How to Know if Your Child is Ready to Read

read reading Apr 22, 2024

There are 2 absolutely necessary skills a child must have to be ready to read:

1. Letter Recognition

2. Phonemic Awareness

is the ability to recognize each letters shape, name and sound. To be able to start reading the child actually only needs to know the letter sounds not names. Later in phonics instructions the child will need to learn letter names to read more advanced words. To test if your child has mastered this skill, take lowercase letter flashcards and ask your child to tell you the letter sound of each letter. I would recommend that the child know almost all if not all of their letter sounds. If your child cannot recall at least half of the letter sounds quickly then I would recommend continuing to practice letters before moving on.

To learn how to teach your child their letter sounds the Montessori way checkout my blog post: Here

Is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words. This skill is crucial for learning to read and is a component to whether a child is a poor reader or good reader. It is very important to strengthen this skill before teaching your child to read.

An example of having strong phonemic awareness is being able to hear and identify the beginning sound in a word. Also being able to hear how many distinct sounds are in a word. For example, although the word "moon" has 4 letters, there are only 3 sounds heard.

In the Montessori classroom we play the sound game and use the Movable Alphabet to strengthen this skill.

To test whether your child has gained this skill. Ask them to identify the beginning sound in the word "cat" then ask them to identify the end sound in the word "cat". If they cannot do this then I would highly recommend using the movable alphabet to practice this skill.

To learn how to teach the sound game and movable alphabet, checkout my FREE Montessori Reading Masterclass!

So to recap, before teaching your child to read they must know their letter sounds and be able to identify beginning and end sounds in spoken words. This will ensure that your child has a strong literacy foundation and set them up for be success in reading.