Towards Reading

Strategies

Towards Reading

• Try to provide a positive, productive period to contribute actively to the lesson.

• Try to give the child the opportunity to practise his reading skills and show off his ability.

• Participate in his reading experience instead of listening.

• Encourage reading by looking at books together. Rag books, board books are great for younger children.

• Read aloud together - use expressive features, different voices to encourage the child to try this too.

Towards Reading

• Joining a library can help establish a good attitude towards books.

• Encourage the child to look at things for information e.g. cereal box, streets, roads,maps.

• Reading should be fun so try not to pressure him/her and don’t expect too much too

Towards Reading

• Read stories at bedtime where it is quiet and you can be comfortable together.

• Make sessions fun by playing around with rhyming words and associated words.

• Read books that are comparable with his reading ability. There are many graded

• series that can be purchased even for the older child.• To build self-belief it is sometimes better to start on an

easier book to encourage and• boost his confidence.• Praise him for the attempted words he gets correct.

Always look for the things that• he can do rather than what he cannot.

Towards Reading

• Use bookmarkers to keep place in a book.• Encourage the child to try to decode the words

himself. Don’t leave him to struggle though! If he is stuck - give him a clue e.g. look at the beginning of the word, are there familiar letters, look at the picture, look at the words around, try giving the first sound.

• Give him the chance to `make up’ stories whilst you write them down for him. Then as he progresses, ask him to write them down as clearly and as accurate as he can.

• In time, you could ask him to transfer his story onto a PC to make it more presentable.

Activities to help with Reading 1

• 1. Say nursery rhymes together; they help to encourage rhythm at an early age.

• 2. Finger play e.g. poems and songs which have hand actions.

• 3. Read to the child: poetry, (especially funny or nonsense poems) and stories.

• 4. Act out a mime of a rhyme or something that has happened and then guess the mime.

• 5. Find pictured to talk about and help the child to notice details e.g. Is the man in front of or behind the lady? Is the boy climbing under or over the gate?

Activities to help with Reading 2

• 6. Play games e.g. hunt the thimble and say “is it inside the pot, under the pot, on top of the pot?

• 7. Watch television together. It can be a useful way of learning if you talk about what is happening.

• 8. There are some very good puzzle books e.g. joining dots, mazes and simple picture crosswords are all useful.

• 9. Encourage the child to help with tasks e.g. laying/cleaning the table, setting out play things and putting them away.

Types of Reading Text Materials

• narrative text materials– stories, fiction, inspirational

• informational text material– textbooks, content area materials,

instructional materials

Literature-Based Reading Instruction

• Strong relationships among language systems: oral language, reading, writing.

• Immerse children in language and books.• Children should have early experiences

with writing.• Children need time for independent

reading.

Explicit Code-Emphasis Instruction

• Systematic, direct instruction of alphabet code

• Mapping linkage of letters and words

• Early attainment of decoding skills

• Children need an early start in reading

In the Last Lecture

Some Aspects of Reading were Discussed

These included

• Phonemic Awareness

• Phonics

• Fluency

• Vocabulary

• Reading Comprehension

Today we look at

• Strategies and resources for

• Phonemic Awareness

• Phonics

• Fluency

• Vocabulary

Phonemic Awareness

• The objective of any phonemic awareness activity should be to facilitate children’s ability to perceive that their speech is made up of a series of sounds. It is the breaking down and manipulation of spoken/oral language. The focus of activities should be on sounds in speech. These activities should fit into a meaning-based framework. Phonemic awareness should not be addressed as an abstract isolated skill to be acquired through drill type activities. It can be a natural, functional part of literacy experiences throughout the day. As Hallie Yopp stated (Yopp, 1995) "Phonemic awareness is not an end to itself – rather, it is one aspect of literacy development."

PA activitiesIdentity of Phonemes

• Introduce the phoneme with a semantic representation. • Demonstrate the production of the phoneme (mouth

shape, tongue, etc.).• Sound repetition activities (iteration) help children begin

working toward full segmentation by isolating the first sound in a word. Eg. K-K-K- Katie. Popular songs may be modified by the teacher to include iterations, e.g Pop Goes the Weasel – last line could be p-p-p-p-Pop goes the weasel!

• Use any popular melody and sing it using that sound as the lyrics. (eg. London Bridge sung as /b/-/b/-/b/-/b/...

• Learn an alliterative tongue twister featuring the phoneme. (Peter Piper)

More PA Identity of Phonemes

• Use a puppet to isolate the initial phoneme in the alliterative words. (bear says blue berries and black berries in the bushes... brown, black...)

• Stretch the phoneme to explore its articulation, using an elastic band or a stretchable action figure as a visual demonstration.

• Isolate the phoneme in the final (or medial for vowels) position of other example words.

• Practice sound-to-word matching for the target phoneme, first as a yes/no game (e.g. "Do you hear /n/ in next?"), and then as a forced choice (e.g. "Do you hear /n/ in old or new?)

More Identity of Phonemes

• Listen for the sound in stories, poems, or songs.

• Find objects in the room that have that sound.

• Use different voices to produce the sound (e.g. baby, troll, queen, tyrannosaurus...)

• Categorize or sort pictures based on beginning or ending sounds.

Rhyming Words

• Rhyme Game: Model rhyming first, by saying, "I can rhyme a word with /at/ that begins with /f/. Can you tell me what it is?" Fat. "I can rhyme a word with /at/ that begins with /s/. Can you tell me what it is?

• Initial rhyme recognition can be reinforced by direct modeling of instances (nose-rose) and non-instances (bed-car) of rhyming word pairs. To make a game of this, use a happy face symbol for a rhyming pair and a sad face symbol for non-rhyming pair; or a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. It is important to have the children repeat the rhyming pairs to reinforce the verbal production of rhymed words.

• Pictures can be used as visual cues for rhyme recognition activities and can be used during the modeling phase of instruction. The teacher can present 3 pictures and ask the child to select and say the two that rhyme. A variation would be to display two nonrhyming pictures and have the child select the one that rhymes with a word being said by the teacher. 

Rhyming Words• Odd Word Out is a game in which the teacher presents four words,

three of which rhyme, and the child determines which word is the odd one that doesn't belong with the others. (e.g. zveed, bead, pill, seed)

• Rhyming Pair Concentration: Name the pictures out loud. Find two that rhyme.

• Snap and Clap Rhymes:  Begin with a simple clap and snap rhythm. Get more complex as children move along in rhyming. Clap Clap Snap fall Clap Clap Snap ball                                                     Clap Clap Snap hall Clap Clap Snap small

• A variation is the "I say, you say..." game: I say fat. You say ___. I say red. You say ___.

• Rhyming Word Sit Down: Children walk around in a big circle taking one step each time a rhyming word is said by the teacher. When the teacher says a word that doesn't rhyme, the children sit down: she, tree, flea, spree, key, bee, sea, went

Rhyming Words• Rhyming words in songs, poems and big books: As you do shared

reading with the students, pause at the end of phrases and let the students supply the rhyming words. After you have read the poem together, ask the children to find the rhyming words. Generate other words that rhyme with these rhyming words.

• Silly Rhymes Big Book: Use rimes (roots of word families) and rhyme charts around the classroom to create silly poems with the class. Write the one line rhyme with the whole class in big letters on large chart paper. Read aloud several times. Use different voices. Have children sound and clap words. Have a child illustrate the rhyme. Repeat each week for another set of rimes.

• Some rhyming patterns to start with: at (s, f, m, r), ip (z, l, r, sh), an (f, m, r, v), eat (f, m, n, s, h), et (s, v, m, n), ock (l, r, s), ick (s, l, th, t), ay (l, r, s, p), ee (m, s, b, t), ame (f, n, g, t), an (f, c, v, p), ed (b, f, r, l), ag (b, n, s, r), ick (k, l, p, s), all (b, c, f, t), ell (b, s, f, sh), ine (d, f, m, sh), ack (b, j, qu, t), and (b, h, l, s).

Rhyming Words Activities

• The Task

• Children identify words that rhyme in a series of activities. For example, "Put your thumbs up if these two words rhyme--pail-tail or cow-pig?" or "Finish this rhyme, red, bed, blue, ______."

Snap and Clap Rhymes

• Begin with a simple clap and snap rhythm.

• Get more complex as children move along in rhyming. Clap  Clap Snap  fall Clap  Clap Snap  ball Clap  Clap Snap  hall Clap  Clap Snap  small

• A variation is the "I say, You say" game:

• I say fat. You say _____. I say red. You say _____.

Rhyming Word Sit Down

• Children walk around in a big circle taking one step each time a rhyming word is said by the teacher.

• When the teacher says a word that doesn't rhyme, the children sit down:

• she tree flea spree key bee sea went

Rhyming words in songs, poems, and big books

• As you do shared reading with the students, pause at the end of phrases and let the students supply the rhyming words.

• After you have read the poem together ask students to find the rhyming words.

• Generate other words that rhyme with these rhyming words.

Silly Rhymes Big Book

• Use rimes (roots of word families) and rhyme charts around the classroom to create silly poems with the class.

• Write the one line rhyme with the whole class in big letters on large chart paper (Shared Writing).

• Read aloud several times. • Use different voices. Have children sound and

clap words. • Have a child illustrate the rhyme. • Repeat each week for another set of rimes.•  

Sound Matching Activities

• Children are asked to decide which of several words begins with a given sound or to generate a word beginning with a particular sound (can use picture cards or small objects). You may ask for a specific sound like /s/; you may ask students to generate their own examples of words beginning with the sound like /s/. Teachers say the phoneme sounds not the letter names.

• Word to word matching: Do pen and pipe begin with the same sound?

Blending Activities:

• Blending requires children to manipulate individual sounds by combining them to form a word. Given a series of isolated sounds (e.g. /b/-/a/-/t/), children blend them together (e.g., bat)

• Guessing Game: Yopp (1992b) "What am I thinking of?" This game encourages children to blend orally spoken sounds together. The teacher tells the children a category and then speaks in a segmented fashion the sounds of a particular item in that category. For eg. category of clothing – sounds may be /h/-/a/-/t/ Children’s attempts to blend the sounds together are applauded and the game continues. Eventually, children become the leaders and take turns providing their peers with segmented words for blending. Categories may include theme words as an extension of integrated literacy experiences.

• Use picture cards with pictures turned away until children have guessed the picture

• Use a grab bag, peeking inside and saying, "I see a toy /d/-/u/-/k/ in here. Who knows what I see?"

Blending Activities:

• Use the lyrics to "If You’re Happy" substituting the words "If you think you know this word, shout it out!"

• Pronounce the sounds individually (the slow way) in a word and ask the child to say the word the fast way. Listen: f-oo-t-b-a-ll is the slow way and football is the fast way. Now your turn. Here is the slow way, can you say it the fast way?

• Blend onsets and rimes: model blending an initial sound onto a word by using a jingle, "It starts with /l/ and it ends with /ight/, put it together and it says light." When they have the idea, the children supply the final word. An element of excitement can be created by using children's names for this activity and asking each child to recognize and say his/her own name when it is presented, "It starts with /b/ and it ends with etsy, put it together and it says Betsy."

• Have a puppet who speaks "funny" by saying words syllable by syllable, or phoneme by phoneme for the children to figure out. The puppet can have children guess, /f/-/i/-/sh/ ... I said fish! or tri-cer-a-tops ... I said triceratops!

Sound Isolation Activities:

• Children are given a word, picture, or object and asked to tell what sound occurs at the beginning, middle, or end of the word.

• Sound Snacks (A Tasty Game): Place two paper cups on a table next to a bowl of peanuts, M & M's, raisins, cheerios, or whatever snack you want to have. Label one cup "B" for beginning and the other "E" for ending. As the child to identify the beginning or ending consonants in words you name by placing one piece of snack in the correct cup. Eg. "Where is the /t/ sound in wet?" (End), "Where is the /b/ sound in bed?" (Beginning). Children may eat the snack if they put it in the correct cup. Some words like pop, treat, tent, Mom will allow the children to put a treat in both cups and eat more than one treat at a time.

Phoneme counting:

• How many sounds do you hear in the word cake? • To count syllables in words, activities can be used such as clapping

hands, tapping the desk, or marching in place to the syllables in children's names (Ma-ry), items in the immediate environment (win-dow), or words from a favorite story (wi-shy, wa-shy).

• Clap your hands or tap finger on the back of your other hand to mark each sound or syllable heard.

• Take One Thing From the Box: Collect a number of objects in a box or bag, making sure that the numer of syllables in the name differ. A child selects an object, name it (e.g., pencil). All of the children should repeat the object's name as they clap out its syllables. Then ask how many syllables were heard. A variation would be to use pictures.

Deleting phonemes:

• What sound do you hear in meat that is missing in eat? • I can make a new word from flat by taking out the /l/ sound? Can you guess what it

is? • I can take the /k/ sound out of monkey and make a new word. Can you tell me what it

is? • I can change the last sound of a word to make a new word: take the /p/ off the end of

map and put a /d/ sound intead. Can any one tell me what the new word is? • Play a game of "sound take-away". The teacher models how to orally segment a word

into the "target" sound plus everything else and then takes the sound away. A modified jingle can be used: "Chair. It starts with /ch/ and it ends with air; take the first sound away and it says air." The jingle can be used until the children can delete sounds with a simple prompt: "Say ball without the /b/".

• Children who have difficulty with deleting sounds might benefit from visual clues. By placing two colored blocks side-by-side, the teacher can designate one as representing the target sound and the other as representing the remainder of the word: "I'm going to use these blocks to say moon. This (red block) says moo and this yellow block says /n/. The child is then asked what the first block said when the second block is removed.

Odd word out:

• What word starts with a different sound: bag, nine, beach, bike?

• Have three of four objects that start with the same sound. Have children identify the objects, so everyone uses the same labels and exaggerate the initial sounds. Sing/say the Sesame Street jingle, "One of these things just doesn't belong here, one of things is just not the same. Can you tell which thing just doesn't belong here? Before I finish this game?"

Sound to word matching:

• Is there a /k/ in bike? • Use songs in sound matching activities, e.g. Old

Macdonald Had a Farm: What's the sound that starts these words? Turtle, time and teeth. (wait... for children's response) /t/ is the sound that starts these words: Turtle, time and teeth. With a /t/t/ here and a /t/t/ there, Here a /t/, there a /t/, everywhere a /t/t/.  /t/ is the sound that starts these words; turtle, time and teeth. The children might use favorite stories from their reading lessons to identify different sets of three words that start with the same sound to incorporate into the song. Each repeated verse could then emphasize a different sound.

Sound to word matching:

• Make a set of dominoes that have two pictured objects on each card. The children are required to join cards sharing beginning (or ending) sounds.

• A version of "snap: uses cards having one picture. The children take turns drawing a card from a face-down pile and placing it on a face-up pile.  When a newly drawn card has the same beginning (or end) sound as the top card in the face-up pile, the first child to identify the match by saying "snap" collects the pile.

• Sound bingo uses bingo cards with pictures that the children mark if one of their pictures has the same beginning (or ending) sound as the word said by the caller.

Segmentation Activities:• Segmenting the sounds in a word is one of the more difficult of

phonemic awareness tasks to perform (Yopp, 1988), yet it is highly related to later success in decoding words. Segmenting refers to the act of isolating the sounds in a spoken word.

• Pronounce a word and tell the children that this is the fast way to say the word, and give an example of the slow way. For example, football (fast way) and f-oo-t-b-a-ll (slow way). Give the children another word eg. bed and ask if they can say it the slow way (b-e-d).

• One idea is to display a picture of a train composed of an engine, passenger car, and a caboose. Three connecting boxes can be drawn under each component. Explain that words have beginning, middle, and end sounds just like the train has a beginning, middle and end. Demonstrate by slowly articulating a CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) word (e.g. /p/-/i/-/g/) and pointing to the box corresponding to the position of each sound in the word.

Segmentation Activities:• Use interlocking blocks as a visual demonstration of segmentation. • Children’s Names: Draw out the first sound and exaggerate so as to draw

attention to the sound, e.g. C-C-C-Catherine, or Llllllllllllll-inda. Students may even begin to guess which child you are calling by the initial sound.

• Use Twinkle, Twinkle melody replacing with the following words: Listen, listen, to my word. Tell me all the sounds you heard: race. (slowly) /r/ is one sound, /a/ is two, /s/ is last in race, it’s true. (ask how many?)

• Concrete Objects: Elkonin boxes have been used in Reading Recovery to help low achieving readers focus on the sounds in words (Clay, 1985). A series of connected boxes are drawn across the page. The number of boxes corresponds to the number of sounds in a target word. The word chick is represented by three boxes. As the teacher slowly says the word, she/he models moving an object, such as a chip, into each box (l-r) as each sound is articulated. Ultimately, the moving of chips into the boxes is replaced by writing of letters in the boxes (chick: /ch/-/i/-/ck/).

Teaching Syllable Segmentation

• The Task

• Children participate in a series of activities that help them realize that words are made up of syllables. For example, "Can you count the syllables or the word parts in football?“

 

Syllable Clap

• Talk with children about why knowing about syllables can help them when they read and write.

• Ask them to clap with you as you say these words:

• sunshine vacation delicious dinner astronaut alphabet communication calendar school wonderful merry-go-round television

Syllable Count

• Have children clap for each syllable you say.

• Begin with two or three syllable words and build up to longer words with more syllables:

• airplane air plane 2

• table ta ble 2

• porcupine por cu pine 3

• communication com mun i ca tion 5

General Phonological Manipulation

• Language games that teach children to identify rhyming words and to create rhymes on  their own.

• Activities that help children understand that spoken sentences are made up of groups of separate words, that words are made up of syllables, and that words can be broken down  into separate sounds.

• "Word play" activities in which children change beginning, middle, or ending letters of related words, thus changing the words they decode and spell.

• Introduction of phonetically "irregular" words in practice activities and stories

Teaching Sound Substitution

• The Task

• Children identify the beginning, middle, and ending sounds in words. For example, "What is the ending sound in pig?" What sound do you hear in the middle of cat?"

•

Activities

• Tricky Rhyming Riddles Using Onset and Rime • Ask children riddles that require them to

manipulate sounds in their heads. • The easiest are the ones that ask for endings. • The next easiest are the ones that ask for a single

consonant substitution at the beginning. • The most difficult are the ones that ask for a

consonant blend or digraph at the beginning. What rhymes with pig and starts with /d/? dig What rhymes with book and starts with /c/? cook What rhymes with sing and starts with /r/? dig What rhymes with dog and starts with /fr/? frog

Songs that Teach Sound Substitution

• Choose a song your students all know and substitute a consonant sound for the beginning of each word in the song.

• One song that works well is from "I've Been Working on the Railroad: (Yopp, 1992) "Fee-Fi-Fiddle-ee-I-Oh" "Bee-Bi-Biddle-ee-I-Oh" "Dee-Di-Diddle-ee-I-Oh" "Hee-Hi-Hiddle-ee-I-Oh"

• Try Old Mac Donald Had a Farm making substitutions when singing about each new animal. (Yopp, 1992) For a cow, sing, "kee-high,kee-kigh, koh!" For a sheep, sing, "shee-shigh, shee-shigh, shoh!"

•  

Teaching Sound Isolation

• The Task

• Children identify the beginning, middle, and ending sounds in words. For example, "What is the beginning sound in nose?" "What is the ending sound in pig? "What is the sound you hear in the middle of cat?"

Activities

• A Song That Teaches Sound Isolation is Old Mac Donald Had a Farm (Yopp, 1992)

• In this song, children are asked to tell what sounds they hear at the beginning, middle, or end of words.

• You may use the same sound for each position (beginning, middle, and end) as you begin to work with a new sound and then mix them up as children learn more sounds.

• What's the sound that starts these words: turtle, time, and teeth? (Wait for a response from the children - /t/.) /t/ is the sound that starts these words: turtle, time, and teeth. With a /t/, /t/, here and a /t/, /t/, there, Here a /t/, there a /t/, everywhere a /t/, /t/. /t/ is the sound that starts these words: turtle, time, and teeth.

More

• What is the sound in the middle of these words beet and meal and read? (Wait for a response from the children - /ee/.) /ee/ is the sound in the middle of these words: beet and meal and read. With a /ee/, /ee/, here and a /ee/, /ee/, there, Here a /ee/, there a /ee/, everywhere a /ee/, /ee/. /ee/ is the sound in the middle of these words: beet and meal and read.

• What's the sound at the end of these words: bed and seed and mad? (Wait for a response from the children - /d/.) /d/ is the sound at the end of these words: bed and seed and mad. With a /d/, /d/, here and a /d/, /d/, there, Here a /d/, there a /d/, everywhere a /d/, /d/. /d/ is the sound at the end of these words: bed and seed and mad.

Teaching Phonemic Blending

• - "I Say It Slowly, You Say It Fast" Game

• Teacher explains that she will say the sounds in a word slowly.

• Children take turns saying it fast. Example: Teacher says, "/k/-/a/-/t/ child says, "cat." Example: Teacher says, "cow - boy" child says, "cowboy."

•  

Another Example

• The THRASS Phoneme Machine is a FREE computer programme that uses moving human lips to pronounce the sounds (phonemes) in hundreds of frequently used English words. It is an excellent resource for teachers, assistants and parents for learning about, and also teaching, the fundamental building blocks of English in an entertaining and fun way.

Phonics

• Phonics teaches developing readers the relationship between phonemes (sounds of oral language) and graphemes (letters that represent sounds in print).

• Students who learn phonics master the sound/symbol code that enables them to read and spell.

• Mastering phonics, or the alphabetic principal, will help readers decode unfamiliar words and automatically recognize familiar words.

Phonics Strategies

• Analogy phonics Teaching students unfamiliar words by analogy to known words (e.g., recognizing that the rime segment of an unfamiliar word is identical to that of a familiar word, and then blending the known rime with the new word onset, such as reading brick by recognizing that -ick is contained in the known word kick, or reading stump by analogy to jump).

• Analytic phonics Teaching students to analyze letter-sound relations in previously learned words to avoid pronouncing sounds in isolation.

• Embedded phonics Teaching students phonics skills by embedding phonics instruction in text reading, a more implicit approach that relies to some extent on incidental learning.

• Phonics through spelling Teaching students to segment words into phonemes and to select letters for those phonemes (i.e., teaching students to spell words phonemically).

• Synthetic phonics Teaching students explicitly to convert letters into sounds (phonemes) and then blend the sounds to form recognizable words.

Contents of a Phonics Program

• A systematic phonics program should cover all the major sound/symbol relationships, including consonants, blends, short and long vowels, consonant and vowel digraphs, diphthongs, and variant sound-symbol relationships.

• However, instruction of sound/symbol relationships is most effective when combined with plenty of practice and application through the reading and writing of words. 

Teaching Strategies for Phonics Instruction

•

• Sound Play

• Rhyming

• Identifying Sounds

• Segmenting Words into Sounds

• Blending Sounds Into Words

• Combining Phonics Skills

Phonics Strategies and ActivitiesSound Play

• Take nature walks or share tape recordings of everyday sounds.

• Listen and identify sounds in the environment.

• Play taped rhythms or model rhythms for students to duplicate by clapping or tapping out the patterns using percussion instruments.

• Share literature selections with predictable language.

• Share tongue twisters that feature specific phonemes

Phonics Strategies and ActivitiesRhyming

•

• Share nursery rhymes, poems, finger plays, and songs that demonstrate rhyming, repetition, and alliteration.

• Display a picture or an object from a story, nursery rhyme, poem, finger play, or song. Have students identify as many words as possible that might rhyme with the name of the object.

• Construct a list of rhyming words drawn from reading materials that are familiar to the students. Assign a word to each student. Call out two rhyming words and ask the students who have those words to act out the two words.

Phonics Strategies and ActivitiesRhyming

• Construct rhyming couplets. Read the stem and ask students to complete the rhyming word. An example of a couplet follows:

I went to the circus in townTo see the funny ___________ (clown).

• Sit in a circle and ask students to imagine going on a class trip. Then give one student a ball. That student begins a rhyming couplet by completing the following frame:

"We're going on a trip and I'm taking a ____ (hat)." The ball is tossed to a second student, who responds, "We're going on a trip and I' taking a _______ (bat, mat, etc…)"The ball is tossed to another student who continues by starting a new couplet with a different ending.

Phonics Strategies and ActivitiesIdentifying Sounds

•

• Have students look into individual mirrors and tell them to look at the location of their lips, tongue, and teeth, when pronouncing certain sounds and words. Use these observations to discuss how certain sounds are produced.

• Create a list of word pairs. Some should have the same number of phonemes, others different numbers. Pronounce the words pairs, ask students to identify which pairs have the same number and which do not.

• Create a list with pairs of words. Some should end with the same phoneme. Pronounce each word pair and ask students to indicate if the pair ends with the same sound or a different one.

Phonics Strategies and ActivitiesIdentifying Sounds

• Prepare a class picture dictionary. Write the uppercase and lowercase letter that represents the initial phoneme. Collect pictures for each of the letter-sounds.

• Create a mobile or collage that features words or pictures of words that begin or end with a specific sound (phoneme).

• Play a consonant riddle game by presenting the riddle in the following frame: "I'm thinking of something that rhymes with dish but starts with /f/. What can it be?

• Use word walls to display words that feature specific sounds or patterns.

Phonics Strategies and ActivitiesSegmenting Words into Sounds

• Have students use letter tiles or small objects to represent the phonemes in a word.

• Ask students to pronounce a word. Then ask them to repeat the same word without one of the sounds. Begin by having them delete the initial consonant sound and conclude by having them delete the final consonant sound.

• Using a large rubber band as a visual, stretch it as you slowly pronounce a particular word. Instruct the students to pretend to stretch a rubber band when they pronounce words to identify the individual phonemes or sounds.

• Use magnetic letters or colored chalk or markers to visually differentiate segments of words by syllables.

• After students have been introduced to word families, construct manipulatives such as word wheels or flip books to create various words.

Phonics Strategies and ActivitiesBlending Sounds Into Words

• Identify the phonemes in a blending riddle that provides a clue to the meaning. One example might be: "I am thinking of a small, furry animal that meows" The sounds are /k/a/t/.

• Assign each student a specific phoneme. Form teams of students to create words from the blending of their assigned sounds. The words can be shared orally or visually by spelling the words on the board or charts.

• Construct a cloze passage from familiar material that has been read to the student or that the student has read. Delete every fifth word by covering it with a sticky note or select key words with particular sounds or patterns that you want to review. As students read the material, encourage them to "guess" the missing word using clues you provide. Start by providing the initial letter, and continue giving letters for them to use by blending their sounds until the word is identified.

•

Phonics Strategies and ActivitiesCombining Phonics Skills

•

• Incorporate repeated readings of familiar passages or stories with previously taught spelling patterns to develop fluency and rate.

• Use a stamp and stamp pad to create words. Once the words are constructed, vocalize each phoneme, blending the sounds, then discuss the meaning of the word. A picture of the word might also be drawn.

• When teaching words with common spelling patterns, use word sorts to encourage students to sort according to the common patterns. Open sorts involve presenting the students with the list of words to be sorted in any way they choose. Closed sorts involve presenting the students with a list and instructions on how to sort them.

Phonics Strategies and ActivitiesCombining Phonics Skills

• Demonstrate the connection of phonics with spelling by using dictation and free writing activities.

• Include commercially prepared children's games that support sound/spelling relationships, such as Hangman, Scrabble, and Got-A-Minute in learning center areas.

• Making words. Begin by displaying and introducing a word to the students. Create a list of shorter words that can be constructed using letters from the larger word. Provide the students with individual letter tiles or cards. Prompt the students to construct 2-letter words. Pronounce the words and use each one in a sentence. Continue constructing smaller words, increasing the number of letters used. Prompt the students to look for patterns as the words are created. Review all the words that were created and encourage students to use the words in authentic writing activities.

• Show the children a picture (dog) and asking the children to identify the correct word out of three: "Is this a /mmmm/-og, a /d/d/d/-og, or a /sssss/-og?" A variation is to ask if the word has a particular sound: "Is there a /d/ in dog? This can be switched to "Which sound does dog start with- /d/, /sh/, or /l/? This sequence encourages the children to try out the three onsets with the rime to see which one is correct.

Improving Fluency

• Repeated reading

• Predictable books

• Neurological impress method

• Read-along method

1. Model Fluent Reading • In order to read fluently, students must first hear and under-

stand what fluent reading sounds like. From there, they will be more likely to transfer those experiences into their own reading. The most powerful way for you to help your students is to read aloud to them, often and with great expression. Choose selections carefully. Expose them to a wide variety of genres including poetry, excerpts from speeches, and folk and fairy tales with rich, lyrical language — texts that will spark your students' interests and draw them into the reading experience.

• Following a read-aloud session, ask your students: "After listening to how I read, can you tell me what I did that is like what good readers do?" Encourage students to share their thoughts. Also, ask your students to think about how a fluent reader keeps the listener engaged.

2. Do Repeated Readings In Class

• In their landmark book, Classrooms That Work (Addison-Wesley, 1998), Patricia Cunningham and Richard Allington stress the importance (and I agree) of repeated readings as a way to help students recognize high-frequency words more easily, thereby strengthening their ease of reading. Having students practice reading by rereading short passages aloud is one of the best ways I know of to promote fluency.

• For example, choose a short poem to begin with, preferably one that fits into your current unit of study, and transpose it onto an overhead transparency. Make a copy of the poem for each student. Read the poem aloud several times while your students listen and follow along. Take a moment to discuss your reading behaviors such as phrasing (i.e. the ability to read several words together in one breath), rate (the speed at which we read), and intonation (the emphasis we give to particular words or phrases).

• Next, ask your students to engage in an "echo reading," in which you read a line and all the students repeat the line back to you. Following the echo reading, have students read the entire poem together as a "choral read." You will find that doing group readings like these can be effective strategies for promoting fluency because all students are actively engaged. As such, they may be less apprehensive about making a mistake because they are part of a community of readers, rather than standing alone.

3. Promote Phrased Reading In Class

• Fluency involves reading phrases seamlessly, as opposed to word by word. To help students read phrases better, begin with a terrific poem. Two of my students' favorites are "Something Told the Wild Geese" by Rachel Field, and "Noodles" by Janet Wong. (See resource box below.)

• After selecting a poem, write its lines onto sentence strips, which serve as cue cards, to show students how good readers cluster portions of text rather than saying each word separately. Hold up strips one at a time and have students read the phrases together. Reinforce phrased reading by using the same poem in guided reading and pointing to passages you read as a class.

4. Enlist Tutors to Help Out

• Provide support for your nonfluent readers by asking tutors — instructional aides, parent volunteers, or older students — to help. The tutor and the student can read a preselected text aloud simultaneously. By offering positive feedback when the reader reads well, and by rereading passages when he or she struggles, the tutor provides a helpful kind of one-on-one support. The sessions can be short — 15 minutes at most. Plus, if you provide tutors with the text that you plan to use in an upcoming group lesson, you can give your nonfluent readers a jump start prior to the next lesson.

5. Try A Reader's Theater In Class

• Because reader's theater is an oral performance of a script, it is one of the best ways to promote fluency. In the exercise, meaning is conveyed through expression and intonation. The focus thus becomes interpreting the script rather than memorizing it.

• Getting started is easy. Simply give each student a copy of the script, and read it aloud as you would any other piece of literature. (See the resource box, below, for script sources.) After your read-aloud, do an echo read and a choral read of the script to involve the entire class. Once the class has had enough practice, choose students to read the various parts. Put together a few simple props and costumes, and invite other classes to attend the performance.

5 Continued

• For the presentation, have readers stand, or sit on stools, in front of the room and face the audience.

• Position them in order of each character's importance. • Encourage students to make eye contact with the audience

and one another before they read. Once they start, they should hold their scripts at chest level to avoid hiding their faces, and look out at the audience periodically.

• After the performance, have students state their names and the part that they read. You might also want to videotape the performance so that you can review it with students later. In doing so, you will show them that they are, indeed, fluent readers.

Talk About The Story

Ask your child to tell you what might happen next.Help her use context, pictures, first letters, ending letters

and other clues to guess what a word is. Model reading smoothly with expression and phrasing that

matches the meaning of the text. This makes the story more engaging and builds fluency.

Reread books several times in a week. Choose books at your child's reading level to prevent frustration and build fluency.

Your child's Accelerated Reader books are good choices for home reading practice because they are at your child's independent reading

Paired Reading

• In paired reading, you and your child read a book aloud together, pointing to each word as you go along.

• Also, you will allow your child to read out loud alone as he moves his finger under each word.

• When a mistake is made, move his finger back and correct it.

Books with Tapes/CD sets

• Many popular children's books come with tapes or CD's or listening while following along in the book. Check your favorite bookstore. You can also record your children's books at home. Use a tape recorder, or record it through your computer mic and burn it on CD

Reading Poetry

• Poetry is a good way to build fluency because poems have rhythm and expression. Begin reading children's poetry to your child at a young age. When he begins elementary school, begin memorization of poetry. The process involves multiple readings and oral expression, two components of fluency development

Dramatic Reading

• Choose a story or book that has lots of dialogue. Practice and perform a dramatic reading with you and your child performing the parts. Again, you will use multiple readings and expression. Your child doesn't have to memorize the dialogue. She may read the script, but encourage pacing and expression

Echo Reading

• In echo reading, you read a sentence or brief passage aloud using phrasing and expression to convey meaning. Then, your child reads the same sentence or passage aloud.

• Echo reading can be used with storybooks, poems, and nonfiction books.

• Choose material that is relatively short and reread it at least four times until he reads the material quickly, accurately, and with expression.

Enhancing Vocabulary

• Helps Reading Comprehension

Root Word Lesson Plans

• Fill-in-the-blanks,

• Synonym/Antonyms,

• Crosswords,

• Word Finds,

• True/False

• Prefix Study

Thematic Puzzles

• Themes organized in subject areas and by calendar to promote decoding skills with vocabulary building activities, discussion questions & ideas

• Themes for example could include Science, Math, Social Studies/History, Language Arts/English, Fine Arts/Music/Drama, Sports & Holidays.

Word Lists

• word lists for writing and word walls;

• vocabulary from books;

• frequently used roots

Others•

• - Jumble PuzzlesSolve jumble puzzles by unscrambling letters to improve Vocabulary

• JuggletsArrange scrambled letters to form words in the English language.

• Fun Games of Hidden English WordsEnjoy games of finding English words on fruits, flowers, animals, vegetables & colors.

• Hangman Games • Translation games in hangman format to learn languages especially English.

More Vocabulary Strategies

• Vocabulary Word Lists - Nouns, Verbs & Adjectives on People, Science & HistoryVocabulary test activities to learn English language and build your word power.

• Preparation for Verbal AbilityAntonyms, analogies and sentence completion tests

• Verbal AbilityConfusing words and sentence correction tests

Reading Comprehension

• Depends upon what reader brings to the text

• A language process

• A thinking process

• Requires interaction with the text

Improving Reading Comprehension

• Building vocabulary

• Using basal readers

• Activating background knowledge

• Language experience method

• Reading-writing connection

• Learning strategies

• Encourage wide reading

K-W-L

K W L

What we know

What we want to find out

What we have learned

Word Webs

Specific Remedial Methods

• Multisensory methods– Orton-Gillingham– Wilson– Fernald– Others

• Reading Recovery

• Direct Instruction

• Using Computers