Reading and Spelling
Reading is more than sounds and sight words.
Children need a lot of skills in order to read and spell successfully. Reading is the ability to understand meaning from print. Spelling is the ability to write letters to form words to express a meaning. The simple task of reading and spelling is really anything but simple!
Children are not born with these skills. Children need to be taught to read and spell. Some children need large amounts of instructions, while other children appear to ‘just pick it up’.
School is not meant to be difficult for your child. Continued difficulties with learning to read and spell can impact on your child’s self-esteem and confidence, and their overall experience at school.
What are the symptoms?
Some symptoms of a reading difficulty may include:
The specific causes of reading difficulties are variable.
Due to the complex nature of reading, no one cause can be identified. This means that the difficulties that children face can differ completely from child to child.
Reading difficulties are considered to be neurodevelopmental in nature. Children can experience reading difficulties with no other associated intellectual or learning difficulty.
Reading difficulties do not generally ‘go away’. Children need to be taught successful skills and strategies in order to decode and understand the information they have read. Research has proven that the earlier a child receives intervention in the form of speech therapy, the better their long term reading skills will be.
What is involved in reading?
Successful reading can be broken into Six main areas:
Phonemic Awareness
Phonics
Vocabulary
Comprehension
Fluency and Retention
Motivation
If you have concerns for your child’s talking, understanding or speech sound development contact Chatterbox Speech Pathology to book an assessment.