The Importance of Early Reading Intervention

First, know that there are set pre- and early-reading skills that children should master as early as preschool and kindergarten that, on the surface, may not seem like they have to do with reading at all. One of these important skills is called phonological awareness, which refers to a child’s ability to hear and manipulate sounds in oral language. It includes such skills as rhyming, clapping out syllables in words, and identifying the initial sounds in words, such as the sound for “m” in “monkey.”

Proficient oral language skills are also key for reading comprehension. That is, children should have developed the ability to talk on time, have a wide vocabulary from communicating with the people around them, and have a compendium of background knowledge from experiences to pull from when trying to understand a book they are reading or that is being read to them.

If these skills are in place, a typical reader should not have difficulty moving on to learning the names and sounds of letters, as well as early sight words, such as “a,” “the,” and “me.” However, if you see that these skills are not in place for your child in the middle of or by the end of kindergarten, early intervention is extremely important.

Research shows that children who fall behind in early reading skills require intense intervention to catch up. In addition, the older a child is (including later elementary), the more intense and long-term the intervention needs to be due to the cumulative effect of the skills the child is missing. Studies have documented that a poor first-grade reader almost always continues as a poor reader without intensive intervention.

If you feel that your child is not developing reading skills as he or she should be, do not wait to see how things go. Ask for a meeting with your child’s teacher to review reading assessments that compare your child’s reading skills to set reading benchmarks for children in that grade.