When choosing an early reading curriculum for school or home, it is important to understand the different methods of teaching reading and how they work together to create a solid reading foundation. Starting children off with phonics instruction provides one of the most important building blocks for reading development. Understanding the meaning of words and sentences is equally important. Phonics gives students the ability to decode words that have regular spellings, which allows them to tackle unfamiliar words in future reading.
What is phonics?
Phonics is the relationship between letters and sounds. It provides a system that is not random–but rather stays the same. Children can “sound out’ or decode the words they are reading. This provides confidence. For the past 30 years, traditional reading curriculum has favored a whole language approach to teaching reading, but research from The Reading League and other science-based groups is causing a shift in perspective. It has become clear that phonics instruction is a key element in overall reading success and should not be neglected. The education community is placing more emphasis on phonics, and schools are working phonics programs back into their reading curriculum.
A good foundation in phonics allows a child to read and process unfamiliar words faster and is a major factor in developing fluency. What is fluency? Fluency is the ability to read many words automatically and quickly. For teachers, it is important to pick classroom resources that promote the development of fluency.
With early learning phonics instruction, the child learns that /Bb/ is the letter-sound at the beginning of boy, ball, big and box. They can count on the fact that each time they encounter /b/ in a word it will have the same sound. Using that knowledge, a child can easily sound out the beginning and middle of bubble, and the ending sound of rub, rob, jab & scrub. By using programs that offer phonics reading practice, you are giving children the ability to read more complicated material later in life.
SuperBooks develop successful, happy readers.
The SuperBooks program uses a carefully developed sequence of steps to create confident readers. Below is an example of how a child should learn the letter sound /Bb/. The SuperBooks teacher’s manual will go into more detail about these steps.
Example: /Bb/
Step 1: Identify and name the letter-sound. /b/
Step 2: Identify words that contain /b/
Step 3: Read the words
Step 4: Read the sentences
Step 5: Read the story
SuperBooks uses repetition of these 5 steps and the gradual introduction of new letter sounds to help students build confidence when it comes to reading.
Help Students reach their Full Potential with SuperBooks
The SuperBooks Program provides 80 books that are written with a phonetically regular vocabulary. Super Books are decodable.
Children can “sound out” almost all the words in each Super Book. Super Books build Super Readers by:
✅ building confidence
✅ building vocabulary
✅ building comprehension
✅ building fluency
Are you ready to join the SuperBooks community and help your child become a Super Reader? Start reading today!