These days, kids begin learning to read and write well before they start school. They’re constantly exposed to words, sounds, texts, and images in various mediums—from books and screen devices to ads and posters. That said, children need proper lessons to master reading and writing. Kids who learn the alphabet and begin playing with words and sounds at an early age are more likely to stay the course and do well in school.
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Your child will learn to read and write almost simultaneously. As kids become aware that language is made up of sounds, they gradually learn to write letters. Reading skills also begin to develop as they look over what they’ve written. In school, your child will become more and more familiar with the alphabet:
- The shapes of the letters
- The names of the letters
- How each letter is pronounced
- How each letter is written
- How to rhyme
- Etc.
Did you know?
Whether kids learn to print or to write in cursive depends on the school. There are pros and cons to both forms of handwriting.
To fully grasp spelling and other basic elements of reading and writing, your child needs to understand that words are a series of sounds represented by symbols (letters). They also need to understand how to isolate those sounds in order to write them. There are a few steps to this process:
- Learn the sound of each letter
- Learn to combine these sounds (e.g., /b/ + /a/ = ba)
- Learn to sound out words by syllable
- Learn that letters can make a different sound in certain combinations
Here’s a little trick that will help your child learn how to read syllables:
- On a sheet of paper, write all the consonants in red and all the vowels in blue
- Cut the letters out one by one
- Spread them out on a table
- Ask your child to choose one letter in each colour to form a syllable
- Ask them what sounds the letters make when put together
- Ask them to form a real or made-up word by adding more letters
The better kids get at reading and writing, the more they’ll notice that some sounds have many possible spellings. Here are some examples:
- The /an/ sound can be written /an/, /en/, /am/, or /em/
- The /in/ sound can be written /in/, /aim/, /ain/, /ein/, or /im/
- Etc.
Did you know?
In French, the 26 letters in the alphabet can be combined to form approximately 36 sounds.
Once a child is able to decode words, the next step is learning to visualize them and associate them with the ideas and objects they represent. For example, when they see the word /to/ma/to/, they should picture a tomato.
Certain words show up far more often than others, in both speech and writing. These range from short and simple words, such as the and but, to more complex word such as school. Memorizing commonly used words is an effective way for your child to master reading and writing more quickly.
In order to help your child learn frequently-used words, we invite you to use our interactive spelling exercise for elementary students or to play Magimot! (french only)
There are many ways to teach reading and writing. Different schools may use different approaches, and some teachers even use a combination of methods.
Writing : The Alloprof Parents' team
Scientific review : Martin Lépine, PhD, professor of French didactics at the Université de Sherbrooke, co-director of Collectif CLÉ, associate researcher at the CRIFPE and CTREQ
Giasson, Jocelyne (2011). « La lecture – Apprentissages et difficultés », pp. 397.