Reading Fluency K-2

Once children know their letters and can read simple CVC words, such as cat, dog, hat, they are ready to take a next step. But this next step can cause frustration in both children and parents.

Students come out of kindergarten reading letter by letter. And if they are not taught word families, they continue to read letter by letter even when words get bigger. This impedes decoding, fluency, and comprehension, and causes great stress.

To address this, students should be taught word families, as I noted in one of my previous posts. Word family study is often referred as “chunking”. Students learn to “chunk words” by learning rhyme patterns/word families. For example…

-ash

dash

smash

rash

trash

Hooked on Phonics books are great for learning and teaching word families and chunking. Hooked on Phonics books progress in difficulty and each story reviews words/word families prior to child’s reading. As with other phonics material, stories don’t offer much of a story line, but they are good practice of word families/chunking.

More on High Frequency Words…

Here is a bit more about high frequency words. Being able to automatically recognize high frequency words will help your child read more fluently. High frequency words have to be memorized, for the most part, since their spelling often does not make sense.

According to Edward Fry, the following 25 words make up one third of all text in English.

I     a     and   he    to

is    are   have    that   of

in    you     it   was     for

on     as   with    his    they

at       be     this     have   from

The Lorax- by Dr. Seuss

The Lorax – by Dr. Seuss

This is another great book by Dr. Seuss. It is a story of man’s impact on the environment, trees, animals, water, sky, and all to produce something nobody needs but everyone buys. As you read this to your children, they will voice their agreement with Lorax, and they will be able to learn, in a fun way, how people’s actions impact the world. This book teaches an important lesson. Let’s hope that our children grow up to treat the world better than previous generations. Happy Reading!

Giftedness in Children- Development

I believe that all children are gifted, and I agree with Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory. But I also know that not all children are made the same.  And what is a norm for one child can be completely unknown to another. We really only know what are own children are like. I ran across a wonderful website about giftedness and if you have one of these children or you teach one of them, who from an early age

can reason well

have large vocabulary

are never tired

have excellent memory

have long attention span

are perfectionist

are always specific about how things should be

are really funny

stubborn

sensitive

are good with puzzles, etc.

you’ll find this site helpful.

http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/Visual_Spatial_Learner/vsl.htm

Girls Learning to Read – Amber on the Mountain- by Johnston and Duncan

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Amber on the Mountain – by Toby Johnston and Robert Duncan

If your girl is 6 or 7 years old and just learning to read, she will love this book.  It is a beautiful story about friendship, self confidence, determination, and learning to read. Anna teaches Amber to read and above all to believe that she can achieve things when she sets her mind to it. This is such an inspiring story that will not only get repeat reads, but it will encourage your little one to keep reading even when the process gets frustrating. The lesson of perseverance once learned will transfer to all other areas of child’s life. Great story!

Learn to Spell- Kindergarten, First Grade, Second Grade

Spelling – Kindergarten, First, and Second Grade

Check the spellingcity.com site. It lets you plug in your own spelling words into a list and play games. It just makes the memorization of the spelling words a bit more meaningful, which will help your child put the words in context and remember them even after the test.

High Frequency Words – Kindergarten

In Kindergarten, your child will be introduced to high frequency words, which are sometimes called tricky words, red words, or sight words.

High frequency words are the most common used words in written English, and by memorizing them, children are better able to process text.

I, see, like, my, to, go, a , and, he, she, the, is , here, are, have, play, said, for, do, saw, out, them, was, help, too, that, be, you, me, they, good, of, his, her, has, all, put, this, we, look, want.

To help children memorize these words, introduce these words slowly. One word every couple of weeks. Have your child write out the words and say it out loud at the same time. Look for the word, which your child is learning at the time, in print. For instance, let your child find and circle every “the” that he/she finds in the book, magazine, catalog. Later, once your child can write few words, help him/her make sentence using high frequency words. Look for high frequency words outside the home on billboards, signs, etc.