Stop spreading the myth that letters make sounds. This makes it harder for kids to learn to read!
We would never teach kids that numbers make money. Of course it doesn’t that’s ridiculous.
It is just as ridiculous to teach kids that letters make sounds. Letters only represent sounds!
People have been talking much longer than we’ve been using a written communication. Thinking about sounds is a natural developmental process, but learning to read and write is not. When we teach kids to read and spell by talking about sounds first the information makes much more sense to their brain.
Letters are things we see and write; sounds are what we hear and say.
When you teach a child that “a” says ‘a’ as in “cat”, it can confuse them when they try to read words like baby, what, father, and any. Typically, teachers tell children that these words break the rules and they should just memorize them. The problem with this is visually memorizing words is not an effective reading strategy for anyone- especially kids who are struggling readers.
To make reading and spelling instruction easier for kids, talk about sounds first, and then teach them the different ways to spell each sound. For example, you can teach kids that “a” usually spells the short vowel sound ‘a’ as in “cat”, and it can also be spelled with “ai” (plaid), “au” (laugh), and “a_e” (giraffe).
