What’s the Solution?

          To read on grade level and beyond, your child must build a strong base of phonics knowledge.  As mentioned on the previous page, this refers to understandings of how sounds from spoken language are spelled in print and it is what allows one to “decode” written English or sound it out.  But equipped with this ever-growing knowledge base, your child must have regular opportunities to apply it in the context of authentic reading experiences (e.g. passage readings, readings of fiction/non-fiction texts, etc.).  And as they do so, we want them to continuously grow and develop in the following key areas:

• automatic word recognition

• vocabulary and background knowledge (both general and specific)

• verbal reasoning or making inferences, recognizing figures of speech, etc.

• literacy knowledge or understanding how books are structured/organized, etc.

• language structures or understanding grammar rules, etc.

• prosody or reading with appropriate tone, pitch, emphasis, rhythm and volume

         As your child progresses with all of this, they will simultaneously improve at comprehension or getting meaning out of reading.  This is particularly important in that comprehension is the end goal of reading and ultimate indicator of one’s reading level.  So to read on a certain grade level, your child must be able to comprehend text at that level.  And to get there, and coming full circle, the key is to build phonics knowledge and apply it to authentic reading as outlined above.