Research and Articles » early reading

by Ellen Shapiro As a creator of materials designed to help children learn to read, I’m a longtime champion of The Cat In The Hat as a beginning reader. It’s not only engaging and funny, it helps kids learn to read C-V-C words, three-letter words with a beginning consonant, a short vowel, and an ending consonant  like cat and hat, sit and bit, man and fan, bed and red. When children understand that an alphabet letter is a symbol that represents a sound and begin to decode the basic building blocks of written language, they are on the way to “cracking the code,” that is, learning to read longer and more complex words, sentences and, soon, books. It’s exciting to see them grasp that when the initial consonant changes, the ‘at’ part stays the same. Aha! Suddenly, they can read a series of words including bat, fat, rat, mat, sat… and are inspired to want to learn more. When the vowel changes and the CVC becomes bit, fit, hit, sit and wit, a whole new series of words is...