The Whole Word Approach

By Cherry Pua

In a Whole Language approach, children's exposure to the written language is through reading books aloud or sharing words of favourite songs. The focus is on the whole word and not so much on individual letter sounds, because individual words can convey meaning for the child.

In the whole language approach, the words that we identify by their very appearance are called sight words. We know them just by looking at them. Having a huge stock of these words in our memory bank makes reading a breeze, thus, we avoid the inconvenience of having to stop and sound out each word we encounter.

Learning to read sight words would make children familiar with their function as distinct components of language, so that when they speak, they do so with flow and ease, without pausing at every sound.

Although there are words prescribed by experts as sight words, it is still important to consider your own child's preferences and interests. Teach one word at a time. Choose words that have special importance, something that will stimulate and excite your child to recognize. Most teachers and parents start with the child's name and members of the family. Move on to those things that play a significant role in his life: a pet, a favorite toy, things found in his bedroom or playroom.

Learning to read words sparks your child's word recognition ability. However, just as he learns most words through conversations, so will he learn to read most words independently through the course of his reading. Unknown words to him become meaningful when he brings his knowledge of the content and language to the page. So he needs plenty of exposure to the conversation of sentences, songs and stories for this to occur. Let your child read 1-3 words every week. Let him focus on the shape of these words. Remember that the idea is to make your child read the words as a whole. This way, every time the child encounters these words, he will breeze through them without struggling with phonics. This makes the reading experience as easy as possible.

For a list of 300 high frequency words found in 65% of print, log on to http://www.geniuschilddevelopment.com Cherry Pua-Africa is the author of stories such as The True Story of Humpty Dumpty that was recognized and awarded by Japan SV Association, The Culture Cat Series used by Cambridge Informatics throughout its franchise network and the Story Ring. She is also the producer of the educator's favorite storytelling CDs entitled The Story Ring and Never Ending Rhythm and Rhymes. She is currently the Managing Director of Never Ending Story, a Singapore-based education consultancy firm providing training and coaching service to educators and school business managers and developing high impact school programmes. Cherry is also a director of ACT English in Thailand and has managed several kindergartens and speech and drama centres. To date, Cherry's clients include Cambridge Child Development Centres (Informatics Singapore), ACTs of life Singapore, Singapore Repertory's Little Theatre Company, Singapore Asian Civilisations Museum, Total Child Centre Malaysia, Kinder Minds Philippines, etc. She has given high impact workshops at the National Storytelling Network in the USA, International Reading Association, Southeast Asian Education Ministers Organization, Chitrlada Royal School in Bangkok, SEGI College in Malaysia and so on. For more information or to ask any questions pertaining to Raising Genius at home, log on to http://www.geniuschilddevelopment.com