Did you know that “my” previous post about phonics was written by artificial intelligence? It’s surprisingly good, but while AI can scan the web for information and put it together, it doesn’t know my opinion about phonics–at least not yet! So here it is. Do you struggle with whether or not to teach phonics? I did for a long time, but no longer. Phonics YES I was a phonics proponent even before I heard about the “phonics wars” or “science of reading.” Both my early training and my teaching experience convinced me that it was essential to teach my students...
Oh, my goodness! Did you know that syllable types were first standardized by Noah Webster in 1806? Let’s thank Noah because syllable types make life easier for teachers and students, alike! For children who are learning to read, studying syllable patterns helps with mastering vowel sounds, one of the most challenging parts about decoding. For us teachers, introducing syllable types is a great way to reinforce phonics instruction, no matter which approach we are using. Showing students one syllable type at a time keeps decoding instruction simple. As you know, a syllable is a word or part of a word...
We teachers know that, when we haven’t fully planned the day’s lessons, our students act out! Oh, yes, it’s important to be fully planned for the day, and even more so at winter holiday time. The kids know that time off is approaching, so it’s hard for them to focus on school work. An engaging writing activity is a great way to keep the kids focused before vacation. With the writing process approach, the students can complete a different part of the writing project each day, leading up to a sharing day on that last day of school. The unique...
NOTE: The Handprints publisher was bought out by a larger publisher who decided to drop the series. I am told that the editors are seeking another publisher for the Handprints series. I hate to brag, but I am extremely proud of my series Handprints, the 120 leveled books I wrote for children at the early stages of learning to read. Creating these books, also called leveled readers, was a complicated process, and I wanted them to be different in several ways from other available books of the same type. Leveled Readers Some people think that “leveled” means “simple,” but leveled...
This is the second post on teaching vocabulary to beginning readers. Here is the first post: Teaching Vocabulary, Part 1: Introducing Words Once youngsters have a decent sight vocabulary, decoding ability, and understanding that words can be categorized in various ways, it’s time to broaden our vocabulary instruction to: word webs;dictionary skills;Tier 2 words;literal vs figurative language. Word Webs Word webs serve a number of purposes in vocabulary development. They help students: appreciate rich word meanings;make connections between words;and expand their vocabularies. There are many different kinds of word webs, but below is a simple one to get you started....
Teaching word meanings at the primary level is often overlooked because there is so much else to cover, but vocabulary development will improve students’ listening and reading comprehension through their school years and beyond. Of course you already knew that… Listening Vocabularies Because young children don’t have the skills for unlocking unfamiliar words, teaching vocabulary for them begins with readalouds. Hearing new words naturally within a story helps kids learn their meanings, and going over the words before and after the reading improves retention. Demonstrating how to use context to figure out word meanings is a first step toward close reading. It’s also fun to...
I don’t know about you, but I can sometimes forget about teaching comprehension! There’s so much to teach beginning readers that it’s easy to put meaning on the back burner. It probably doesn’t help that I have a history of poor reading comprehension myself. Growing up, I had no idea how to focus on meaning as I read, but instead concentrated on identifying word…after word…after word… One time my first grade teacher asked me to read a page to the class. I proudly stood up and read every word correctly, word…after word…after word… Then she asked me to explain what...
What a time for early literacy tutors! Because of the last two years of COVID and the so-called learning gap, tutors are in great demand right now. Isn’t it wonderful to know that we can help? But, due to the changes in our students’ lives during the pandemic, we might want to tweak our approach to teaching beginning readers. (more…)
I love teaching children about morphemes, because the payoff is so great! Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units of a language (e.g., -s, re-, spect, fly). After spending decades focusing on phonemic and phonological awareness, educators are now realizing how important it is to teach morphological awareness as well. Morphological awareness—the ability to use the smallest meaningful word parts to determine a word’s meaning—helps young readers by improving their: word recognitionspellingfluencyvocabularycomprehension We can start teaching morphemes in kindergarten, or even pre-K, and our knowledge of word chunks can expand into adulthood. Word Recognition and Spelling The earliest morphemes a child...
Are you or your reading students suffering from the “midyear blues”? For many teachers, this midwinter halfway point in the school year is a challenging time. Some of our students have stopped putting much effort into learning to read. Perhaps they were practicing inefficient reading strategies that are no long working for them, or maybe the text level is just too frustrating, so they’ve given up. We adults may be having trouble focusing on day to day lessons, as well, with worries such as report cards, parent conferences, and high stakes tests. And, yes, we’re also fretting about those children...
Are you turning your attention going back to school? If so, you want to start with thinking about assessment–especially this year after so many students have been learning remotely because of COVID. This year it’s possible that your class will look very different from the way classes looked at the beginning of previous years. Baseline Testing When I was teaching 2nd grade classroom and 1st grade guided reading, my primary goal at the beginning of the year was getting to know my students–both personally and academically. Establishing a reading baseline informs your instruction–where to begin teaching, who needs extra help,...
Today I want to talk about teaching letters and letter sounds to beginning readers. A strong alphabet foundation is beneficial, no matter what teaching method you are using.
Don’t you love getting ready to tutor a new student? You look forward to getting to know this youngster as a reader, and as a person, too. It’s wonderful to anticipate using your own teaching strengths to help someone else experience the joy of literacy. Aren’t we reading teachers the luckiest people in the world? (more…)
Farrah has come to the word standing in her book. She has progressed to the point where she doesn’t have to read all 7 phonemes in the words sequentially: /s/-/t/-/a/-/n/-/d/-/i/-/ng/. She can identify the word almost immediately because she can see the bigger chunks in the word: st-and-ing > standing. Farrah can do this because she is in the Consolidated-Alphabetic stage. READING STAGES You may have read one or more of my previous posts about Linnea Ehri’s reading stages: Teaching the Pre-Alphabetic Reader: Early Sight Words Teaching the Partial-Alphabetic Reader: Phonetic Cue Reading Teaching the Full-Alphabetic Reader: Cipher Reading Dr. Ehri...
Seth is stuck on a word in a story. The word is irregular, nonphonetic. The letters in the word are not connected with their regular sounds, or at least the sounds he has learned so far at school. The word is night. He tries to decode word phonetically, because that is his go-to reading strategy. He associates the letters with the sounds he knows: /n/ – /ĭ/ – /g/ – /h/ – /t/…./nig-hit/. Seth is in the early Full-Alphabetic stage. He has learned to sound out words letter by letter, but doesn’t yet realize that there are some words that...
