Reading Tips and Strategies

Did you know:

Learning to read is a team effort. Collaboration between home and school is crucial. Parents are a child's first teachers.

What preschoolers know before they enter school is strongly related to how easily they learn to read by first grade. Three predictors of reading achievement that children learn before they get to school are:

• The ability to recognize and name letters of the alphabet

• General knowledge about print (understanding, for example, which is the front of the book and which is the back and how to turn the pages of a book)

• Awareness (not mastery) of phonemes (the sounds in words)

Reading aloud together builds knowledge and enhances skills. As a result, reading aloud with children is the single most important activity for parents and caregivers to do to prepare children to learn to read. (Adams, 1990).

What skills should I be working on with my child:

1. Letter recognition and letter/sound correspondence. "This is the letter D, it says /d/", "What is this letter called?"  "What sound does D make?" Use manipulative letters, magnetic letters, foam letters, etc. Match uppercase and lowercase letters. Continually talk about the sound the letters make. Point out letters in print. Use letter flashcards to practice, match and group into easy to identify and those that need more practice. Always praise and make your child feel smart for working hard. 

2. Sight Words. Your child will begin to learn sight words right away in kindergarten. Sight words are those words that we see most often in print. Many of them can be decoded (sounded out) and should be practiced that way. There are several, however, that do not play by our English code rules and are not easily decoded. "Said" is an example. It sounds like /s/ /e/ /d/ but does not look that way. Some of these words need to be practiced and learn to be recognized 'by sight'. A strong sight word base is very important and decreases the amount of energy put into decoding words as your child begins to learn to read. 

3. Decoding. Decoding means to sound words out. Work with your child to sound words out completely. Many children get into a habit of looking quickly at a word and guessing it-usually by the first sound. This leads to a habit of ineffective reading and errors. Decoding the entire word, from left to right, is essential. Noticing endings such as -s, -ed, -ing and reading them accurately helps in the comprehension of the sentence. As early as late kindergarten, early first grade your child is already learning about these endings and what they mean. They are also learning about phonetic rules such as identifying short vowels versus long vowels, learning about silent 'e' at the end of words, vowel pair sounds and much more. Decoding accurately is crucial to good comprehension. 

4. Blending. Your child will need to learn to blend the sounds they are segmenting when they decode. Reading 'pig' as /p/ /i/ /g/ and then blending those sounds accurately so they don't read it as 'pit' for example. This is why left to right decoding is so important. Seeing each sound is necessary to effective blending. Things you can say if your child is struggling to blend accurately: "Let's look at this word again, sound it out from beginning to end." Listen for accurate decoding of the sounds. Then help them blend it slowly all the way through the word, drawing your finger under the word as you move through the sounds. Let them hear you smoothly blending the word.  Decoding: /p/..../i/.../g/  then say piiiiiiiiig, pulling your finger along the word. Sometimes children do not realize what they see is not matching what they are saying. Ask, "Is your mouth matching the sounds you see?" "You said "pit", what do you see? (pig) Never make your child feel bad for making an error. This will discourage them from taking risks. In early reading, there is a lot of risk taking. If you feel yourself getting frustrated, take a break and come back to it another time. Reading in small doses of 5-10 minutes is better than sitting for a long time and both you and your child becoming frustrated. 

5. Accuracy. Once your child is able to decode and blend at a CVC level (consonant-short vowel-consonant) and knows some sight words, they will be off and running! It is important at this stage of early reading that your child is not memorizing what they are reading. Practice tracking with fingers first-left to right and reading where their finger is tracking. As they become better readers, eye tracking will be faster and quicker. However, sometimes errors creep in because they try to read too fast or think they know what the sentence says. Always stop and fix the error, reread the sentence accurately. You can correct the error on the spot or once they have finished the sentence. Sometimes stopping a reader constantly can be frustrating for them too. Try both ways.  Ask them if what they read made sense to them. Ask them to tell you what that sentence was talking about. Even little errors such as reading 'it' for 'is' or 'a' for 'the' may or may not change the meaning of the sentence but it is still an error. If your child is making errors with the little words, bringing it to their attention may be all it takes for them to be more attentive. Do not push for speed if errors are continually being made. This develops bad habits and sends the message that reading fast is the goal. It is not the goal. Accurate reading, even if slower, is the goal so that good comprehension can be achieved. 

6. Fluency/Comprehension. This is the reason for reading, to understand what we are reading. When your child is able to read accurately, their fluency will increase. When their fluency increases, so will their comprehension. Notice how fluency is at the end of this list. We need all of the steps above to be solid before fluency can be achieved. 

*word meaning: throughout the stages of reading, stop to discuss the meaning of words your child may not know or understand. This helps grow their vocabulary base and aid in their comprehension of what they are reading. 

**Reviewing what they have read by talking about the characters, setting or the events in the story help them to pull it all together and understand the purpose of the piece of writing. 

***Extend their thinking by asking your child what they think would happen next if the story continued? How would they change the story if they were the author? What was their favorite part of the story or what did they learn from the story.