I want to talk to you about teaching children to read.

Because what we're doing is not working.

Globally, according to UNESCO, 56% of primary school aged children

are not reaching minimum proficiency levels in reading.

Surprisingly, they add that most children who are not learning, are in school.

I'm a Montessori teacher.

I have taught pre-school children to read for almost four decades.

When I hear a parent very proudly saying, "My child knows the ABCs,"

my heart sinks.

Because I know I must move all that information aside

in order to teach that child to read.

We do not read with the names of letters.

We read with the sounds of letters.

Reading is like music.

Music comes from the sound of a note, not the name of a note.

Reading comes from the sound of a letter, not the name of a letter.

For the child who was taught ABCs first,

such as "a says ah as in apple,"

it usually takes six months to a year longer to sort out the sounds

and begin to read.

Stop teaching the names of letters first.

Instead, start early teaching the sounds of letters.

Consider what must be sorted through:

twenty-six letter names, twenty-six letter sounds, twenty-six upper case letters,

twenty-six lower case letters, and twenty-six stories to go with the letters.

Snake, octopus, monkey, apple...

From baby books to toys to typical classrooms,

we force pre-school children to untangle one hundred thirty pieces of information,

most of which are not needed to learn to read.

Research confirms that young children being read to and talked to

assimilate all the speech sounds in their environment during the first year of life.

Through the following years, with the sounds of speech in place,

learning to read begins by simply attaching symbols to those sounds.

Stanislas Dehaene in the conclusion of his book Reading in the Brain states,

"All children, regardless of their socioeconomic background,

benefit from explicit and early teaching of the correspondence between letters

and speech sounds."

Connecting those letters to their sounds

is just another example of object labeling for the child.

One letter, one sound.

"This is mm, can we find mm on this page?"

Focus on lower case symbols, because that is what children see most often in books.

Children are driven to learn.

On one occasion, when I was working with children living in poverty,

one little boy who had just turned 3,

insisted on participating.

His experience with letter sounds was purely through play with six letters.

So I said those letters out.

He looked at me with indignation and disbelief.

He swept up all six letters, held them up one at a time,

correctly stating the sound of each.

Then he looked around and behind me, to see if there were more.

In essence, he was saying, "Enough already! I know these. I'm here for more."

Keep in mind, he learned six letters informally through play

when he was 2 years old.

And he was there for more.

Typically, the names of letters, the ABCs, are the primary focus

until a child is 4-5 years of age.

But we don't read with the names of letters.

And unlearning is really hard.

By shifting that early focus to the most common sounds of letters

children begin reading by 4-5.

Clearly, little people, are given years to learn to dress and eat independently.

Likewise, they should have the same wide window of time to learn to read.

Children are surrounded by print,

but they don't know how it all fits together with speech sounds.

Figuring it out is one of the most consequential tasks in a lifetime.

To help them, start early.

Engage, engage with the environment.

Choose two or three letter sounds to teach,

make sure the child is confident identifying those few sounds

before adding another.

Children are able to identify a letter of a sound when they hear that sound,

before they sometimes can say that sound.

A child who says, "I want to read,"

deserves to have the most common letter sound associations already in place.

The secondary sounds, such as the "c" in "city" or the "e" in "ego,"

upper case letters, letter names,

or more complicated quirks of a language come later.

If we continue to teach the names of letters first, the ABCs,

the children who learn to read are doing so in spite of us.

We are asking all children to struggle unnecessarily.

We all can help children learn to read

in a more logical, natural, and seamless way.

Talk to children differently.

Whether you are in the grocery store with your toddler,

or in a conversation with a friend's child,

"Look, this is eh,"

"Do you see the mm on her shirt?"

"Can you hear the tt in Tuesday?"

"Let's go look for ss down this aisle!"

Stop teaching the ABCs first.

Trust our youngest children with the actual tools of print,

the sounds of the letters.

Those little analytical minds will do the work of reading, one sound at a time.

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我想和你谈谈教 孩子阅读。

因为我们正在做的事情是行不通的。

根据联合国教科文组织的数据，在全球范围内，56% 的 小学适龄

儿童没有达到最低 阅读水平。

令人惊讶的是，他们补充说，大多数 不学习的孩子都在上学。

我是蒙台梭利老师。

我教学龄前儿童阅读 将近四年。

当我听到一位家长非常自豪地说： “我的孩子知道 ABCs”时，

我的心沉了下去。

因为我知道我必须将所有这些 信息放在一边

，以便教那个孩子阅读。

我们不阅读字母的名称。

我们用字母的声音阅读。

阅读就像音乐。

音乐来自音符的声音， 而不是音符的名称。

阅读来自字母的声音， 而不是字母的名称。

对于先学 ABC 的孩子，

比如“a say ah as in apple”

，通常需要六个月到一年的 时间才能理清发音

并开始阅读。

先停止教字母的名字。

相反，尽早开始教授字母的发音 。

考虑必须排序的内容：

26 个字母名称、26 个字母 发音、26 个大写字母、

26 个小写字母，以及 与这些字母对应的 26 个故事。

蛇、章鱼、猴子、苹果……

从婴儿书籍到玩具再到典型的 教室，

我们强迫学龄前儿童解开 一百三十条信息，

其中大部分不是 学习阅读所需要的。

研究证实，在生命的第一年， 被阅读和交谈的幼儿可以

吸收周围环境中的所有语音 。

在接下来的几年里，随着 语音的到位，

学习阅读的第一步是简单地 将符号附加到这些声音上。

Stanislas Dehaene 在他的 书《大脑中的阅读》的结论中说：

“所有的孩子，无论他们的 社会经济背景如何，都能

从早期明确的 字母和语音对应关系的教学中受益

。”

将这些字母与它们的声音联系起来

只是给孩子贴标签的另一个例子 。

一个字母，一个声音。

“这是mm，我们可以在这个页面找到mm吗？”

专注于小写符号，因为这 是孩子们在书中最常看到的。

孩子们被驱使去学习。

有一次，当我和贫困儿童一起工作时 ，

一个刚满 3 岁的小男孩

坚持要参加。

他对字母发音的体验 纯粹是通过玩六个字母。

所以我把那些信说了出来。

他用愤慨和 不可置信的眼光看着我。

他把六个字母都扫了一遍， 一个一个举起来，

正确地说出每个字母的发音。

然后他环顾四周和我身后， 看看是否还有更多。

本质上，他是在说，“ 已经够了！我知道这些。我来这里是为了更多。”

请记住，他 2 岁时通过游戏非正式地学习了六个字母

。

他在那里还有更多。

通常，字母名称（ABC） 是

儿童 4-5 岁之前的主要关注点。

但我们不阅读 字母的名称。

而忘却真的很难。

通过将早期的注意力转移到最 常见的字母发音上，

孩子们在 4-5 岁时开始阅读。

显然，小人物需要数年时间来 学习独立穿衣和吃饭。

同样，他们应该有同样宽 的时间来学习阅读。

孩子们被印刷品包围着，

但他们不知道这一切是 如何与语音结合在一起的。

弄清楚它 是一生中最重要的任务之一。

为了帮助他们，尽早开始。

参与，参与环境。

选择两个或三个字母的发音来 教，

确保孩子在添加另一个之前有信心 识别这几个发音

。

孩子 们在听到声音时能够识别声音的字母，

而有时他们会说出那个声音。

一个说“我想阅读”的孩子

应该拥有最常见的字母 发音关联。

次要的声音，例如 “city”中的“c”或“ego”中的“e”、

大写字母、字母名称

或更复杂 的语言怪癖出现在后面。

如果我们继续先教 字母的名字，那么 ABC 和

学习阅读的孩子们会 不顾我们这样做。

我们要求所有孩子进行 不必要的斗争。

我们都可以帮助孩子

以更合乎逻辑、更自然、 更流畅的方式学习阅读。

以不同的方式与孩子交谈。

无论你是 和蹒跚学步的孩子在杂货店里，

还是在 和朋友的孩子交谈时，

“看，这是呃”，

“你看到她衬衫上的那个毫米了吗？”

“你能在星期二听到 tt 吗？”

“我们去这条过道找ss！”

先停止教ABC。

相信我们最小的孩子，用 实际的印刷工具，

字母的声音。

那些小的分析头脑会做 阅读的工作，一次一个声音。