Are you sure that your child's phonics curriculum is teaching everything that he needs to know? Reading readiness is a big part of the process of learning to read, and if your current curriculum is not up to par, your child may suffer the consequences of falling behind in school. Likewise, if you are just reviewing the different phonics curricula available to you, use this as a guide to help you choose the right one.

Learning the Vowels

Teaching the short vowel sounds should be done in isolation before your child learns any words. Examples of short vowel sounds include "a" as in alligator, "e" as in elephant, "i" as in ice cream, "o" as in octopus, and "u" as in under. This helps your child to understand that vowels can be pronounced as their names and also in short sounds as well.

Learning the Consonants

A solid phonics curriculum will teach the consonants in isolation before your child is introduced to any words. This is important because letters such as "c" can be pronounced with a hard sound and a soft sound (as in cat and city). Learning this will help your child as the reading process begins.

Combining Short Vowel Sounds with Consonants

A child should be introduced to a short vowel sound and several consonant sounds before learning to read words. Examples of this would include introducing the short vowel "o" with the consonants "c," "p," and "t" to make words like cop, pot, and top. Teaching this to your child should be done in isolation before introducing whole words.

First Grade Reading Readiness

All 50 sounds in the English language should be introduced to your child by the first grade. There are also 70 common ways to spell these sounds in different combinations. Be sure that the curriculum you choose covers these spellings in isolation. Examples of these would include diphthongs such as "ou," "au," "oy," etc. Other examples include the digraphs "wh," "th," "ch," and "sh."

Common Reading Methods

A good phonics curriculum will have students practicing how to read from left to right and teach them how to blend sounds in words as they are reading each word. Easy readers or beginning readers that accompany a phonics curriculum should match up with the skills they are teaching. It should be apparent to a child what a particular book is teaching without having to guess what skill is being highlighted.

Curriculum to Be Aware Of

There are some companies that market phonics curriculum that look good on the outside, but the content is weak. Here are some things you should look for in order to spot a weak phonics curriculum.

• Children should not be encouraged to guess at words they do not know.
• Children should not be encouraged to skip unknown words.
• Children should not be encouraged to replace unknown words with a different word.
• Children should not be encouraged to make up words or invent ways of spelling words.