Grade K2
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Tips and Tricks
Supporting Kindergarten Readers at Home
As students are reading more at home over the next month, we wanted to send home some tips for supporting readers to use what they know to help them read and to read independently. Below is a description of strategies readers use and how they can be supported to read as independently as possible. Please don’t hesitate to reach out with questions about best supporting your student as you learn more about them as a reader.
How readers read:
Readers use a lot of different strategies to help them read. They use the pictures and what they know about the world to help them understand books. They also use the letters and parts in words to help them figure out what the words say. Good readers use all of these things together to make sure they understand what they are reading. To help our students use these strategies independently, we can use prompts and questions that will help them think more about what in the book can help them.
What we can say to support readers:
We want our readers to become as independent as possible, so supporting them to use what they know and be independent is important. We can use questions and prompts to guide students to use what they know when they are stuck. Questions and prompts like:
If a student is stuck on a word and doesn’t seem to know how to solve it:
· Check the picture. Does something in the picture help you think about what that word could be?
· Think about the story. What would make sense there?
· Do you see a part of the word you know?
· Say the first sound and get it started.
· Just try something.
If a student reads a word wrong, notices that they were wrong, and is having trouble moving forward in the book:
· What you said looks right, but it doesn’t make sense. Try something else. (“Looks right” means having the same first letter, for example if the student says “day” instead of “dog”)
· That makes sense, but doesn’t look right. Look at the word and try something else.
· Try something.
· If the student can’t solve the word and is getting frustrated, tell them the word and move on.
If a student loses their place in the book or misses a part:
· Use your finger to point to the words to make sure you’re reading every one.
· Make sure you read every part of the book.
If you think a student is not understanding the book:
· Stop and think. What’s happening right now?
· Look at the pictures and tell me what’s happening. (or what you are learning about).
**Above all – make sure you are talking about books after students read them. Have them tell you what they are thinking, or their favorite part, or if they liked they book. Have them retell the story and share the most important part. Every time a student reads with you, be sure to have a conversation with them about the book when they are finished.**
Teaching Sight Words
One of the best ways to teach sight words is by creating “little books” with students so they can practice reading and writing their sight words in context. Using a repeated pattern throughout the book with sight words allows a struggling student to authentically practice reading and writing difficult to remember sight words, while providing repeated exposure to them.
Below is a list of other teaching strategies for sight words:
Visualizing: say it, skywrite it, visualize it, then write it three times from memory
Play the game “Memory” with sight words
Highlight sight words in guided reading books
Create content sight word cards with visual supports
Use white out tape and have student guess what sight word would make sense from the context clues and then write the word over the white out tape
Use a sentence strip and cut up the sentence and have the student reassemble the sentence and read it
Ask a student to write down all the words they know and suggest they use their sight words to help them