Reading Foundations

Before children can read sounds, they need to hear them.

We develop children's awareness of the sounds in spoken language through activities that encourage them to listen, identify, compare and manipulate sounds.

Children explore:

• Words

• Syllables

• Rhyming

• Alliteration

• Beginning sounds

• Individual phonemes

We're building the foundation before we build the words.

HEAR IT → UNDERSTAND IT

Then we connect what children hear to what they see.

Children learn that letters and combinations of letters represent sounds.

We explicitly teach these relationships so children begin developing a reliable connection between:

SOUND ↔ LETTER

This becomes one of the most important tools they will use when learning to read unfamiliar words.

HEAR IT → SEE IT

What happens when we put those sounds together?

Children begin using their sound knowledge to read words.

They learn to:

identify → segment → blend → read

For example:

/m/ /a/ /t/

becomes:

MAT

This is where the magic starts to happen.

Children begin to realise that they don't have to memorise every word.

They can work words out.