Blog Post

Does your child love reading?

Happy Staff • October 20, 2022

What are GRADED READERS?

Mastering a language means mastering the 4 skills of that language: 
  • listening
  • speaking
  • reading
  • writing.
This week, we would like to talk about reading.

Children usually begin reading simple c-v-c words around the age of 4 or 5 . Of course, some kids are faster and some are slower but this is a good general rule. 

Even before students can actually read, they need to understand the sounds of English and how sounds relate to letters. This is called Synthetic Phonics, and it's a highly effective technique to introduce kids to the joys of reading. Once students understand the concepts of synthetic phonics, it is pretty easy to get them to start reading.
Once students have mastered recognizing the graphemes and corresponding phonemes, they use books called Graded Readers to practice reading. Graded Readers are available in multiple levels and includes a section called "Head word" which lists key words in the book.  

Graded Readers are designed so that if a student can read the all words in the "Head word" list, they can read the book!! It's as simple as that! This makes it easy and simple to pair students with a book that matches their level. Soon, students discover they can read stories ALL BY THEMSELVES. It's a wonderful sense of accomplishment and often students want more and more books to practice their new skills. 

Sometimes it is hard for parents to know which book to have your child read. Well, we have the perfect solution for you!

At Hisaya International Preschool, we have a BOOK LENDING LIBRARY where the teachers will choose a Graded Reader that is specially suited for your child's needs. Our lending library is 100% free! And of course, if you would like to purchase sets of books to have them at home, you are able to purchase carefully-selected sets of wonderful books your child will LOVE. For more information please contact the front desk for details of our LENDING LIBRARY.

Question time:

Based on research, when students are learning how to read a new word, about how many times should the student be exposed to the word before they learn it?
  1. 5 times
  2. 20 times
  3. 100 times
.
.
.
  • Reveal the answer

    The correct answer is...

    2. 20 times!


    Research says students are able to gain recognition of the word after seeing it about 15-20 times.

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