Tag Archives: phonics

4 Reading Rules to Boost Literacy

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#1 Consistency

There are several different approaches to reading instruction. Yet, the most widely accepted and proven method to teach reading is through phonetic instruction. Even within phonics instruction some teachers begin with letter sounds, and add vowel blends moving to the right… others learn by word families such as “hit”, “bit”, “sit”, “wit”, and “kit.” The connection between these words are based on rhyming. Most new words we learn are decoded from words we know already and that rhyme. Once you’ve begun phonics instruction, it needs to be practiced daily. After they’ve gained a foundation, then introduce early readers to your children. Daily work with consistent rigor will yield success!

(If you are worried about just how to introduce phonics check out “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons”, or “You can Teach Someone to Read” or use the website “Explode the Code.” My favorite early reader books are the Bob books, inexpensive, simple and easy to read. Don’t go for the expensive reading programs, you have everything you need in your local library and your computer.)

#2 SSR – Sustained silent reading

This is a well-known teacher strategy. The more a child reads silently and on their own the better they can read. Setting aside a specific amount of time each day for reading will grow a successful reader. You just might find that after you begin this, it will become a habit that your child will keep for life.

#3 Read for Understanding

Teaching you children to read for a purpose should be a primary objective. This should begin as early reading skills emerge. When a child reads his first sentence, understanding should occur. This should grow in to a process of analyzing and critical reading. There are several great books to help parents direct their children. “Critical conditioning” by K. Stout is great for exercises reinforcing these skills.

#4 Develop Expression and Love for Literature by Reading Aloud

A great way to hook you children on classic literature is to read aloud to them. Find a great story that they otherwise would not choose to read, and read it aloud to them. Another read aloud benefit is to have them read aloud to you. This develops expression and opens them up to dramatic reading opportunities.

Don’t let your children settle for poorly written literary works. Always encourage them to vary the genres that they enjoy, and challenge them to explore the classics.

A good reader is a good learner!

Teaching Your Child How to Read – Part 3

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Baby Step 3 – Special Sounds, One Vowel and Two vowel rules, and 3 letter words

By now your early learner is well on his or her way to reading. In fact, if they are anything like mine, they are already trying to jump ahead and read some. There may be some small words that they can go ahead and pick out. That’s great! At this point, I would suggest getting them some type of reading books that are on their level. The local library has plenty of these, and you can also invest in a set of Bob Books. There are several levels to these sets, but they are paperback and rather inexpensive. However, they are awesome for your beginner reader to gain confidence in their reading skills.

Your early learner is ready now for the one vowel and two vowel word rules. Once your child is at this point, you begin teaching them these rules. “If there is one vowel in a word it usually says it short sound.” and “If there are two vowels in a word the first one says its long sound and the second one is silent.” I usually have my daughter go through story print outs and mark her vowels. We then try to read the easy 3 letter words.

Special sounds are those consonant combinations that defy all English grammar rules. These are also called digraphs.  Combinations such as “sh”, “thr”, and “th”. I suggest printing out flash cards that help you explain these sounds and then review them regularly with your child.

As your child begins to comprehend the special sounds or digraphs, understands the one vowel and two vowel rules, he or she should be taking reading by leaps and bounds. Your worries are almost over! From here, the things to watch for are speed, flow, and comprehension. You will want to begin incorporating comprehension exercises into your daily reading. Warm up by asking a few questions about the subject they will be reading then ask the questions after they have finished reading.

What an awesome gift you  have given to a child. The key to wisdom and understanding lies in the ability to read!

Teaching Your Child How to Read – Part 2

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Vowels and consonants and blends

In the first edition of our series on how to teach children how to read, we discussed the beginning steps of phonemic awareness. Many homeschooling moms are terrified of teaching their children to read, but taking one baby step at a time will naturally bring your child to the place where they not only read, but read well!

Baby Step 2

Differentiating between vowels and consonants can be something that you incorporate with your beginning letter awareness or something that you really bring out after your child has already learned their alphabet and the letter names and sounds. There are alot of really great games that you can play and songs that you can sing to help bring out the concept of vowels. One of my children’s favorites was “Old McDonald” but on his farm he had vowels… with an aa here and an ee there… you get the point. They loved it, and my four year old still loves it! We played memory with vowel cards, and then of course they would have to tell me their sound and one word that began with that sound.

It is easiest to start with the concept of vowels, because then you can state that all the rest of the letters that aren’t vowels are consonants.  After your child has mastered these two concepts and completely understand what vowels and consonants are, you can move on to blends.

Blends are simply the combination of vowels and consonants. When I begin to teach this I usually make blend families. These are little groups of blends that have the same consonant but use each of the vowels. For example, b-a, b-e, b-i, b-o,bu. Introducing a new blend family and then reviewing it each day is an incredibly important step on the road to reading.

As with every step toward reading, making sure the child enjoys a print rich environment is important. Surround him or her with plenty of books that they can “read”, and then be sure to read to them each day.

Teaching Your Preschooler How to Read part 1

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Some homeschool parents are so afraid of having to teach their children how to read. I must admit to being one of those… and I have been a teacher for over 15 years, and I even teach teachers how to teach. Sounds crazy huh? I think I had so stressed the importance of my children learning how to read correctly that it had pretty much just freaked me out.

Yet, if I think about the practical steps that it takes and just take one simple little baby step at a time reading will flow naturally from that progression. I have taught countless children how to read, why were my own so intimidating to me? Silly right?

1) The first baby step is gettting your child to recognize the letters of the alphabet. First get them to say them in a song, or a silly saying. I think almost every child in America picks this one up from cartoons,or leap frog, or educational games.

2) Next begin to correlate those letter names with visual symbols of the letters. Begin with either A,B,C or with the vowels and then progress to the consonants. Typically, when we begin with the vowels we only teach the short sounds at first. After the child has progressed through recognition of most of the alphabet we then progress to the long sounds for the vowels. Some people believe that associating these letter pictures or symbols with a picture of the sound that it makes helps the child go from this step to the next step.

3) At this point your child should be able to say the alphabet and recognize the letter of the alphabet by their names. To help facilitate this, use of letter flashcards is very beneficial. Review these daily to keep the letter names fresh in their memory.

4) Once your child recognizes each letter by name, begin a deeper study of each individual letter. Bring out the sound that it makes. When you do this be sure to make only the sound of the individual letter. Sometimes when we teach the sounds of consonants we tend to attach a vowel sound to them. Instead of saying “nnn” we will say “nnnuuu.” This is not correct and can produce sound confusion with your young learner. 

 Go through your entire alphabet learning the sounds of each letter, draw pictures that begin with these sounds, and use games of thinking up more items to represent these sounds. Review of the letter sounds should take place each day, and should be fun and entertaining. You can make a game out of items