Learning to Read Books

When learning to read, children need books that are engaging, provide an adequate challenge to their current reading skills, and most importantly, books that they will enjoy and encourage them to keep reading.

Starting out

Emergent readers are still at the stage where they are developing their phonemic awareness and phonics skills, that is, the awareness of the individual sounds in words (called phonemes) and how these sounds link to individual and combinations of letters. Nursery Rhymes are a great way to build these crucial skills and also introduce your child to rhyme. Learning through repetition is one of the most effective ways for young children to learn, and by reading rhymes they are exposed to consistent repetitions of the same sounds and combinations of letters in words.

Developing Vocabulary

If your child has an understanding of the alphabet and how to pronounce basic words, developing their vocabulary is the next step on their journey to becoming a fluent reader. The most basic words that children need to add to their vocabulary are known as sight words, that is, words like ‘the’, ‘is’, ‘an’, ‘it’ etc that children need to recognise ‘at sight.’ Sight words make up more than 50 per cent of primary level texts, so it is important for children to add these to their vocabulary from an early age. To help broaden your child’s vocabulary, introduce them to different book titles and genres. The wider variety of books they read, the more they will be exposed to new words.

Reading Books in Reading Eggs and Reading Eggspress

Reading Eggs and Reading Eggspress both include real reading books that help kids on their learning to read journey. After lesson 9, Reading Eggs introduces children to a new e-book at the completion of each lesson. Each e-book appears with a cover and pages that turn to mimic the act of reading a real book. These story book and nonfiction titles allow children to put into practice the letter-sound correspondences and sight words they have learnt in earlier lessons. Reading Eggspress includes a comprehensive library of over 3000 ebooks. These ebooks cater to children aged 6-12, and include illustrated chapter books, full colour non-fiction books and a range of classics. The entire Reading Eggspress library is also available on iPad.