There's more than one way to teach your child to read. In general, reading lessons should lead to automatic word recognition along with comprehension of the text. You can use more than one method as you teach your child to read.
Phonics
Phonics involves learning the sounds of letters. Kids decode words by sounding them out or recognizing the word by sight. Phonics teaches kids to associate certain spellings with certain sounds. Once children learn these sound-spelling relationships, they can come up with the pronunciation of words. The theory is that kids need to become proficient at decoding words to quickly and accurately read them.
Sight Words
The "look-say" or "sight reading" method teaches kids to recognize words by sight. The idea is to teach a child to read with whole word. Children learn words by sight without first understanding that the words are formed by letter combinations. Children also are taught to gain clues about the words by looking at pictures on a page as well as from the context of sentences.
Language Experience
The language experience approach teaches children to read via activities and stories. These are developed from a child's personal experiences. A parent or teacher writes the text about the personal experiences and the child and adult read them together. The child learns to associate written and spoken words. One of the benefits is that it creates reading material that's predictable as well as readable because it uses the child's natural language.
References
- Harvard Graduate School of Education: More than One Way to Teach a Child to Read; Tom Mashberg
- "Phonics From A to Z: A Practical Guide;" Wiley Blevins; 1998
- Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine; "Why They Teach Your Child to Read That Way"; 1971
- SIL International: What is the Language Experience Approach?
- "Early Reading Instruction"; Diane McGuinness; 2004
