggle to read words containing this part. While this method works great especially with visual learners and it does not require the use of any letter-sound knowledge/ blending skills, it does have its disadvantages. Imagine this: There are more than 170,000 words in the dictionary, how is one going to learn to read and spell all these words in the shortest period of time? This is where spelling by phoneme segmentation/ word families (sounds) come into play. With these letter-sound knowledge, one could almost spell any word with invented spelling.

Of course, for any reading/ writing to happen, one must be able to recognise and write letters. Hence, it is very important we expose alphabets and phonics to children at a very young age. How young? As young as birth. That's why we always start by singing 'ABC' song to babies. But very often, parents do not know how to continue after one has mastered the song.

In my lessons, I will be covering:

a) letter naming and writing (both uppercase and lowercase letters);

b) letter sounds and more complex sounds (e.g. graphemes, phonemes, vowel teams, digraphs, etc.);

c) sight word reading and spelling;

d) spelling by phoneme segmentation;

e) near/ far copying skills; and

f) sentence writing.

All these skills above are essential and have to be mastered before a child goes to Primary One. A parent asked if I conduct just 'Reading' classes alone to prepare her child for Primary school. I know some tuition classes only focuses on reading, but in Ms Cherie's classes, preparation for Primary One encompasses more than just having the ability to read, one must also know how to spell and write short, simple sentences.

P.S. My Preschool Phonics/Literacy class is for typical preschoolers who have sufficient fine motor and language skills. For special needs children, there is a different programme (different and more enhanced approach targeting each need), hence fees will be different as well.

Below, I will be sharing with you how I teach/ expose my son (just turned 3 years old) to phonics/ literacy and writing as early as 1 year old. Just before he turned 3, he has already started reading Usborne Level 2 books by himself (with mama's supervision of course!).

- Caerus saying letter sounds at 23months old. Here, I incorporated actions with sounds.

- Caerus learning to blend CVC words at exactly 24 months old (2 years)

- Caerus learning to read sights words embedded in short sentences at 2y4months old. Here, he was encouraged to point at each word as he read. This is an important tracking skill.

- Caerus knows all his lowercase letter writing at 2.5 years old. This was through almost daily practice and hard work. He knows his uppercase letter writing at 2y8 months old. I use a brilliant kinaesthetic and visual way of teaching letter writing which allow kids to remember the strokes quickly!

- Caerus practices his far-copying skills at exactly 3 years old. This is a more challenging goal as the child requires to know the formation of the letters well as well as to track each letter accordingly.

- Caerus reading 'I can read' Level C books at 3y 2months old. Here, he displayed good pointing and blending skills as he read.

Due to PDPA, I can only update the progress and milestones of my son :) I would like to assure you, it is very possible to get children to love writing and reading at a very young age.