Are you hoping your child can get a little extra help in reading this year after school? Here are some suggestions for finding someone to help your child at the end of the school day. How about your child’s teacher? First stop is your child’s classroom or reading teacher. It can be very convenient if they tutor right there at school. Also, their familiarity with your child’s reading strengths and weaknesses make them an optimal choice for tutoring. Or take tutor recommendations from the teacher. If your child’s teacher is unavailable for tutoring, the next best choice might be someone...
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...
I’ve been struggling for ages with trying to write a post about the pros and cons about teaching phonics. I guess it’s been hard because the topic is so controversial, and my opinion about teaching phonics is complicated. So, while taking a workshop on writing with artificial intelligence (AI), I asked chat.openai.com to write an opinion about teaching phonics. I think you’ll be interested in its (their??) answer! MY PROMPT: Write an opinion about teaching phonics. AI RESPONSE: As an AI language model, I don’t have personal opinions, but I can provide an overview of the benefits and potential drawbacks...
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...
If you haven’t already, check out Teaching Comprehension, Part 1: Learning to Focus on Meaning. Once youngsters have learned to focus on meaning as they read, the next step I take in developing their reading comprehension is to teach them about different types of texts and how they are organized. As I grew up, the meaning of long texts always seemed elusive. Understanding a chapter or article was like trying to catch a bunch of slippery eels that were wriggling through my fingers. I realize now that I was focusing on the individual words, and not the larger text. So...
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...
Noun Town paper and digital resources provide a memorable way for children to learn about parts of speech. With these concrete, hands-on (or fingers-on) activities, youngsters cut and paste (or drag and drop) images onto a map. Then they match the images with words. Kids have so much fun creating their towns that they don’t even know they are learning grammar! The rich context of the activity enables beginning readers to identify words that they might not be able to do in a different context. And, in addition to developing decoding skills, the activity is a great way to review...
Do you have a student who is struggling with learning to read? I don’t know about you, but every year when I was teaching, I seemed to have one student who worried me far more than the others because he wasn’t progressing in reading. (And it usually was a boy…) Often these children are reluctant readers, as well. They have encountered failure so much that they give up trying. When you read those words, I bet you are immediately thinking of one of your own students, past or present. (more…)
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.
