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Wednesday, 18 December 2013

First Reader Books Help Children

By Eugenia Dickerson


Literacy is an important skill to have and can benefit an individual through all the stages of their life. The earlier a child is introduced to this concept, the better their command of the written word seems to be as they mature. First reader books are made with consideration to the way the young mind learns and processes the ideas of letters, words and sentences.

Children do not read for the same reasons that adults do. Before the third grade, most kids have no interest in deep, involved plots or being taught a lesson in morals, so to be successful, any book meant for this group should focus only on subjects that a child would find engaging. More important than an intricate storyline, as far as the young ones are concerned, is a main character that they can feel a bond with.

The story should be about situations to which they can relate without having to put a lot of thought into it. The main challenge is to make the tale simple yet keep it engaging. Children have relatively short attention spans and if the book becomes too long and complex they will lose interest and have no desire to put forth the effort necessary to work through the words.

A few characteristics of books meant for beginners are short sentences that are repeated several times throughout the course of the story and are comprised of words that are simple to sound out and easy to recognize. Illustrations are used to demonstrated the story. This is because when a child is able to see a picture while saying the words, they have a better understanding of what they are reading.

With the developing mind, repetition is a key learning technique that has a very high success rate. The more often they see and say the same combination of letters and sounds, the more easily the child can retain that association and use it in future endeavors. This formula is often used in conjunction with rhyming.

Children love to hear, say and read words that rhyme and this has long been one of the leading learning techniques. This is partly because the repetition of sound is fun and feels a bit like singing. A base vocabulary is often built by the child figuring out the phonetic pronunciation of the first word and making new ones by altering the beginning letter.

Reading skills are learned in recognizable stages. The first is where a child follows along while an adult reads the words and over time, picks up the skills of sounding out the letters in a word. Once this has been mastered, children move on to doing most of the phonetic work themselves, requiring only basic assistance for the more complex letter combinations.

Pictures can be used to tell a tale and first reader books use them as a way to connect a visualized idea with the written words accompanying them for better understanding. Each storyline is based on a child's way of thinking, being kept short and uncomplicated but engaging all the same. The techniques of rhyming and repeating are two of the most basic tools for teaching the children to enjoy themselves.




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