Reply to Would you want a teacher trying to make your 3 yr. old read?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm a preschool teacher.

I don't think that starting a child on decoding should be the priority in a 3 year old program.  I think that there's a place in preschool for some rhyming games, and quick lessons on letters and sounds, and reading a schedule that's set up to go left to right, but not much more.

On the other hand, I think that a good 3 year old program should be very much focused on the skills that kids will need to be skilled readers in middle school and beyond.  For example, I think that a good preschool program includes:

Lots of opportunities for kids to grow their vocabulary in the context of stories, and science "experiments", and field trips and more.  Afterall, research tells us that vocabulary is a huge predictor and driver of reading skills.

Lots of opportunities for kids to understand the structure of a narrative, through dramatic play, and acting out the stories in a book, and working with props like flannel boards, and puppets.  Because we know that kids who can visualize a story in their head, understand it better, and understanding what is read is the heart of reading.

Lots of opportunities for kids to develop their oral language, by talking talking talking, and listening to each other talk, at the lunch table, and in the block corner, and at show and tell.  Because kids develop their sense of syntax and morphology by practicing and practicing, and until they know what sounds right when they say it, they can't begin to use context cues to support their decoding, or the understand complex sentences.

Lots of opportunities for kids to have experiences with print in meaningful contexts, such as hanging up their coat on the hook with their very own name, and dictating the text for a birthday card to Grandma.

All of these things build readers, and all of them belong in a good preschool program. If a program is rich enough in these things, some kids will make the jump to reading in their 3 or 4 year old year, and almost all of the rest will start Kindergarten so ready to read that they take off.  
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Bravo!  I wish you were my child's preschool teacher.[/quote]

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