Viral video sheds light on a common mistake that parents make while teaching kids how to read

Teaching kids is no child's play as education has the power to shape the future by influencing professional decisions as well as life choices. They way children are taught about language also has an impact on how they will communicate in the years to come. Before a child can start using complex words in their vocabulary to communicate with others, it's important to build a solid foundation for them where they learn how to pronounce basic words. But throwing a bunch of words and their meaning at kids expecting them to memorize it all at the snap of a finger might not be the right approach to educating them. 

Spencer, also known as @toddlerscanread on TikTok, gave a simple solution to parents and teachers trying to make kids learn basic words in English. "Parents, stop doing this," he stresses at the beginning of the video as a child looks up at him patiently. Then he shows the kid a whiteboard with words written on it such as "are," "all," "to," "do" and "at." Spencer speaks about how that is not the correct way to teach certain words to children. "What you should be doing instead is this," he says as he starts showing the kids a bunch of cards consisting of phonic sounds written on them. 

"Stop having your child memorize sight words and instead focus on the phonics sounds (starting with the primary letter sounds). This way, they have the key to unlock any word vs. just a few on a sight word list!" the caption on the video read. The video struck a chord with many parents and fellow educators who came across the video and left their comments. @tjpnt wrote, "I agree. I totally went against the grain when teaching our boys. No sight words here!  Teaching phonics just made more sense to me!" @sarinilla7 commented, "From someone who was reading at the age of two, this is exactly right! You have to learn a few sight words only - 99% phonics!"

@micika89 shared, "This is how I was taught English in school (it's not my first language). I didn't know that kids do not always use this method." @dontevenbotherm questioned, "What if it’s a bilingual family? Any tips to do more than one language with this technique?" Spencer replied to this person, explaining that "it’s up to the person and they can learn to read in both languages or just focus on one while teaching both. The skills from learning one transfer to the next." @homo_zacharius added, "Phonics teaches you the mechanics of language while sight words teach you how words work in real life. Seconds are helpful but you need the first just to think."

In another popular video on his TikTok, Spencer shared people can teach 2-year-old kids to read by following three easy steps. The first thing they need to do is teach the kids the sounds of each letter and not just words from the get-go. Then the educator needs to blend sounds into words bit by bit which the kids can repeat after them. The last step is blending these sounds into words and writing them down as well. Spencer's audience on TikTok praised him his patience with the kids while teaching them the basics of a language in the right way.

Follow @toddlerscanread on TikTok for more educational videos.