Many schools continue to advocate the Whole Word or Sight Word method when teaching a child to read. The child learns to identify the shape of the words and, ultimately, memorizes a list of vocabulary words. Unfortunately, the English language is comprised of approximately 600,000 words. It is impossible to memorize enough words to become functionally literate. Competent readers have a minimum vocabulary of between 50,000-70,000 words.

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Even when a child memorizes words, he often continues to labor as he attempts to recall the word from his memory bank making his reading difficult. Without easy recall, reading fluency is halting and comprehension is affected. A young child's brain is wired for memorization, but typically, children are only able to memorize a maximum of 5,000 words. Memorizing a list of high frequency words will help some. The Dolch List is an example of a high frequency word list, which has been shown over time to be a reliable list. However, memorization is not enough.

Conversely, teaching a child phonics will help him learn to decode words allowing him to be able to read words he has never encountered. Phonics takes time and practice as there are a lot of grammar, punctuation and spelling rules, which much be learned along the way. With time and patience, decoding skills can be learned.

There are many things a parent can do to help prepare a child to learn literacy skills.

-To start, a baby should be encouraged to crawl and creep on hands and knees. Crawling and creeping are considered pre-literacy skills and help with a variety of developmental steps including hand-eye coordination, easing cross-lateral movement, and assisting in training the eyes to track, converge and cross mid-line. Skipping this very important developmental stage can have a huge impact on academic success and may lead to learning disabilities.

-Music is a great way to help a child to learn material that will function later in life as the brain "hooks" from which more advanced learning will hang. Helping a preschool-aged child memorize the alphabet song as well as the phonics sounds each letter makes is a start to helping a child learn that letters have sounds and when combined will form meaningful words. Music involves both hemispheres of the brain at the same time and is a wonderful learning tool.

-Reading to a child, starting as babies and continuing throughout their educational journey, will help a child learn to enjoy language and learn to enjoy reading.

-Playing language games will allow your child to explore language and vocabulary. Make up silly songs or nonsense, rhyming lines or poems as well.

-Have your child dictate a story for you to write down leaving space for the child to add his own illustrations.

-Encourage a child to color and practice fine motor skills. Introduce the concept that letters have upper case and lower case shapes, then help them trace and copy the letters. Be sure to use a variety of font styles so that a child can see that a letter may look different depending on the font used.

-As the child starts to learn to read, ask him to read out loud to you. Assist him with decoding by sounding out new words.

-Most of all, have fun with reading and language activities!