K-1 reading

[omishev]

My DD is going into first grade. She went to school for preK and K and is registered for next year as well but I am on the fence about homeschooling. Anyway, learning to read this year was a struggle. Her teacher was amazing and taught her the basics, but now I need to practice practice practice with her! Doing her reading homework each night was like pulling teeth. This summer we have been reading almost every day, but her motivation is low and she is easily overwhelmed like if there is more than one line on a page any long words anywhere on the page. She is perfectly capable and I'm happy to help her if she gets stuck but she would rather read something really easy (1 sentence per page, 3-4 word sentences, short familiar words). We can get through one very short book or we take turns and I read some, she reads some. She is working at a lower level (and volume) than the primers she had been doing for homework just because I figured it was better for her to at least read SOMETHING. In the learning to read books she is on level 1 or pre-level 1 depending on the brand (which is supposed to be for preK-K) but from her friends I have seen and teaching Sunday school I know she is behind other kids her age. She still mixes up b and d, n and r, and some special sounds and I often have to remind her of the long vs short vowel rules. Any advice?

[Ellie]

If you are going to homeschool, then I would recommend doing a formal phonics program with her

[SKL]

Going into 1st, I think I would let her read the "easy easy" books she wants at least half of the time.  It will help solidify what she has learned and make progress easier as well as less painful / more enjoyable.  I would add a little bit of phonics & sight word drill at times separate from book reading.

You don't mention whether you read aloud to her much, but that will help a lot.  I would recommend more time reading aloud each day (you reading to her) than the time she spends reading.  Choose books that have rich language and illustrations to enjoy together.

[MerryAtHope]

I agree with the above suggestions. Also, this article has some ideas to help her with reversals. I would try to do some short, fun exercises to work on those daily, working on one letter at a time.

Homeschooling would have a lot of pluses, one being you can help her learn at her pace!

[Mergath]

Those easy readers can be deadly boring.  Could you look around for something more interesting? Or maybe write something yourself, like a serial drama written in one-syllable words that ends on a cliffhanger every day? 

Also, some kids find it helpful to spend a bit of time doing flashcards of the most common words in the English language. Stuff like the, a, for, at, and. The flashcards aren't a ton of fun, obviously, but once they can recognize the very common words on sight, sounding out a book becomes less of a slog.

[Xahm]

Check out ProgressivePhonics.com. it's free. Funny stories that aren't overwhelming. You read the words in black, she reads the ones in color. You could likely fly through the beginner level and then really start working at the intermediate level, but if you want to build confidence, you could start with the alphabeti books and go through the whole sequence. In the early books, the child gets to "read" a whole book while really only reading a few words, like at, cat, and hat. By mid-intermediate, most of the time they are reading half or more of the words, and by advanced they are taking over just about all of it. We never finished advanced because my oldest kid was ready to switch into real books, but now I'm in intermediate with the next, and it's interesting to see how it works with a different child.

[HomeAgain]

You say her teacher taught her the basics.  What does that consist of?

My thoughts- schools usually do a pretty cruddy job of teaching reading.  They ignore fact-based evidence of methods and go for what will give the appearance of reading.  If you managed to find a school that does not teach sight words, jingles, and use poorly designed readers (like the A-Z leveled series), and focused on phonics, I would find a more indepth program like All About Reading.  If your school did use the above, any phonics program should work.  I prefer Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons, but it's one of those books you either love or hate.  It does have going for it the "funny alphabet", where the child is initially taught with an alphabet that doesn't lend itself well to reversals.

[Ausmumof3]

I wouldn’t say I did the most amazing job of teaching my kids to read but here’s what worked.

1. Bribery!  Learning to read is hard work and not fun until you have a certain level of success.  My kids got a small prize for finishing their long Sonlight readers then one for every 10 books after that (books had to be at a level that was challenging them not just sight word type stuff).

2.  Read aloud!  Honestly this is the biggest.  Once your kid has mastered reading reading aloud lots and lots of books will make them love reading.  It boosts the vocabulary as well so they have the comprehension skills once then get the mechanics sorted.

3.  Bedtime reading.  I don’t have great sleepers so I’ve always let them read at bedtime.  Because there’s nothing else to do then they read a lot.

aside from that I agree with Ellie, if school didn’t do phonics do some phonics.  We’ve had a mix of resources and I think finding a solid program earlier and sticking with it like have been better but doing it’s the most important thing.

[ElizabethB]

On July 31, 2018 at 6:39 PM, omishev said:

My DD is going into first grade. She went to school for preK and K and is registered for next year as well but I am on the fence about homeschooling. Anyway, learning to read this year was a struggle. Her teacher was amazing and taught her the basics, but now I need to practice practice practice with her! Doing her reading homework each night was like pulling teeth. This summer we have been reading almost every day, but her motivation is low and she is easily overwhelmed like if there is more than one line on a page any long words anywhere on the page. She is perfectly capable and I'm happy to help her if she gets stuck but she would rather read something really easy (1 sentence per page, 3-4 word sentences, short familiar words). We can get through one very short book or we take turns and I read some, she reads some. She is working at a lower level (and volume) than the primers she had been doing for homework just because I figured it was better for her to at least read SOMETHING. In the learning to read books she is on level 1 or pre-level 1 depending on the brand (which is supposed to be for preK-K) but from her friends I have seen and teaching Sunday school I know she is behind other kids her age. She still mixes up b and d, n and r, and some special sounds and I often have to remind her of the long vs short vowel rules. Any advice?

Give her the MWIA Level 1 short.  If there is any slowdown (reading the phonetic words slower than the holistic words) or she misses more phonetic than holistic words, you need to do some nonsense words with her as part of phonics.  But, I have a fun game that makes nonsense words. Here is a direct link to the test.

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/Resources/The MWIA Version 3 new.pdf

Here is the nonsense word game:

https://www.thephonicspage.org/On Phonics/concentrationgam.html

She is a little young to do the last few lessons, but if you teach a modified version of my syllables program, that might be motivational, the first 6 to 8 lessons at a slow pace and only do a few words from each exercise.  My young students really enjoy being able to sound out 2 syllable words on their own.  My charts make learning those last few sounds easier, when they look them up themselves they learn a lot faster, and it is fun to color in.  The one page version is more efficient, but if she still needs large print, the 2 page version is better. 

https://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/syllablesspellsu.html

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/Resources/40LChartsCombined.pdf

Also, there are a lot of things you can do to make phonics fun, I made a movie about it!!

 

 

 

[ElizabethB]

On August 6, 2018 at 2:04 PM, HomeAgain said:

You say her teacher taught her the basics.  What does that consist of?

My thoughts- schools usually do a pretty cruddy job of teaching reading.  They ignore fact-based evidence of methods and go for what will give the appearance of reading.  If you managed to find a school that does not teach sight words, jingles, and use poorly designed readers (like the A-Z leveled series), and focused on phonics, I would find a more indepth program like All About Reading.  If your school did use the above, any phonics program should work.  I prefer Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons, but it's one of those books you either love or hate.  It does have going for it the "funny alphabet", where the child is initially taught with an alphabet that doesn't lend itself well to reversals.

Most schools do not actually teach reading well.  I've remediated hundreds of students in my 24 years as a volunteer literacy tutor.  We're a retired military family that lived dozens of places, there has only been one public school out of all the schools in all the districts we have lived in that did a good job teaching reading.  The private schools do a bit better, but some of them don't do that great of a job, either.

If you got sent home lists of sight words to memorize, that is very detrimental to learning to read well, it builds guessing habits, not good sound reading from left to right habits. Accelerated Reader and Leveled readers based on high frequency words also build poor reading habits.  Most of the things they do in schools are based on balanced literacy and three cueing, which are basically whole language repackaged with a bit of phonics thrown in.

While there are hundreds of studies showing the superiority of phonics over whole language or balanced literacy, recent brain research is even more strong in favor of phonics.  It shows that good readers are processing every word as a string of sounds, just super fast in parallel. My sight word page explains this, as well as how to teach all but 5 of the 220 Dolch words and 100 Fry words with phonics:

https://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/sightwords.html

[acresoft]

Jolly Phonics Finger Phonics is colorful and has motions to go with the sounds.

Reading Pathways is a good book.

There is also A Beginning Advantage readers called A Reason for Guided Reading. A lot of them are Bible story based readers.

Abeka Basic Phonics Readers set

[Bluegoat]

Not to disagree with ay above suggestions, because I don't, but it is not abnormal for kids at that age to find reading a lot of work, and for them to have a short attention span.  It's also normal for kids that age to vary a lot in reading level, so I'd not worry about comparing to other kids.  Just meet her where she is.

So - make sure your expectationsaer in line with her development.

[omishev]

On 8/1/2018 at 11:33 AM, SKL said:

You don't mention whether you read aloud to her much, but that will help a lot.  I would recommend more time reading aloud each day (you reading to her) than the time she spends reading.  Choose books that have rich language and illustrations to enjoy together.

We read a lot and have since she was a baby. I read to her 30+ min before "rest time" and 15 min at bedtime and sometimes random other times. Every other day (alternates with brother) she listens to audiobooks with the readalong stories during rest time. We read a children's Bible before bed and we are working our way through the Mary Poppins series. So she has plenty of exposure. We get a variety of books from the library. She likes the old fairy tale books and tend to be very high quality. We frequently borrow William Steig, Bill Pete, Jan Brett books. We always end up with some books that I consider junk but I think letting the kids pick some of their own books helps foster a love of reading. 

[omishev]

On 8/6/2018 at 4:04 PM, HomeAgain said:

You say her teacher taught her the basics.  What does that consist of?

My thoughts- schools usually do a pretty cruddy job of teaching reading.  They ignore fact-based evidence of methods and go for what will give the appearance of reading.  If you managed to find a school that does not teach sight words, jingles, and use poorly designed readers (like the A-Z leveled series), and focused on phonics, I would find a more indepth program like All About Reading.  If your school did use the above, any phonics program should work.  I prefer Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons, but it's one of those books you either love or hate.  It does have going for it the "funny alphabet", where the child is initially taught with an alphabet that doesn't lend itself well to reversals.

I don't know what their method is called or even how to describe it correctly but I'll do my best! They use A Beka curriculum. In PreK they start with the blending ladders. In K they go back through blending ladders and learn how to read CVC words. Then they introduce 2-vowel words and "the first one says its long name" rule. They learn some sight words out of necessity (the) but not many. Then they learn "special sounds" like sh and ch and continue adding to that list for the rest of the year. I think the teacher taught reading individually (one teacher and one aide for 12 kids) because I know her classmates all had different reading homework. 

[omishev]

On 8/2/2018 at 11:30 PM, Mergath said:

Those easy readers can be deadly boring.

No kidding!! The ones from school are horrible! We have found much more interesting ones at the library or I just have her read parts of our read aloud books.

[Tsuga]

How old is your child?

[ElizabethB]

They are boring too, but the Blend Phonics stories may be easier for her because you read the words first, then the stories, so it's a combined phonics lesson and then story.  It's really hard to make a good story when you are limited to a small stock of words, only Dr. Suess can do it well, it's a talent not many have.

http://www.donpotter.net/pdf/blend_phonics_stories.pdf

Also, Don Potter has a lot of supplemental resources on on Blend Phonics page.

http://www.donpotter.net/education_pages/blend_phonics.html

One that can be made into fun games are the word cards, but you use them for spelling and phonics, not as words to memorize as wholes.  You can have a treasure hunt for them, hiding them in various places with hints and then sounding them out, or relay races where you run to get the card and then run back and see how many you can sound out in 2 minutes, etc.  There are a lot of possible games with the cards.  Here is a direct link to the cards:

http://www.donpotter.net/pdf/blend_phonics_spelling.pdf

Also, I would go through my chart daily after coloring it in and use it when reading, it is really helpful for building up the sounds.

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/Resources/40LChartsCombined.pdf

Also, the cards to make words are a fun way to make words, give her a dozen or so letter cards and have her see how many words she can make in a minute.  Too many cards can be overwhelming, you can figure out the best number and then give her different vowels and consonants, making sure to have plenty of good ending consonants such as s, n, d, t.

Distributed practice is best, it's better to do two 10 minute sessions with at least an hour break in between than one 20 minute session.  Or, two 5 minute sessions are better than one 10 minute session.  The more fun you can make it, the easier it is to get in the needed repetition.

For long vs. short vowels, I like to make it a fun game on the white board and go back and forth.  cap/cape/cap; mine/min/mine.  You can also do it with nonsense words, sip/sipe/sip; fot/fote/fot; mote/mot/mote.  You can also add in long vowel syllables to the mix... go/gote/got no/note/not.  If you teach the long vowel syllables, you can then do table 26 of Webster and celebrate her ability to sound out 4th grade level words!  ba-ker, ti-ger, so-lo, tu-lip, etc.  (The a syllables have long a as in ba-ker, ma-ker instead of ah in words is in pa and ma.  The rest are the same is in words, as in go, he, me, hi, by, with y acting as a long I.)

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/Resources/WebsterSpellingBookMethodExcerpts.pdf

A fun way to get in practice online is Read, Write, Type, it is reasonably priced, fairly fun, and effective.  I used it with both of my kids when they were learning to read.  Once she gets the hang of it, she can do it on her own.

http://www.talkingfingers.com/read-write-type/

 

[omishev]

On 8/6/2018 at 3:39 PM, xahm said:

Check out ProgressivePhonics.com. it's free. Funny stories that aren't overwhelming. You read the words in black, she reads the ones in color. You could likely fly through the beginner level and then really start working at the intermediate level, but if you want to build confidence, you could start with the alphabeti books and go through the whole sequence. In the early books, the child gets to "read" a whole book while really only reading a few words, like at, cat, and hat. By mid-intermediate, most of the time they are reading half or more of the words, and by advanced they are taking over just about all of it. We never finished advanced because my oldest kid was ready to switch into real books, but now I'm in intermediate with the next, and it's interesting to see how it works with a different child.

Thank you Thank you Thank you! She has really enjoyed reading these and actually asks to read sometimes. The stories and pictures are funny. My younger son will actually sit and listen to us read whereas before he was bored out of his mind listening to her read. She is capable of reading pretty much all of the words and can follow along with me but the fact that she only has to read a few very easy words prevents her from getting overwhelmed.