Guest Post- Tips For Teaching Beginning Reading

Pin It Now! Guest post by Amy from Oh So Savvy Mom

Beginning to teach your child to read before they enter kindergarten (or before they are kindergarten age if you homeschool) can be fun and rewarding for both parent and child.  Most children begin showing signs of varying levels of reading readiness at about 3 1/2.  Some children are ready to read earlier, and some children are ready later.  During the time I taught preschool I found that about 80% children in my 4 year old classes were ready, after we gave them the tools, to begin reading at the beginning of the year.  The same 80% were reading at a beginning to mid-first grade level or higher by the end of the year.  If your child is not ready to read don't worry, in the long run whether your child learned to read months earlier or later than his peers is rarely going to have an impact on their overall education.


So where do you start?  We've all heard that reading readiness starts in infancy so let's just fast forward to the toddler and preschool years.


Age 1-2

• Begin singing the alphabet song!  If you know an alphabet song that goes through both letters and sounds all the better.  If you don't know one, try googling, and see if you can find one that you like.  Or you can try this site: www.starfall.com.

• Sing the alphabet song at breakfast or lunch when the child is in his or her high chair and not otherwise occupied.  For even more cognitive stimulation you can throw in some flash cards (not for the child to eat, mind you, but to show as you sing ;). Choose flash cards with pictures as this will help later with beginning letter sound recognition.

• (For the 2 year olds) Get magnetic letters for the fridge.  These are so inexpensive and are such a great teaching tool.  Choose 3-5 letters to have on the fridge (at the child's level).  Play with them for a couple minutes each day and talk about the sounds they say and words that begin with that sound.

Ages 3-4

• If you have already been singing the alphabet song with letter sounds for a while you'll be surprised at your child's ability to volunteer the beginning sounds of words they come across during the day.  For example, my little guy used to love telling me things like, (while playing with his animal figures) "T-T-Tiger, Hey, Mom, did you know tiger starts with t-t-tiger?" Me, "Wow, you know that tiger starts with t-t! Do you know what letter makes the t-t sound?" Him, "T!!!"

• When your child is ready to have individual letters introduced begin with LOWERCASE.  In order to begin reading children need to know the lowercase letters.

• It isn't necessary to teach the letters in order.  Some of the easiest letters for children to remember and make the sounds for are: m, p, a, s, t, b

• Avoid introducing similar letters like p, b, and d together.  Remember that a lot of children have difficulty with these letters.  If your child does have trouble with these letters don't hesitate to help.

•  Don't feel like you need to teach the entire alphabet before your child can begin reading.  You can make quite a few words out of the letters: m, a, p, s, t, b, g, h (these are some of the easily recognizable letters).  Lets look at some of the words you can make: has, bag, hat, pam, sat, sam, a, pat, bat.  You can make little storybooks with simple words. 

• Use only short vowels first until your child has mastered reading simple words with short vowels.

• Avoid beginning reading books that mix sight words with simple phonetic words. (Two exceptions to this rule are "the" and "have") Sight words are great, but they are a little too cognitively advanced for 3 and 4 year olds.

• Teach children to sound out words like there is a motor in their mouth (aren't most kids motor mouths anyway!). Put your finger under the letter and make the letter sound with the child.  Keep making that sound until your finger gets to the next letter and you begin making the next sound.  Sounding out words with this kind of fluidity helps children to hear the complete word.

• Keep it upbeat, praising your child's successes (effort is great success!).  Keep reading sessions very short...unless your child is begging for more!

And remember, the most important thing is to have FUN!


Amy is a stay-at-home mom to two darling boys, age 3 and 1.  Her husband is finishing up his 4th of five years of a PhD program in Clinical Psychology and getting ready to start his year-long residency in San Antonio.  She loves finding deals, living frugally, cloth diapering, finding new and great products, and hosting giveaways.  Her blog is about her adventures in mommy-hood and to get the word out about products she's recently discovered.  Make sure you stop by and visit her at Oh So Savvy Mom!

Focus on Literacy: Phonemic Awarness

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Sorry, this post took me so much longer to write than I had planned.  Phonemic Awareness is such a broad topic, it's hard to narrow it down into a concise post yet also have it be helpful.  Hope you get something out of it!  : )


In case you missed the first one, check out Focus on Literacy: An Overview.


Phonemic Awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate phonemes or sounds.  In phonemic awareness activities there is no discussion of letter names or written words, it is all oral.  It is one of the most important of the Big Five for young children (not that the others aren't important but it is more developmentally appropriate for younger children and is the building block for many of the Big Five), and it is one of the easiest to work on with young children.  Furthermore, it is an early predictor of later reading success and research has shown that weaknesses in phonemic awareness can lead to problems with reading development.  There is a wide range of skills that encompass phonemic awareness, some being easier than others.  

- Phoneme/sound isolation- the ability to isolate individual phonemes/sounds in a word

For example, knowing that /d/ (the little lines on either side of the letter represent the sound the letter makes) is the first sound in dog or /t/ is the last sound in cat (beginning sounds are much easier than ending sounds to identify and the middle vowel sound is the hardest).

- Phoneme/sound identity- the ability to identify sounds that words have in common

For example, knowing that dog and dad both have a /d/.

- Phoneme/sound substitution- the ability to substitute a sound in a word for a new sound

For example, being able to change the /f/ in fall for /t/ to make tall.

- Segmenting- the ability to break a word down into it's individual phonemes/sounds

For example, being able to break the word cat down into /c/, /a/, /t/

- Blending- the ability to take individual sounds and blend them to make a word (it's the opposite of segmenting)

For example, being able to take the sounds /c/, /a/, /t/ and know that they make the word cat

- Phoneme/sound deletion- the ability to take a sound away from a word and know what it left

For example, being asked to take the /c/ out of cat and having at left

- Onset- Rime manipulation- the ability to isolate, identify, substitute, segment, blend, and delete onsets (the beginning consonant or consonants in a word, like the /b/ in bat or /br/ in braid) and rime (also called the word family, like /aid/ in braid or /og/ in dog)


- Phonemic Awareness also includes rhyming, syllabification (breaking words into syllables or putting syllables together to make words), and assonance (also called vowel rhyme, when successive words have the same vowel sound, like "I made my way to the lake")

Most of the phonemic awareness activities that I do with Avery right now involve talking to her, reading to her, singing, and modeling.  Two phonemic awareness skills that I focus on a lot right now are rhyming and alliteration (words that begin with the same sound).

One of the easiest ways to work on both rhyme and alliteration is through the use of books (yes, this is still phonemic awareness even though you are using written text because the focus is on the sounds not on the written words, the book is simply the tool to help you come up with the rhyme or alliteration).  


As we read I'm sure to tell Avery the words that have the same sound and what sound that is.  Like "Oh Avery, cat and car both start with a /c/.  Can you hear the /c/ in cat and car?  /c/ cat.../c/ car.  They start the same!  What else starts with /c/?"  I do the same thing with rhyming words.  "Stop and hop rhyme, Avery.  Listen, stop...hop.  What else rhymes with stop and hop?...hmm...how about pop, cop, top, drop, mop, shop, flop.  They all rhyme."  




Rhyming books we like:
Nursery Rhymes are of course great (such as Mother Goose by Long- that's the one we have)
Baby Beluga by Raffi
Down By the Bay by Raffi
Tumble Bumble by Felicia Bone
Snuggle Puppy by Sandra Boynton
Hugs and Kisses by Roberta Grobel Intrater
Fluffy Chick and Friends (no author given)
Fuzzy Bee and Friends (no author given)
Night-Night, Little Pookie by Sandra Boynton
Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed by Eileen Christelow
The Noisy Egg by Judith Nicholls
Good Morning, Good Night by Melanie Mitchell
Ten Chirpy Chicks by Debbie Tarbett


Alliteration books we like (these are a lot harder to find then rhyming books but ABC books are usually pretty good): 
Click, Clack ABC by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin 
My First ABC Book (no author given)
Chicken Little by Steven Kellogg
ABC book by Dr. Suess
A My Name Is Alice by Bayer
Six Sleepy Sheep by Jeffie Ross Gordon
Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert
Alligators All Around: An Alphabet by Maurice Sendak
Sheep on a Ship by Nancy Shaw
How Do I Love You? by Marion Dane Bauer


Most, but not all, of the books I have mentioned are board books and geared towards children around Avery's age, if you are interested in books for older children, look here for rhyming books and here for alliteration books.


Another great way to work on rhyme is by singing songs.  This one is easy too, you can do it anywhere and kids love it. Even as young as Avery is, she'll start dancing when we start singing to her.  Here are some of our favorite rhyming songs: 
"The Animal Fair"
"Kookaburra"
"Five Little Ducks"
"I've Been Working on the Railroad"
"Down By the Bay"
"Baby Beluga"
"Five Green and Speckled Frogs"
"I'm a Little Teapot"
"Hush Little, Baby"
"Baa, Baa, Black Sheep"
"Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star"
"The Name Game"


The list could go on and on, there are so many great children's songs with rhymes.  I'm sure you have some of your own favorites!

I often do phonemic awareness work when we play with her alphabet blocks, great for alliteration

Other than songs and books, most of the phonemic awareness work that I do with Avery is simply playing with words.  I will take random words that I see, hear, or think of and use them to isolate sounds, identify sounds, substitute sounds, segment words, blend words, delete sounds, or manipulate the onset/rime.  I also do a lot of clapping syllables.  When Avery gets older, my goal is for her to join me in these word games.  


Looking for phonemic awareness activities to do with older kids, take a look at this link.  Many of these are games and activities that I did in my classroom.  I love the block activity, I used that one a lot in reading groups.  


One thing to be aware of when working with phonemic awareness is that you want to be sure you are pronouncing the sounds correctly.  It is quite common for people to put a /u/ on the end of consonant sounds.  For example saying /zuh/ instead of /zzzz/ or /fuh/ instead of /ffff/.  You want to be sure that you are isolating the consonant.  

If you have any specific questions, just let me know and I will do my best to answer them!


I'll start working on the Focus on Literacy: Phonics post soon.  Keep a look out for it!


Resources:
Phonemic Awareness - From WETA (DC) Public Television's Reading Rockets
Phonemic Awareness- Wikipedia

Focus on Literacy: An Overview

Pin It Now! I love reading!  When I was teaching, literacy was one of my passions and a huge focus in my room.  I have taken several master's classes on different literacy components and would love to one day have my master's in literacy. I have done tons of research and incorporated lot of the things I learned into my classroom.  I now use that knowledge in order to help develop Avery's pre-reading skills.

A little background information, current research has shown that effective literacy programs must contain 5 critical components that are referred to as The Big 5.  I thought this chart did a good job of explaining them:

		What it is		How it’s taught
Phonemic Awareness		The ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in spoken words		·  Focus on sound ·  Identify & blend: o   Onsets (initial consonant or consonant clusters) o   Rimes (vowel and consonants that follow the onset) ·  Segment, blend and manipulate sounds
Phonics		Phonics and word study (decoding strategies) involve the systematic instruction of letter-sound relations to read and spell words accurately and quickly.		· Practice knowledge of letter-sound correspondences · Decode and read words · Manipulate, categorize, and examine the similarities and differences in words
Vocabulary		How children acquire an understanding of new words and concepts		· Provide key experiences · Promote wide reading · Lead discussions through questioning
Fluency		Reading quickly, accurately, and with expression		· Practice reading words automatically (accurately and quickly with little attention or effort) · Increase speed (or rate) of reading while maintaining accuracy · Practice reading with expression
Comprehension		The process that enables readers to make meaning of text, and to communicate meaning about what was read		· Read text aloud · Communicate to others about what they read · Promote thinking and extended discourse through questioning and discussions

Taken from http://faculty.tamu-commerce.edu/jthompson/resources/Five%20Big%20Ideas.doc

Although it is not included in The Big 5, print awareness (learning how to use a book, understanding that spoken words can be written, knowing that we read left to right) is another important early literacy skill.  

Although Avery is only 1 year old, it is never too young to begin working on The Big Five.  A lot of it at this age is just talking to her and modeling things but it still makes a big difference.  I don't want to make this post too long and it would if I went into too much depth on each one, so instead I am going to spend the next few weeks going over each one in more detailed posts.  If you have any specific questions let me know and I will try to address them.  Happy reading!!