Teaching Reading

With the holidays fast approaching, it’s easy to tap into the excitement to get some fresh motivation for reading.  Here are a few ideas to get them going….

• Song Lyrics: Sometimes song lyrics are easy to read because they are familiar and often are already divided into syllables.  Drag out the little carolling books for some great reading fun.  You can even try choral reading or reading in parts.
• Find the Words in “Christmas”: This old game has a lot of value for reviewing phonics and word attack skills.  Rearrange letters to find words using the letters in the big word.  Remind the kids to think of word families, such as hat, mat and sat.  How many can you find?
• Read Sale Flyers: What better motivation than a gift list?  Use newspapers or catalogs to find things that would be fun to receive.  Cut out the names of the items and glue them onto a page to make a word collage.
• Read Christmas Stories: And there are a bunch of them.  You can read them to your group or have volunteers read portions.  Grab some great literature!
• Christmas Scavenger Hunt: Make a list of Christmas symbols and then send the kids out to find as many as they can.
• Christmas Cards: Read the verses inside.

One way to help children learn phonics attributes and word analysis skills is through word sorts.  These activities will help with reading as well as spelling.  The basic premise is that words can be put into groups based on various phonetic attributes, such as a long or short vowel sound, number of syllables, type of rules for applying affixes and so forth.

Choose the aspect of phonics or word analysis you wish your student to focus on.  Together, generate a long list of words that have the attribute you’re looking at.  For example, you might be thinking of adding the ending -ed to words.  Make a list of words with the -ed ending.  You can find words in everyday conversation, books, magazines, textbooks, the environment and even in the dictionary.

Now, decide what you want to learn about the -ed ending words.  You might sort these into groups based on the rule they follow for adding the affix.  Do the words simply add -ed, double the final consonant and add -ed, drop a final e to add -ed, or change a y to an i to add -ed?  You might also choose to sort based on the sound that the -ed makes.  Does the word’s -ed ending sound like /ed/, /t/ or /d/?  Once the words are grouped, look for patterns.  How could you predict which group a new -ed word will belong in?

You can see that word sorts take a bit of thinking.  This mental engagement helps children to generalize rules and patterns so they can use them later when they encounter unfamiliar words.  Give it a try!

Got a young child or beginning reader at your house?  Take advantage of a pervasive source of reading material: environmental print!  Environmental print is the writing that we encounter every day in the course of living.  For many children, it is the first experience with words they recognize.  It’s easier to read most environmental print because it’s generally stylized and often incorporates logos of various sorts.  It’s also situation-specific.  These factors make it very memorable and usable even to nonreaders. 

Some of the best examples of environmental print are business signs.  How young of children do you think recognize the signs for their favorite fast-food restaurant?  I’m sure studies have been done, but experience will give you the answer as well.  Most little children recognize those signs almost as soon as they can talk!  Situational signs are also good for beginning readers.  Look for things like ‘no parking,’ ’stop,’ and ‘walk’ signs in your travels and encourage your child to “read” them.

What’s really going on?  I’m sure most people understand that the child is not REALLY reading those words.  If you showed the young child the same word out of context and without the stylized printing and incorporated logo, there would likely be no recognition or connection to the word.  Actually, the child is recognizing a whole pattern instead of a word.  The construction is recognized in much the same way that the brain sees a table and thinks ‘table.’

And that’s OK!  Reading environmental print in this way really does promote beginning reading skills.  One huge piece of reading readiness is understanding that letters and words convey meaning.  Another is learning that the same combination of letters produces the same sounds and words.  (Yes, I know about phonetic inconsistencies and homophones-that’s a whole ‘nother article!)  These are very important underpinnings to the development of reading readiness skills.

And you can move the learning along even faster if you’d like.  When your child shows recognition of environmental print, look for the symbol in other places.  The fast food logo might be on billboards, in newspapers, or on product packaging, for example, as well as on the big sign near the restaurant.  You can also begin to point out the letters contained in the sign and match them up to sounds.  The word ‘STOP’ always starts with an ’s’ and we always hear the matching /s/ sound.  Try writing the words from the environmental print and teaching your child to recognize them in other contexts.  Point them out in books as you share reading together. 

All of these little techniques and activities will help you build a more firm foundation at the skills necessary to be successful at reading in school.  Give it a try!

Here’s an easy and fun way to motivate a young reader: Make a reading caterpillar!  All you need are a few sheets of colored paper and some wall space to hang the critter up.  You might want markers or glue for decorations, too.  Start by cutting out a large head.  Make it a friendly smiling sort of a face, as funny and unique as you’d like.  Now, cut out a bunch of smaller circles.  These will be parts of the caterpillar body.  Write the names of books read (or heard for younger kids) on circles and add them to the caterpiller when they are accomplished.  Your ‘pillar will grow and grow as more and more books are polished off.  Have fun!

Reading A-Z is a hugely popular resource for homeschoolers and even classrooms. The site offers a wealth of free samples so you can take a peek at their popular printables. When you visit, you can click on the ‘free samples’ button and be taken directly to the list of freebies.  There are12 leveled readers with related worksheets, four phonics readers, three from their fluency development series, and seven more from other categories.  The books are pdf format, with instructions for printing them so they can be assembled into a real book.

To get the most from Reading A-Z, you will need to purchase a membership. For one classroom (or family), the cost is $89.85 for a one year access membership.  This membership will support up to nine classrooms, as well.  Membership will grant you access to literally thousands of coordinated reading materials.  The leveled readers run from A through Z (hence the name!), and cover through elementary grade levels and even up into middle school.  In addition to the leveled readers, there are support materials for each one. You’ll find worksheets, comprhension exercises, and much more.  Be prepared to print-ALOT!

Overall, the $89.85 annual pricetag is not too steep for the materials that are available.  With some patient printing, you can end up with an entire library of materials to keep your students or children reading for years.  Even if you only access a single grade level’s worth of the offerings, there are still over a hundred.  Compare that to most commercial reading curriculums, which can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars.  If you are homeschooling or operating a classroom or even a school on a shoestring, Reading A-Z is worth a look.

Here’s an article that I wrote that might help parents or regular education teachers understand a bit more about how to help struggling readers with dyslexia, learning disabilities, or cognitive challenges.

Reading Strategies for Students with Special Needs introduces several alternatives to mainstream reading instruction that you might find helpful, and gives options for teaching in addition to traditional phonics programs.

I’m a firm believer that no individual should be denied reading instruction. It’s a matter of meeting a student where he or she is at presently with literacy skills and then designing an individualized program to move forward from there. One researcher in Australia put it quite succinctly: Literacy is a human rights issue. Everyone has the right to become as literate as possible.

It can be difficult in the public school setting to meeting the needs of learners who are far below the norms for whatever reason. The constraints of time limits and standardized test requirements make it difficult to accommodate learners who are struggling, and then they fall further behind.  I haven’t figured out a good answer yet, but one part of it is to identify reading problems as early as possible, and never to assume a child will “grow out of it.”  The schools around here that have early intervention programs that pull children from the mainstream at the first sign of trouble and provide intensive, research-based intervention programs are having the most success with preventing long-term reading problems.

For my adult students, the answer seems to be a combination of self-direction, positive experiences, and using a wide array of materials and activities.  I work with cognitively impaired adults (some severely) whose families never dreamed that they would become even marginally literate.  Together we have made huge strides, with many advancing several grade levels in their skills.  It’s a success story that I’d like to share with the world, because not only are literacy achievement levels improving, but these adults also are almost universally increasing their self-esteem, social skills, motivation for other tasks, and even self-care skills.  It’s remarkable what a difference a seemingly insignificant gain like learning five new sight words per year is making in their lives.

So yes, I’m very much in favor of continuing educational activities for all adults who are interested.  I’m in favor of continuing education opportunities even for adults with severe impairments, and I never give up on a student.  I believe that it’s my responsibility as a special education teacher to find the right combination of methods, techniques, materials and motivation to reach every individual who wants to learn to read.

Got questions? Want more information about what I’m doing with my students? Please drop me an email (address on the ‘about’ page above) or flag me down on AIM, Facebook, or Yahoo Instant Messenger, where I am tutor1235 or sandy fleming (facebook).

So what’s not to love about the word ‘free’ when it’s attached to quality activities and worksheets??

I believe that language development and reading proficiency are very closely related, so it stands to reason that I have a great deal of respect and love for my speech/language therapist-colleagues.  I found this site through StumbleUpon, and it looks outstanding.  The author, Paul Morris, has posted many ideas and activities out of the goodness of his heart so that teachers around the world can benefit.  You’ll want to visit his site at Free Language Stuff.com.  Check out activity ideas on sentence construction, negation, parts of speech, and following directions.  I think you’ll find much of what he has to offer will really help your students build reading comprehension skills as well as language skills.

Check out Mr. Morris’ profile page as well, and maybe even leave him a big, fat thank you from the reading teachers!

http://www.freelanguagestuff.com

is an outstanding site that you’ll want to explore thoroughly!

Reading Pathways, by Dolores G. Hiskes, offers a wealth of reading fluency exercises.  Through the use of ‘pyramids,’ students are led through a series of increasingly difficult readings.  The lessons begin with the short A sound and continue through polysyllabic words such as effervescent and panorama.

Each lesson starts with a ’sounding out’ activity where students blend the first two sounds or syllables, then progressively add one more on each line.  For example, the word ‘cat’ is presented first as ‘/c/-/a/’ then ‘/c/-/a/-/t/.’

The reading pyramids for each sound or syllable begin with a short phrase that stresses the target sound/syllable, such as ‘Jan’s’ to begin the short a pyramid.  It progresses through ‘Jan’s fat,’ followed by ‘Jan’s fat cat,’ and ending after several more steps with ‘Jan’s fat cat Max sat on dad’s hat!’

The sole focus of the book is to build reading fluency between the stage where students can sound out three-letter CVC pattern words up through four and five syllable constructions.  It does include directions for four additional games for use after the polysyllabic words are mastered.  The tagline for the publication is “Simple Exercises to Improve Reading Fluency,” and the exercises do just that: build fluency.  Repeated work with each lesson will improve most students’ fluency scores.  The book does not address reading comprehension or other phonics or word analysis techniques, but it does not purport to, either.

My personal experience with using this book has been mixed.  The exercises have been effective for my students, but I have had some students who get tired of the repetition and complain vigorously of boredom.  Keeping a visual record of progress, such as a colorful graph or chart, has helped somewhat.

This is a good resource to have available, but may not be suitable for all students who need fluency exercises.

Interested in further information?

Reading Pathways: Simple Exercises to Improve Reading Fluency (Jossey-Bass Teacher)

If you need to motivate reluctant readers, sometimes you can be a tease.  Find an exciting book that’s at the reading level of your students, and read a chapter or two aloud.  Get them past the scene-setting and character building parts, and into the main part of the action.  Use all your talents to draw them into the story, like creating voices and mannerisms for the characters and pacing your delivery to match the mood of the story.  You can even use props or other devices to make your presentation more memorable.

Then, when you get to an exciting part, stop.  Leave the characters hanging so that no one can predict what will happen next.  Put the book down, but make it available to your young readers.  At least a few are quite likely to beg and plead with you to finish, but stick to your guns.  To find out the rest of the story, they need to open the book on their own.