When helping your child learn how to read, it is important to understand the biology, psychology, and sociology of learning.
The Biology of Learning
The brain was never made to read. It was made to talk, listen, sing, but not read. Humans, in their infinite creativity, attached meaning to symbols and eventually made complex rules about those symbols. Here is the catch: in order to learn a new word, the neurons in the brain need to grow new synaptic connections among the cells that store the information of letter shapes, sounds, and meanings. Growing dendrite neural connections between and among neural cells is a physical process that is slow and takes deliberate focus on the part of the learner.
The brain needs to make a new set of neural connections for each word a human learns. If the average young adult person knows about 40,000 words, that is a lot of neural connections and time needed to teach someone how to read.
The Psychology of Learning
In order to set your child up for success with learning how to read, and to master these words, you will need to teach your child that learning happens through practice, lots of practice. If they learn how to focus and practice on one small set, then they can learn anything. This is where learning a few letter combinations via flash cards teaches the learner that they can master anything, it just takes a little focus and hard work.
The Sociology of Learning
The last part of learning success is encouragement. Parents should be super encouraging, providing lots of praise for correct answers, but also lots of praise for even trying to sound out the letters. Teach your student that their effort is accepted and encouraged. They tried, and that is amazing! And when there is progress, even more praise. It is easy to create a fun and motivating academic environment.
To All the Parents:
Learning to read is a long and difficult journey. However, through repeated exposure to letter patterns and lots of focus, students will be successful!
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