This post will deal with the practical aspects of phonics instruction in a preschool setting. Many of the activities promoted for early literacy development actually fall into the whole language camp rather than the phonics-based camp. I will address these activities to show how they can be tweeked to promote phonics. I will also discuss activities that wholly fall in the phonics-based camp.
The Great Divide at 3
In my post dealing with phonics based instruction for infants and toddlers, I discussed how children truly begin to diverge at the age of two as to maturity, ability, and exposure to good learning experiences. When children reach the age of three, this continues and becomes more pronounced. In any given three year old classroom in the United States, you will find children not pottytrained and not speaking very well to children who are nearly ready to begin learning to read. The causes of this wide divergence are as varied as the children themselves. However, dealing with the wide divergence has become one of the hottest topics of discussion in early childhood and early elementary teachers.
Providing preliteracy instruction for such a wide divergence of abilities and maturities can be extremely challenging. In this post I will provide activities for children ranging from very immature to advanced and gifted. How you incorporate these activities into your setting will depend on the ability and maturity level of the children in your care.
The Immature 3 Year old
Preliteracy instruction for immature 3 year olds will look very similar to what I suggested for 2 year olds. For those children who are still struggling with speech, the babble games are the most important activity you can do with these children. Many immature children also have speech issues by this age. A lot of this is due to underdeveloped tongue muscles. When you do babble games with this age, it is very important to make it a game about the tongue and where the tongue goes to make each sound. Sometimes this will require you to sit and think carefully about how your own mouth makes these sounds before you try this with the children. For example, the "L" sound is one of the most common problems that comes up. For that sound the tongue must touch the top of the mouth behind the teeth in order to say it correctly. For many children this is a challenge, but keep after it. The tongue is a muscle and will develop with use. Being able to pronounce all the consonant sounds is the first stepping stone of learning to sound out words. I cannot stress how important this particular stepping stone is for future phonics instruction.
Beyond babble games, one of the most important activities you can do with children is read to them. For three year olds with little experience with books, you will need to choose books that have easy repetitive text. As with normally developing two year olds, this type of book gives them experience with "reading" a book. They will pick up this repetitive text and say it with you. In the phonics based method this is more about learning to use language than actual reading as advocated in the whole language method. Playing with words is extremely important for this age. For three year olds that have had good exposure to books, you will need to choose books that rhyme or use alliteration (all the words begin with the same letter). Again, the purpose is for children to play with the sounds of language. These types of activities prepare a child to break down words into their basic sounds. The whole language method advocates trying to help children learn how the whole word looks. The phonics method, on the other hand, deals with the way sounds are used in words. When reading to children, play with the sounds of language as well as expose children to as much language as possible. These are the activities that prepare children to decode words not just memorize them.
Normally Developing 3 Year Olds
Normally developing three year olds typically begin to learn some of the letters of the alphabet. This is the next stepping stone. Children must know the names and sounds of letters to learn to read through the phonics method of instruction. One of the best suggestions I ever received in one of my early childhood literacy classes came from a woman that also taught kindergarten. She told us to plaster the alphabet everywhere and point to letters naming them as much as possible. This contradicts what many early childhood experts suggest. They suggest we plaster words all over the place. However, she understood how vitally important knowing the letters is for children entering kindergarten. Children that enter kindergarten not knowing the names and sounds of the letters are behind as soon as they walk in the door. That is just a simple fact of life. Learning the letters can start for many children at age three if they have had good experiences with books. When you work with the children on learning the letters, make sure to include the letter sounds as well. How you teach the letters will greatly depend on your teaching style. There really is no wrong way to teach the letters if the children are actually learning them. Let me give you a word of caution. Some activities are fun, but when the activity is over, the children have not gained knowledge of the letters. Make sure the activities you are doing help the children to learn the letter names and sounds.
The Advanced 3 Year Olds
Most three year olds will probably begin learning the letters but will not fully conquer them until they are four years old. However, there will be the small minority of children that conquer all the letters at three and are ready to move on to harder tasks. My middle child fell into this category. These children are ready to begin to put letters together into blends and short one vowel words. As I have said over and over and over again. I never hold back a child because of his/her age. It just is not fair to advanced and gifted children to keep them from what they are capable of doing. Many times they will do this in spite of us. My middle child learned to read sitting in the floor playing while I did her older sister's kindergarten instruction. She was three. She looked like she was playing but she was listening to every single thing I taught her sister. When I realized what she was capable of doing, I just let her go for it. She does not remember not being able to read, and she thinks that is the coolest thing in the world. To her, every child should have that opportunity. However, I understand that only a few three year olds fall into this category.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!!
Check out Natalie's children's books at: https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457
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