ABSTRACT
Reading is a developmental process and a reading programme should be so organized as to assist the development. The programme has therefore to be based on a sound knowledge of the developmental psychology involved in learning to associate visual and auditory patterns, to extract meaning from these, and to interpret and apply these meanings for the growth of knowledge and enrichment of ideas. The child now begins to derive pleasure from his reading success. He responds enthusiastically to word recognition games, he matches sentences to pictures with greater ease, and enjoys the speed with which he is ‘climbing’ his word ladder and filling his thumb-index alphabet book. Some children are able to continue to make progress in reading without a systematic programme for the teaching of phonics and other word recognition techniques. The child’s response to the types of exercise and activity will provide some indication of his readiness for using a systematic programme for the teaching of phonics.
