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...
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...
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...
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...
It’s November already! Halloween is over (boo-hoo!), and it’s time to think about Thanksgiving-themed lessons in early literacy. I love teaching gratitude—the state of mind that can turn around a sour mood or disappointed mindset. And I especially love introducing or reinforcing the idea of thankfulness to children, who are at the beginning of their lives. (more…)
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…)
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...
Given my background, I generally think I know what’s best when it comes to teaching reading. I like to make my own decisions as a tutor, based on my students’ needs and the current research. Ask my former colleagues! I wasn’t much of a team player when it came to teaching language arts. I always wanted to do it my way. Enter COVID…COVID brought me to my knees as a tutor. (more…)
Many politicians, administrators, and educators are focusing on how much children have been losing academically since the pandemic caused schools to close last spring. I’m usually in that academic camp–worrying about the progress my students are making in reading. My training has taught me to always keep it professional as a tutor and to use time efficiently. But, a couple of months back, the parent of a child I tutor opened my eyes to what her young daughter was missing the most with online tutoring. (more…)
Did you think you would be tutoring online? I didn’t! But meeting in person with our young students is no longer possible, now that we are “socially distancing.” Yes, transitioning to online tutoring is a new adventure! I want to briefly share with you my path and encourage you to take the leap, if you haven’t already. (more…)
Tutoring reading is wonderful because you can concentrate on the needs of one child at a time. But it’s important to figure out what to focus on in each brief lesson. I say “brief” because some young readers can only concentrate for half an hour at a time. And even an hour seems short, if the parent wants only one lesson a week. (Sadly, once-a-week tutoring arrangements are becoming increasingly common, as children are engaged in more and more activities.) Yes, tutoring time is precious, so it’s important to be clear about what your focus is for each lesson. (more…)
Meet Liza. Liza was “reading” a book. The text said: I see a puppy. Liza read: “Look at the little dog.” She could match the meaning of the text to the illustrations because she heard the language pattern during the book introduction, but she was not yet ready to match her voice to the text, or to monitor her attempts phonetically. Thus, she made semantic errors (errors that match meaning). Liza was a Pre-Alphabetic reader. Young children go through different stages as they learn to read. When we figure out the stage a student is on, we can adjust...
Some educators argue that teaching children to memorize sight words encourages guessing. But is there a place for teaching sight words? I believe there is. What are sight words, anyway? The term is often confused with high frequency words and irregular or nonphonetic words. These categories overlap, for sure, but sight words are simply words that can be immediately recognized as wholes, without being decoded. There are several reasons why I teach sight words to beginning readers. (more…)
