TBD

this example from Cambridge University shows,

FIRST CONSIDER: ARE WE TEACHING READING OR ARE WE HELPING THE CHILD LEARN TO READ?

Teaching Reading — With Traditional Programs. With this approach, the first thing to do is analyze the act of reading to discover the various skills involved. Then teach them separately. So one obvious strategy is to focus primarily on phonics. This is usually done through incremental lessons designed to teach children the most common sound each letter make.

Following that, the children practice blending the sounds together to both create and decode words. Through repeated practice, children successful with this approach ultimately recognize a list of words for their grade level and are able to sound out those they don’t recognize.

Such an approach usually incorporates books that provide practice with the words containing the sounds the children have been focusing on.

Another “teaching reading” option is the traditional basal reader. Here, children are usually sorted into small reading groups, where they work their way through a series of books with a carefully controlled vocabulary.

The emphasis here is on context — the use of pictures and discussion of what the story is about. Some phonics may also involved, when they are encouraged to “sound out” words they don’t recognize.

But this approach relies primarily on slowly adding word recognition through repetition: “See Jane run… See Dick run… See Dick and Jane run….” And so forth.

Still another method is referred to as “cueing.” Here the child is shown how to use context as a clue — making predictions based on the picture, the letters, sentence structure, and the story itself. Teachers using this strategy do not usually emphasize phonics. Read more here about the different methods for “teaching reading.”

Helping The Child Learn to Read, Using a “Natural” Approach. Here, the first thing to do is analyze how a child learns — naturally. And since nature has given virtually all children the ability to learn to speak — without professionally designed lessons — a good place to look for guidance in designing a natural approach is how we help a child manage that.

Analyzing that process, here’s basically what we find: As they go about their daily routines, caregivers repeatedly speak words with strong meaning for the young child. Combining those spoken words with some “real life” activity/purpose, they are modeling speech. While they may speak in complete sentences, they have a natural tendency to emphasize, through intonation, the main word that describes the associated action or object. They don’t expect a response at first, just allow the child plenty of time to make the connection between the word(s) and the action or object it represents.

Hearing and watching this, the child gradually absorbs the information and makes all the physical connections that go into speaking those words. That is, caregivers make no attempt to break the words down into their component sounds and then present lessons to demonstrate how the child must coordinate the tongue, lips, throat, and breath to make those sounds. They know the child has come with innate techniques for doing this, on their own.

So all caregivers do is speak, with a slight emphasis, words they can see would be of special interest to the infant — milk, mommy, daddy, cookie, etc. —  in conjunction with the corresponding action or object. The child’s brain does the rest.

At first, all we can see of the child’s effort is some spontaneous babbling, apparently serving as trials and practice for creating the sounds in the words they’re hearing. Then finally one day, they delight us by speaking their first word. And so on it goes, as they continue to watch and listen, then practice and gradually expand –building vocabulary, incorporating intonation, and developing sentence structure — all quite spontaneously.

To recap, a child masters the amazing challenge of learning to speak through our modeling words of special interest to them. Then on their own and in their own time, they move through silent absorption, trials, practice, and gradual expansion. So why not employ a similar process in helping them learn how to communicate thoughts and feelings in print?