Teaching someone to read can feel overwhelming, especially if you’re just getting started.
Whether you’re a parent trying to help your child read their first book, or a teacher looking for a better system, you’ve probably asked:
Where do I even begin?
There’s a flood of advice out there—some helpful, most of it wrong. You’ll hear everything from “just read aloud more” to “memorize 100 sight words by Friday.” But here’s what no one tells you:
👉 Reading isn’t natural.
👉 It must be taught.
👉 And it must be taught the right way.
In this article, I’ll walk you through exactly how to teach reading for beginners—step by step, using methods grounded in the Science of Reading. I’ll also share how we built our Orton-Gillingham curriculum to make that process easy for parents, teachers, and anyone working with young or struggling readers.
The #1 Mistake People Make When Teaching Reading
The biggest mistake? Starting with books.
That’s like asking someone to drive a car without teaching them how to turn the key or press the gas.
Reading doesn’t start with books. It starts with sounds.
The key to reading is decoding: taking letters (graphemes) and turning them into sounds (phonemes), then blending those sounds into words.
If beginners don’t get this foundation, they’ll struggle with reading for years—guessing, skipping, and memorizing their way through texts instead of actually understanding how to read.
What the Science of Reading Says
Here’s what decades of research from linguistics, neuroscience, and education tell us:
Reading is not a visual guessing game.
Reading is about building connections in the brain between letters and sounds.
The five key components of learning to read are:
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Phonemic Awareness – Hearing and manipulating sounds in spoken words
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Phonics – Mapping those sounds to letters
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Fluency – Reading smoothly and accurately
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Vocabulary – Understanding word meanings
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Comprehension – Making sense of what’s read
Step-by-Step: How to Teach Reading for Beginners
Let’s break down the process into real, actionable steps.
Step 1: Start with Phonemic Awareness
Before they can read a word, beginners must be able to hear and work with the individual sounds in spoken words.
✅ Activities to try:
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Clapping syllables in words
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Identifying beginning, middle, and end sounds
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Blending sounds together orally (e.g., “What’s /c/ /a/ /t/?” → “cat”)
Step 2: Teach the Alphabetic Principle
This is where we connect the sounds they’ve been practicing to actual letters.
✅ What to teach:
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Letter names
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Letter sounds (focus on lowercase first)
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How to write each letter while saying the sound
It’s important to teach sounds before or alongside letter names. Knowing that “m” says /m/ is more useful than calling it “em.”
Step 3: Blend Simple Words
Once your student knows a few sounds (like m, a, t, s, p), you can start blending!
✅ Try:
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Sounding out CVC words (consonant-vowel-consonant): map, sat, tip
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Using Elkonin boxes or finger tapping to help segment and blend
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Asking, “Can you make the word mat using these letters?”
Step 4: Use Decodable Books—Not Leveled Readers
Leveled readers are filled with words students haven’t learned yet. That forces beginners to guess based on pictures or context—bad habits we want to avoid.
Decodable readers, on the other hand, are carefully written using only the sounds and rules the student has been taught.
Step 5: Teach Sight Words the Right Way
Yes, some sight words can’t be fully decoded at first (like “said” or “the”), but most “sight words” are phonetic—if you teach them the right way.
✅ Instead of memorizing:
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Use a structured “heart word” routine to map irregular parts
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Connect high-frequency words to phonics rules when possible
Step 6: Build Fluency Through Repetition
Reading the same decodable sentence or story multiple times may feel repetitive, but for beginners, it’s gold.
✅ Fluency routines include:
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Echo reading (you read, they repeat)
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Partner reading
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Timed re-reading of familiar texts
Repetition builds automaticity—and automaticity builds confidence.
Step 7: Expand Vocabulary and Comprehension
Once decoding is underway, start growing your child’s vocabulary and comprehension through conversation, read-alouds, and guided discussion.
✅ Ask:
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“What do you think this word means?”
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“What happened in the story?”
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“Why do you think the character did that?”
Our Orton Gillingham Curriculum includes comprehension questions that are easy for beginners to answer—even before they’re reading full stories independently.
What to Avoid When Teaching Reading to Beginners
Let’s talk about what not to do:
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❌ Telling kids to “guess” the word from the picture
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❌ Using leveled readers with unpredictable text
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❌ Relying solely on sight word memorization
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❌ Skipping phonemic awareness
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❌ Pushing ahead before a concept is mastered
If you’re doing any of these, it’s not your fault. You were probably taught to teach reading this way.
But the good news? It’s never too late to pivot.
Tools That Make Teaching Reading for Beginners Easy
You don’t have to design a curriculum from scratch or guess at what to teach next.
We’ve done the hard work for you.
✅ Teach Me to Read with Orton-Gillingham Curriculum
Everything from letter sounds to decoding to fluency and comprehension—organized and ready to go.
✅ Orton Gillingham Decodable Coloring Books
Perfect for early readers to reinforce phonics while having fun.
✅ Structured Literacy Curriculum
Over 2,000 pages of phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, reading, and writing—ideal for home, tutoring, or classroom instruction.
Final Thoughts: Teaching Reading Is About Simplicity, Not Complexity
Teaching reading isn’t about having the perfect script or expensive software. It’s about starting with sounds, moving to letters, and building skills one step at a time.
It’s about showing students how to unlock the code of written language—and watching their confidence grow with every word they read.
If you’re just starting your journey as a reading teacher—welcome. You’ve already taken the most important step: choosing to learn how to do it the right way.