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...
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...
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…)
What a time for early literacy tutors! Because of the last two years of COVID and the so-called learning gap, both in-person and online tutors are in great demand right now. Many studies have shown a loss of achievement in reading as a result of the pandemic, especially for at-risk populations. I’m not here to argue about the reasons that many students are behind academically or the extent of the learning gap. Instead, I want to focus on how you can help as a tutor of beginning readers. In many ways, these suggestions are just what I would recommend for...
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...
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…)
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...
Keeping the students focused on school work during the weeks before winter vacation can be challenging for a teacher, under normal circumstances, but with the pandemic this year, holding their attention may require even more effort. Whether you are in the building, teaching remotely, or both, here are a few ideas to help you keep your primary grade students on task as their winter break approaches. (more…)
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…)
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…)
Remember Liza? If you read that previous Liza post, you met that preschooler when she was at the earliest stage of learning to read—the Pre-Alphabetic stage. She knew a few letters but no letter sounds, so reading was primarily a visual matching task for her. If she remembered any words, it was usually through partial visual cues, such as associating the word look with two eyes in the middle. Now we will see how Liza moved on to the next stage. As she began to learn a few letter sounds she progressed into the Partial-Alphabetic phase. Although not able to...
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…)
Many teachers cringe when they hear the word testing, mainly because so much of it is mandated at the national, state, and district level. Weeks of classroom time have been stolen to both prepare for and administer high stakes standardized (norm-referenced)[i] tests with little or no benefit to our students. And, for some of us, our jobs have depended on our students doing well on these time-consuming tests. Talk about stress! (more…)
