13 Challenges In Teaching A Kid to Read

School is back in session, and so my 6-year old just started the first grade a couple of weeks ago. And I’ve got to tell you – the homework isn’t at all how I remember it! Lots of math and logic problems early out of the gate, which isn’t too bad but the way the questions are worded sometimes, they not only trip up my kid but also my husband who’s supposed to be helping with the homework. Basically, my husband checks over my son’s answers, and then I have to check over my husband’s checking.

I’m almost afraid to see what second grade is gonna be like.

But even the homework is a walk in the park compared to the reading lessons I’ve been giving my child daily for a couple of years now. Ever try to teach a young kid how to read? It’s rather tricky! Here’s a list of 13 reasons teaching a kid to read is a challenge:

1. Read (present tense) and read (past tense) are spelled exactly the same but sound different
2. “bear”, “bare”, “hair” all rhyme, but “hear”, “hare”, and “hair” don’t
3. “snow” and “know” rhyme but neither rhyme with “now”
4. “where” and “there”, sound alike, but “here” doesn’t sound like them
5. There’s a trick to learning when a word is using long vs short vowel sounds
6. Trying to teach a kid to sound out words, when sometimes a letter doesn’t make a sound. Silent ‘e’. And silent ‘k’. Silent ‘c’ when next to ‘k’. Silent ‘g’ when next to ‘h’
7. The seemingly random interchangeability of ‘c’ and ‘s’ and ‘f’ and ‘ph’ (why IS it cellphone instead sellfone?)
8. Does the letter ‘k’ really have a use in our language? It’s silent in “know” and “knee”, does nothing but reinforce the sound ‘c’ is already making in words like back and heck, and could be replaced by ‘c’ in almost every other instance
9. I, eye, aye and the letter ‘i’ all sound exactly the same but mean very different things
10. Be, bee, the letter ‘b’
11. See, sea, and the letter ‘c’
12. Pea, pee, the letter ‘p’
13. There’s no ‘w’ in the word ‘one’ even though it sounds like there should be. But there IS a ‘w’ in the word ‘two’ even though it sounds like there shouldn’t be.

It’s almost amazing that anybody ever masters the English language!

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Tagged as: Thursday Thirteen