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Introduction
If your child is learning to read with phonics at school,
or you are teaching them at home using this method,
it makes sense to use easy reader books which
support phonics teaching.
These books help your child to practice specific
phonics rules by
containing words which can be
sounded out using these rules.
If your child comes across a word they do not know
they can decode it by breaking the word down into
units (or phonemes) and blending together
the
sounds of each of these units.
While phonics-based easy reader books are perfect
for practicing
phonics rules, the vocabulary can sound
strange at times when the author uses a word which
follows a particular phonics rule, rather than choosing
the most appropriate word.
There is also the risk that your
child focuses so much
on decoding the words that they start to lose the
meaning of what they are reading.
If you find this is a problem, try reading authentic text
easy reader books alongside phonics books.
These are written without any specific
phonics rules
in mind and, through repeated readings, are a good
way of
building up your child's ability to recognize
words by sight. They will
eventually need to do this
in order to read fluently.
Think of phonics-based easy reader books in
two categories:
The first category contains series of books which are
designed to introduce the phonics sounds to your child
in a gradual and systematic way.
