Anna Geiger's Blog, page 31

Fall vocabulary activity

These free pocket chart sentences will help your preschooler learn some basic Fall vocabulary. ��We hope you have fun with them!

(This post contains affiliate links.)

If you haven’t purchased our Fall Theme Pack yet, you haven’t seen these fun pocket chart sentences that come in the giant bundle of preschool and kindergarten activities.

We love pocket chart sentences for quite a few reasons!

They teach basic concepts and vocabulary.
They help my preschooler learn concepts of print.
They bring attention to common sight words.
They’re FUN!

First, I printed and cut apart the sentences.

My Three loved sorting the word I, see, and the. ��He could read I, of course, and with some help remembered the word see.

The word the, however, was a tricky one- especially without a beginning sound clue. ��He constantly needed me to tell him what the word was.

But that’s perfectly fine. ��Since he’s really not ready for sight words yet, my purpose for this activity was to build concepts of print: specifically, the understanding that each printed word represents one spoken word.

He chose a Fall word to complete his first sentence.

Next, he put the words on the pocket chart in��the order that I gave��him. “We’re going to make the sentence I see the crow. ��Let’s put up the “I” first. ��Now can you find “see”? ��Here’s the word “the.” Now it’s time for��your Fall��word and picture.”

When my Three��put the words up, he wanted to cram them all��together, but I pulled��them apart so he could see each individual word.

Look at that smile! He loves reading with our new pointer.

After he made and read three sentences with me, he was tired. So I built the rest of the sentences while he watched. (And a certain little one-year-old had to have a turn! ��I just love hearing her nonsense words as she pretends to read.)

Finally, my Three read all the sentences himself using the pointer and picture clues.

I just love how pocket chart sentences reinforce concepts of print, teach sight words, and build vocabulary all at the same time! (Plus, they’re a great confidence booster!)

Want to build more Fall vocabulary? Check out our book lists!

Books about apples
Books about leaves
Books about pumpkins

Did you know?

In my Fall Theme Pack you’ll get 250 pages of Fall-themed activities, including a variety of pocket chart sentences:

types of Fall leaves
the life cycle of an apple
the life cycle of a pumpkin
Fall vocabulary (download for free below!)

Have fun!

 

 

© 2020, Anna G. All rights reserved.

The post Fall vocabulary activity appeared first on The Measured Mom.

When sight words won’t stick

TRT Podcast#18: When sight words won’t stick

What can you do when learners can’t remember those tricky sight words … no matter what you try?

Today I’m sharing five tips that will help!

You will learn

how to teach new words explicitly
how to practice the words both in context and in isolation
how to make sight word learning multisensory

Listen to the full episode here

Full episode transcript











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You are listening to episode 18, When Sight Words Won't Stick. I just want to say welcome back. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're listening to this in real time, we're in the early fall or late summer of 2020, and you may have noticed that it's been a while since I posted an episode. That's because we've had a lot going on here at our house, what with the pandemic and having my kids home all the time. There hasn't been a lot of extra time to do things. But I also have a really, really big project that I'm doing, which is taking up the time that I have. And that is I'm working with a designer and a developer to completely redesign themeasuredmom.com website. So that's going to be really exciting. I'm hoping that that's ready to go the end of September, but that's the reason why I haven't posted a new episode in over three months.

I am really excited to be back with you. And we are picking up in the middle of our eight-part series about helping struggling readers.

So, so far we've talked about helping learners who struggle to learn the alphabet, quick tips for teaching letter sounds, how to build phonemic awareness and seven tips for helping kids sound out words. Today, we're going to talk about what to do when kids have trouble learning sight words. Sight words, of course are words that cannot be sounded out phonetically, at least not all the way through. And so kids need to learn them by sight. Hence, the name.

The first tip I have is to remember that many parts of sight words can be sounded out. So we don't want to jump right to flashcards. We want to take a look at each word and examine the parts explicitly. So for example, if you had the word from, you could teach your learners that the F, the R and the M can be sounded out using phonics knowledge. It's that tricky O in the middle that makes it a sight word. So you would examine each letter, talk about the sound that it makes. And then take note that the uh sound in the middle is actually represented by an O instead of a U. There's a website, it's called a reallygreatreading.com and they have these wonderful animations that show you how to explicitly teach these sight words that are mostly phonetic, but have a couple tricky letters in there. I'm going to give you a link to those in the show notes, and it's definitely worth checking out. You can show your students any of those free animations, and you can also use them as inspiration for making your own.

Tip number two is to give kids practice writing the sight word. A lot of times we focus so much on reading it, we forget to have kids practice writing it. When they do that, you can work through the letters explicitly with them as you did when you taught the word, and you can maybe have them grab a highlighter and highlight any letters that make an unexpected sound. You can also have your learners write the words on some kind of special surface like shaving cream, or they can use a chopstick and write the words in colored sand. There are lots of different ways to help your kids who need to learn things in multisensory ways.

So far, we've talked about practicing the words in isolation, both by teaching those individual letters and by writing the word. But it's also really important to follow tip number three. And that is to have kids read the words in context. And this is where simple sight word books are very useful. I have a lot of these on my website, I believe over 40, that are free for you to download. So I'm going to leave a link to that in the show notes as well.

Tip number four is to figure out a way to repeat the words in a fun way. So certainly you can use flashcards. They do have their place, but you're going to want to do something besides flashcards. And we have an active Facebook group, actually, we have three of them and one of them is called Kindergarten and First Grade Teaching Ideas. Last I checked, we are almost at 10,000 members and it's a very active group. Recently, someone asked a question about helping their child with sight words, because they struggled to remember them. And there were so many good ideas there.

So I'm going to pull from some of those ideas for this tip. You can put two to three sight words by the door. So maybe by the light switch, and this could be in your classroom or a resource room or at home. And every time that particular child leaves, they're supposed to tap the words and read them out loud. Of course, now in the time of COVID, you won't want them to touch the words, but they can point to them and say the words as they leave the room.

Something else you can do. This was probably something more for home or maybe in a resource room, but you can give students a lanyard. So one of those name tags that you wear around your neck with the little clip and inside it, instead of putting a name tag, you can put the sight word, and then the child would actually lift up the lanyard to read the sight word and get extra practice that way. Of course, you'd have to have the sight word inserted upside down so that when someone looks at the child, it looks upside down. But when they pick it up to read it, it's right side up. So I would suggest putting a special sight word in their lanyard and periodically having them flip it up and read it to you.

Something else you can do is play hide and seek where you have multiple copies of just three words, and you hide them around the house and your child finds them and reads them. There are many other ways to make sight word learning playful, and I'm going to link to some of the ideas that I have on my website in the show notes.

My fifth tip is to help your child use their body while they're learning sight words. A great way to do this is to do a sight word song that has actions. I would definitely check out Heidi Songs if you have not, again, I'll leave a link to her in the show notes. Heidi is a kindergarten teacher who has created some wonderfully catchy sight word songs with full body actions. So those are really great for helping kids internalize the spelling of a lot of sight words. And then if you do that with the screen, because she has it on a DVD, they can actually see the words as they're singing that.

Some people teach students to tap the word on their arms. So for example, if the word is the, they might touch their shoulder as they say T, touch their upper arm as they say H, touch their lower arm as they say E and then slide their arm all the way down from the shoulder to the wrist saying the word. So I've got my right arm extended, my left arm is tapping THE. The.

Another member had this idea. She calls it dribble and shoot where she said that she teaches her students to pretend to dribble the letters and then shoot the basketball when they say the word. So for the, it would be T-H-E, the. So imagine them hitting the air, sort of like they're dribbling a basketball for those letters, and then moving their arms way over their head for the word, the.

Other things you can do would be to teach your students stomping and clapping movements for particular songs, some kind of rhythm that they can do maybe as they march around the room. So think about involving the whole body, if necessary.

My last tip for helping learners, who struggle to learn sight words is to use magnetic letters or letter tiles. So there is a blog post I have about using magnetic letters to teach sight words. It's based on the method that Jan Richardson recommends in her book, The Next Step Forward in Guided Reading. I'm going to link to that in the show notes, but here's an idea from that set of steps. You would have kids build the word with magnetic letters, and it's nice to use the letters that are actually the shape of the letters and not just a letter tile, because they can feel the shape of the letters as they're spelling the word. You have them, make the word, then mix it up and then build it again.

Something else you can do is take a letter away, have them build the word, leaving a space for the missing letter, and then write that letter in the missing space. So maybe you're doing this on a board, like a dry erase board or a piece of paper. Do this several times, maybe take away two letters next time, and then three, until they can simply write and read the whole word.

So those are some ideas for helping kids when sight words just won't stick. Let's review.

Number one, you want to examine the word and talk explicitly about each part, remembering that oftentimes most of the word can be sounded out. There may just be one or two troublesome letters.

Number two, give your students practice writing the sight word, whether that's on a regular piece of paper, in shaving cream, on a dry erase board or something like that. And then you could have them highlight the tricky letters.

Tip number three, have kids read the words in context often in the form of little books.

Number four is to playfully repeat those words. So lots of practice, repeating the same words over and over. This may include flashcards, but I recommend games as much as possible.

Tip number five is to help kids use their whole body as they learn the sight word. And so this may involve tapping, dribbling, stomping, dancing.

And finally, tip number six, have your learners use magnetic letters as they practice reading, building, spelling, those sight words.

I have a whole set of editable sight word games on my website that I highly recommend if you're helping learners master sight words. There are 150 different games included in the bundle. You can type in any words you want and they will auto-populate into the games. The fun thing about this pack is it's seasonal so there's something for any time of the year. So to check out my editable seasonal sight word games, you can go to themeasuredmom.com/sightwordgames, and you will find this bundle from my shop. I'll also leave links to everything else I mentioned in the show notes, which you can find at themeasuredmom.com/episode18. Thanks so much for joining me and I'll talk to you again next week.

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Resources and links mentioned in this episode

Sight word animations from reallygreatreading.com
Free sight word books
25 low-prep sight word activities
Heidisongs’ sing-along songs that teach
How to teach sight words blog post

 

 

© 2020, Anna G. All rights reserved.

The post When sight words won’t stick appeared first on The Measured Mom.

Books for the first day of school

Looking for books to read aloud the first day of school?

I’ve got you covered!

A new school year is upon us!

What better way is there to start the year than to read some spectacular picture books to your learners?

Here are my top picks for preschool/pre-K through third grade.

Please note that many of these books could fit on multiple lists, and I recommend our personal favorite, Don’t Eat Your Classmates!,�� for any grade level.

Books to read aloud the first day of preschool/pre-K

Rex Wrecks It! by Ben Clanton

This is a delightful book about a set of creatures in an early childhood classroom. Rex (a young T-Rex of course) wrecks every block structure the other creatures create. His friends are frustrated until they find a way to work together. This is a great book for opening discussions about playing nicely together.

My Teacher Sleeps in School, by Leatie Weiss

This book actually takes on a new meaning if you’re teaching virtually, but it’s a good choice for those of you in a social distancing classroom. My preschooler really liked this book in which little elephants imagine that their teacher lives at school. ��Their imaginations run wild as they wonder where she eats, sleeps, etc. ��It’s a vintage book (1985) that hasn’t lost its charm.

All the Colors of the Earth, by Sheila Hamanaka

This lovely book is actually a poem with just a few words on each page. Help your young listeners celebrate ethnic diversity by talking about different types of hair and skin color. “Children come in all the colors of love, in endless shades of you and me.”

Chu’s first day of school, by Neil Gaiman

If you want an absolutely adorable book for the first day, this is it. Chu is a little panda who is nervous about the first day of school. He waits anxiously as the teacher goes around the circle asking each animal child what they are good at.�� The snail is my favorite: “I like to go into my room and close the door and not come out until I want to.”

And Chu? Turns out he’s��very good at sneezing.

Stunning illustrations + hilarious story = a surefire winner!

Back to school Tortoise,��by Lucy M. George

Tortoise is worried about going back to school. What if he falls down, the kids are mean to him, and he doesn’t like lunch? Kids will love the surprise ending, when we learn that Tortoise is actually the teacher.

Books to read aloud the first day of kindergarten

Lena’s Shoes Are Nervous, by Keith Calabrese and Juana Medina

It’s Lena’s first day of kindergarten. She’s ready to go, but her shoes are hiding; they’re too nervous to go to school. Together, Lena, and her dad encourage her shoes until Lena the shoes find the courage they need for the first day. Sweet!

Mae’s First Day of School, by Kate Berube

Mae decides she IS. NOT. GOING. to school. There’s so much that could go wrong! Mae does end up walking with her mom to school, but she climbs a tree and is determined to stay there.

Rosie, another hesitant child, joins Mae in the tree, along with a tall lady named Ms. Pearl, who is definitely not ready for her first day either. As it turns out, of course, Ms. Pearl is Mae’s and Rosie’s teacher. All three enter school hand-in-hand.

The Pigeon Has to Go to School! by Mo Willems

Fans of Pigeon will love this addition to the series in which Pigeon doesn’t want to go to school at all. It’s great for addressing concerns kids may have about coming to school, and letting them know you’ll be there to help them every step of the way.

Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten? by Audrey Vernick

A big nervous buffalo (wearing a backpack) holds hands with his friend as he makes his way to kindergarten for the first time. But is he ready? This is a lighthearted book, also perfect for opening up a discussion about kids’ concerns about a new school year.

Books to read aloud the first day of first grade

School’s First Day of School, by Adam Rex

This book is simple but beautifully relatable. School is a brand new school and is nervous about welcoming students. His friend Janitor tells him not to worry – he’ll like the children.

But School isn’t so sure, especially when there’s a little freckled girl who doesn’t like school at all. “I must be awful,” he whispers to himself.�� In the end, of course, School and the little freckled girl win each other over.

This is the perfect book for teaching empathy and for helping overcome fears about a new school year.

We Don’t Eat Our Classmates, by Ryan T. Higgins

This book was by the far the favorite of everyone at our house. It features darling Penelope, a t-rex who keeps eating her classmates! (Don’t worry; she swallows them whole and spits them out afterward.)

Not only are the illustrations phenomenally good, but the text is hilarious. “Sometimes it’s hard to make friends,” said her dad. “Especially if you eat them.” And “You see, Penelope, children are the same as us on the inside. Just tastier.”

I can’t do justice to this book in a review … please just get it! I guarantee students of all ages will love it. (And so will you.)

First Day Jitters,��by Julie Danneberg

Sarah is nervous about the first day of school. When Mr. Hartwell urges her to get out of bed, she covers her head with the covers. Finally she arrives at school, nervous and feeling sick about a new year at a new school. ��It isn���t until the last page that we learn that Sarah is Mrs. Hartwell, the teacher!

Rufus Goes to School, by Kim T. Griswell

You and your students will quickly fall in love with Rufus, a pig who longs to go to school and learn to read. When he finds a backpack, lunchbox, and blanket, he’s sure he has everything he needs … but no pigs are allowed in school. In the end, the persistent Rufus wins the principal over.

Great story with engaging illustrations – recommended!

Second Grade

The Day You Begin, by Jacqueline Woodson

This is a breathtakingly beautiful book best for first grade and older and is perfect for starting a conversation on acceptance. The book talks about things that may make a child feel alone or outside the group while also encouraging them to be their unique selves.

This book nearly made me cry and is sure to open the door to meaningful discussions.

My Teacher is a Monster! by Peter Brown

This is a wonderful book that my little guy has requested again and again. Bobby has a problem: his teacher is a monster (with green skin, claws, and sharp teeth). But when Bobby meets his teacher in the park, she seems less and less like a monster … and we learn that she’s not a monster after all. First graders are old enough to understand why the teacher looks less and less like a monster as we move through the story.

My Name is Yoon, by Helen Recorvits

I’m in love with this story about precocious Yoon, who isn’t happy that her Korean name looks so different when printed in English. But as she learns to find her place at school, Yoon learns that she can still be herself in America. The only problem with reading this book aloud is it might make you cry.

Enemy Pie,��by Derek Munson

This is a friendship book well-suited to older kids (first grade and up), but younger kids will enjoy it too. ��The narrator puts mean Jeremy, his new neighbor, on his Enemy List. ��When asking his dad for advice on how to get rid of enemies, his dad promises to make Enemy Pie. �� But first he has to spend one day being kind to his enemy. ��Of course after the day spent together the boys are no longer enemies. ��Good story!

Books to read aloud the first day of third grade

Miss Nelson is Missing, by Harry Allard

This is one of my all time favorite children���s books about a teacher whose students constantly misbehave. When she comes back to school disguised as the cruel Mrs. Viola Swamp, the children shape up in a hurry.�� Kids of all ages will enjoy this book, and you’ll love reading it aloud.

The Teacher from the Black Lagoon,��by Mike Thaler

So … warning … this book isn’t graphic or gory, but it does feature a (fictional) teacher who shoots fire at students and even bites them in two. I know it sounds creepy, but it’s a classic picture book (1989) that’s funny and not scary. It turns out that the narrator is actually dreaming, and Mrs. Green is actually a beautiful and kind teacher, not the villain we meet at the beginning of the book.

(I recommend this book for third grade because of the type of humor, but my preschooler – who scares easily – absolutely loved it.)

The Name Jar, by Yangsook Choi

Unhei has just moved to America from Korea, and her new classmates can’t pronounce her name. When she decides she needs a new American name, her classmates put new choices in a jar for her to choose from. As it turns out, Unhei keeps her Korean name and celebrates what makes her unique. Not only does the book have an important message, it’s also beautifully written and illustrated.

What books have��your students loved the first week of school? Please add your recommendations to the comments section below!

 

© 2020, Anna G. All rights reserved.

The post Books for the first day of school appeared first on The Measured Mom.

7 Tips for helping kids sound out words

TRT Podcast#17: 7 Tips for helping kids sound out words

Is “sounding it out” just not clicking for some of your learners? These tips will help!

Learn the pre-reading skills kids need before they’re ready to sound out words.
Discover the power of oral blending.
Learn three different approaches to teaching kids to sound it out.
Get even more tips for helping kids find success with this important skill!

Full episode transcript

You are listening to episode 17, Seven Tips for Helping Kids Sound Out Words.

First and foremost is tip number one: You want to make sure that your learners are developmentally ready to sound out words. Way back when I started my blog, I published a post called Five Things Kids Need Before They can Sound it Out. And I wrote that post because I was getting a lot of emails from people who were telling me their learner couldn't sound out words. And I could tell that the child probably wasn't ready. And so, I asked them to go back, look at that post, and make sure all those things were in place first. So, I'll link to that post in the show notes, but these were the things that I talked about. Concepts of print, language and listening skills, letter knowledge, phonological, and phonemic awareness, and an interest in learning to read.

Now, this episode that you're listening to, right now, is in the middle of a podcast series about helping struggling readers. So, if you go back a few episodes, you'll find the ones about teaching letter names and sounds, as well as an episode about building phonemic awareness. So you have some tools that you can go to if your child is not quite ready to sound out words.

Tip number two is from The Literacy Blog, and that is to do lots of oral blending. A lot of times we rush into sounding out words on paper because a child knows letter names and sounds, but we kind of hit a brick wall, and it just doesn't click. So, you can take a step backward and do oral blending. Make sure the letters you choose to work with when you're doing oral blending have sounds that are continuous. So, an example would be the letter M; its sound goes mmmmmm, or the letter S, ssssss. An example of a consonant whose sound is not continuous would be T, /t/, or P, /p/p. They're harder to work with. So start with those words that have consonants that you can drag out, and then start with very simple CVC words, like map, mmmmmaaaaaap, and then put those sounds together. As students become comfortable with that, you can make the words a little more complex by adding a beginning blend, or an ending blend. So, an ending blend example would be the word milk, miiiiilllllll. And then, they put those together quickly to say milk. An example of a word with a beginning blend would be flat, ffffflllllaaaaaat. You say it slow; they squish it together and say it fast.

Tip number three, once your learners have the pre-reading skills they need, and you've done plenty of oral blending, is to try different approaches to sounding out words. And I like to think of three different approaches. One of them is the word family approach, which can be really helpful when you're first starting out. For example, you would teach a child to read AP as -ap, and then you would just keep switching out the first letter: map, cap tap. This can be really good for building the foundation, but as you move on, you're going to want to switch to something else because kids will need to be able to read all the sounds in order when sounding out words.

Some people like to teach individual sounds, so in sounding out the word map, it's /m/ /a/ /p/, map, and that can work for a lot of kids.

But for other kids, by the time they get to the end, they forget the first sound. So they might be able to do, /m/ /a/ /p/ and then they say cat, or something totally unrelated. The reason is because their working memory isn't strong enough. You can help them with that by doing successive blending. And I have a blog post with a free printable, and a video all about this. I'll link to it in the show notes. But, in general, this is how it works, with the word map you would have the child point to the first letter, say its sound, the second letter, say its sound, put the first two together and say the sound, then say the last sound and put it all together. So for example, /m/, /a/, /maaa/, /p/, mmmmmmaaaap, map. Successive blending can help a lot. And, like I said, I have that blog post with the printable to help you out.

This brings me to tip number four, it's a quick one. And that is just to use magnetic letters, letter tiles or, in the instance I was just talking about, letter cards, so kids can manipulate the letters as they say their sounds.

Tip number five is turn this into a game. So, here was an idea from The Literacy Blog. If a child is trying to read the word, mat says the sounds, /m/ /a/ /t/, and then looks at you blankly, or says something completely unrelated, you could turn it into a game where you take those letter tiles, or magnetic letters, and they have to say the sound of a letter for as long as you're pointing to it. This is why you want to use words with continuous sounds, at least at the beginning of the word. So, if you're doing mat and you're pointing to M, they would have to say mmmmmm until you go to the A, and then he switched to aaaaaaa. Then, you can reverse roles, which they will love, but you're going to need a lot of breath for. They point to the letter, you say the sound until they move to the next letter. So, kids enjoy that, it could be fun for you and them, and it helps them get this concept of blending sounds into words.

Tip number six is to do more than sound out the words. After they've sounded out a word, do some more activities with the same word. So, maybe they sounded out the word map using letter tiles. After that, mix them up, have them build the word map. Pull out a dry erase board, have them write the word map, or write most of it and leave one letter out, and have them fill it in.

And, finally, ask for support at home, but you want to make this very easy and doable for parents. So, you could put together a little intervention kit for a family to do at home. It should be very short. I recommend taking no more than 5, possibly 10 minutes, and let it be extremely clear. The best thing to do would be to simply have more examples of activities you're doing at school already, so the child understands what needs to be done. In the show notes for this episode, I'll include a lot of links to resources that I have for helping kids read short words. Those are certainly things you could send home to be done with a parent.

Let's review our seven tips for helping kids sound out words. Number one, make sure they are developmentally ready to sound out words. Number two, do lots of oral blending. Number three, try different approaches to sounding out. So, that could be using word families, sounding out letter by letter, or using successive blending. Number four, use magnetic letters, letter tiles, or letter cards, so kids can manipulate the letters as they say their sounds. Number five, make it fun by turning it into a game. Number six, do more than sound out the word. So, after they've sounded it out, build the word, or write the word. And, finally, ask for support at home by sending home easy games parents can do with kids, or simply an extension, or repetition of the same things you're doing at school. And make these things very easy to use. Just pop them in a manila envelope with a clear set of directions. And they should only take 5 to 10 minutes a day.

That's all for today. I invite you to check out the rest of the episodes in our series about teaching struggling readers. To find everything I mentioned today look in the show notes, which you can find at themeasuredmom.com/episode 17. Thanks for listening. And I'll talk to you again soon.

Resources and links mentioned in this episode

Blog post: 5 things kids need before they can “sound it out”
Can’t blend, won’t blend (blog post at The Literacy Blog)
Successive blending video and free printable

Subscribe & review in iTunes

Are you subscribed to my podcast? If you���re not, I want to encourage you to do that today. I don���t want you to miss an episode!�� Click here to subscribe in iTunes!

Now if you have an extra minute, I would be really grateful if you left me a review over on iTunes , too. Those reviews help other people find my podcast, and they���re also fun for me to go in and read. Just click here to review. You’ll need to click to “Listen on Apple Podcasts” and “write a review.”�� Let me know what you appreciate about the podcast. Thank you!

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© 2020, Anna G. All rights reserved.

The post 7 Tips for helping kids sound out words appeared first on The Measured Mom.

How to build phonemic awareness

TRT Podcast#16: How to build phonemic awareness

Did you know that a child’s level of phonemic awareness is the greatest predictor of future success in reading?

Learn exactly what phonemic awareness is.
Discover how much time you need to teach phonemic awareness daily (hint: it’s not much!).
Learn how to teach the four elements of phonemic awareness.
Get real-life examples for teaching phonemic awareness to the whole class and small groups.

Full episode transcript

You are listening to episode 16: How to Build Phonemic Awareness. You may have read that a child's level of phonemic awareness is the single greatest predictor of future success in reading. So it's no surprise that struggling readers are often weak in this area. That's why I chose this topic for the third in our eight-part series about reaching struggling readers.

First things first, what is phonemic awareness? Phonemic awareness is the ability to play with sounds in words. Here's a really great definition from the site homeschoolingwithdyslexia.com, "Phonemes are the individual units of sound that make up words. For example, the word sat is made up of three phonemes, /s/,/a/,/t/. Phonemic awareness is not only the recognition that words are made up of small sound units, it is also the ability to break down, manipulate, and blend phonemes. For example, being able to remove the s- and replace it with m-, to make the word mat. Young readers need to be able to apply their understanding of phonemes in order to begin to read."

It's important to understand that phonemic awareness has four parts. So we have phoneme isolation, phoneme blending, phoneme segmentation, and phoneme manipulation, and they start simpler with phoneme isolation and gradually get more complex. So let's take a look at each of those.

Phoneme isolation is simply the ability to identify where a sound appears in a given position in a word. It also involves having students identify specific phonemes in a word. So, for example, "What sound do you hear in the middle of the word mad?"

Phoneme blending is the ability to blend individual phonemes into words. So what you could say is, "Can you blend these sounds together to make a word? /k/ /a/ /t/," and the child should be able to tell you cat.

Segmentation is the opposite of blending because we're asking kids to break words apart. So you might say, "What are the sounds of the word cat?" And they could say, "/k/ /a/ /t/," taking the word apart into its individual phonemes.

Phoneme manipulation is by far the most challenging aspect of phonemic awareness, and it's something that we keep working on even after kids are readers. So it's probably not something most kids will have a strong handle on in kindergarten. Phoneme manipulation involves adding phonemes, deleting phonemes, and substituting phonemes. So you might say to a child, "If I have the word hat and I take off /h/ and put /ch/ in its place, what's the new word?" The word would be chat, but as you can see, there's a lot of thinking involved to figuring that out.

When it comes to teaching phonemic awareness, you should do two things. First, schedule quick whole class lessons, and second, build it into your small group reading lessons.

If you are teaching kindergarten or first grade, you should build whole class phonemic awareness instruction into your day, but the good thing is it doesn't have to take much time at all. It can literally be three minutes, maybe when you're transitioning to lunch, or the end of your calendar time, or when you're trying to get your kid's attention during the middle of the day and you need a little bit of a game break. Phonemic awareness is very playful and can be quite fun. Here are some examples of phonemic awareness activities that you could do with your whole class.

You could play I Spy, where you say "I spy something near Brandon's desk that starts with /p/," and they might see a pencil on the floor. That's an example of phoneme isolation. You could say a short word and have children stretch it like a rubber band by using their hands to stretch out the word and say it slowly. You could even give them a rubber band to stretch as you say the word. So you might say, "Let's get out our stretchy rubber bands. Let's stretch out the word fish," and they'd stretch it and say it with you, "Fffffffiiiiiish." You could play a mystery word game where you have a silly puppet who says mystery words very slowly and children have to say the word fast. So you might say, "Here's our silly snake. And today he's got a mystery word. Snake, what's the mystery word?" And then you have the snake talk and he says something like, "Paaaaaaack," and the kids can say, "Pack." So in that case, they are blending the sounds together to make a word; they're saying it very quickly. You could play a picture game where you put pictures of CVC words or other short words up at the front of the room, and then you say the sounds of one of the pictures, and then maybe you have one child come up and identify that picture. So you might say, "I'm going to say a word and I want you to find the picture. Here's the word, /h/ /a/ /t/," and someone has to find that picture. As you can see, there are many different ideas for building phonemic awareness into your day. I will link to a blog post that has a lot of ideas.

So this is a given, if you teach kindergarten or first grade, you should make time every day for two to three minutes of phonemic awareness games, but you should also include it at the beginning of your small reading groups for every group in kindergarten and for many groups in first grade, and then possibly even in second grade, if kids are still struggling with phonemic awareness. What you do in those groups is going to depend on the needs of the students in the groups.

You'll probably have your groups organized by ability if you're doing guided reading. And then at the beginning of that guided reading lesson, just save two minutes to do some phonemic awareness activity. If you have a group that's really struggling with phonemic awareness, it makes sense to me to take a few weeks and just do phonemic awareness activities during that small group, instead of working on reading actual books. It's okay to take that time to build the foundation. If you're not sure exactly what level of phonemic awareness to teach such as isolation, blending, segmenting, or manipulation, I have a great assessment inside my new bundle of Phonemic Awareness Games and Activities, and you can find that on my blog linked to in the show notes. In that bundle, there is a great assessment that you can use to find out exactly where your learners are with phonemic awareness, and it will help you realize what you need to work on in those small groups.

Once you know what work on, of course, the challenge is finding what to do in the small groups. And that's where this bundle really comes in handy because I spent a lot of time creating a pretty great variety of games and activities for phonemic awareness for all levels. So let's break down each of those four parts of phonemic awareness and I'll talk to you about things that you could do in your small group.

Let's say that you're working on a phoneme isolation. You can simply say a word and ask your students what sound they hear at the beginning, middle, or end. It's a good idea to have a set of words printed and ready to go so you're not trying to pull something out of your head when you're feeling stumped. I have a link to a blog post with a list of CVC words that you can just print. I'll leave a link to that in the show notes. I have a free game on my website called Say the Sound where kids take turns rolling a die and moving along a path, and when they land on the picture, they just say the picture and the first sound. So sun, /s/; that's something you could do in a small group. If you purchase the Phonemic Awareness Games and Activities bundle, you will find a lot of ideas for teaching phoneme isolation. There's beginning, middle, and ending sound tic-tac-toe, beginning, middle, and ending sound snakes and ladders, and some other fun activities.

Now let's talk about phoneme blending. If you want to do this orally, so maybe just two minutes without some kind of printable, you can just give your learners three sounds and have them blend them together to make a word like we talked about earlier. For example, "We're going to play Mystery Word today. I'm going to give you the sounds. I want you to tell me the mystery word, are you ready? /m/ /o/ /p/," and they would tell you, "Mop." Printables in the bundle include phoneme blending bingo, where you say the sounds of the word and they find the picture. So if you say, "/p/ /i/ /g/" they find the picture of pig on their board and cover it. And there's a similar activity called Cover 8. So instead of trying to get four in a row, they have a little board and they have to be the first to get all eight pictures covered.

Now we'll talk about phoneme segmenting. Remember, that's breaking the word apart into phonemes. Orally, you could say a CVC word and have kids break it apart like a robot. So you could say, "My word is pen, can you say it like a robot?" And your kids would say, "/p/ /e/ /n/." If you're ready to use some computer ink, Elkonin boxes are great for phoneme segmentation. So you may have seen the free Elkonin boxes on my website, which I'll link to. An Elkonin box has a picture on the top and boxes at the bottom, usually one box for each sound in the word. So for the word cat, you would have a picture on the top and then three boxes. And kids would move a manipulative forward for each letter and put one into each of the boxes. So /k/ /a/ /t/, pushing those forward as they go. Inside the Phonemic Awareness Games and Activities bundle, there is a game that includes Elkonin boxes. Kids draw the Elkonin box card, figure out the number of sounds, and move ahead that number of spaces on the board. There's another game in the bundle where kids roll a die, land on a picture, and say all the individual sounds.

Finally, let's talk about phoneme manipulation. I told you earlier that this is a tough one because it involves deleting, adding, and substituting phonemes. That's a tough one. To do it orally, you could say something like, "Take the word fish, take out/f/ and put /w/," and see if they can tell you the new word. Or, "Can you take the word wish and add /w/ to the beginning?" Then they would say, "Swish." It's a little tricky to find good phoneme manipulation printables, but I've created some and included them in the bundle. The games are called, Add a New Sound and Make a Sound Disappear. So it helps kids practice adding or deleting at the beginning of the word and at the end of the word. These are perfect for using with small groups. I also have some Change the Sound mats, which can be used individually or in a small group, where kids change either the beginning, middle, or ending sound of each word, matching the corresponding picture to the top.

So in a nutshell, phonemic awareness is the ability to play with sounds in words. You'll want to teach phonemic awareness in whole group reading lessons in kindergarten and first grade and at the beginning of small group reading lessons. When you teach it in small groups, focus on the skills particular readers need based on the phonemic awareness assessments you have given. And again, I have an assessment included in the phonemic awareness games and activities bundle. You can do strictly oral activities when building phonemic awareness, but I've found that it's helpful to include printable games and activities as well. I do have a handful of free games on my website, which I will link to in the show notes, but if you really want the motherlode of fun, engaging phonemic awareness activities, I highly recommend purchasing the Phonemic Awareness Games and Activities bundle. I have a secret for you though, if you are a member of my membership site, The Measured Mom Plus, all the things in the pack are included in the membership. So that might be something to look into if you're not sure about buying the pack, join the membership and you'll get those and hundreds more resources right your fingertips.

Links to all these resources are included in the show notes at themeasuredmom.com/episode16. Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you again soon.

Featured resource

Get it here!
Resources and links mentioned in this episode

How to build phonemic awareness��(from Homeschooling With Dyslexia)
The Measured Mom Plus, my online membership site which contains hundreds of printables for teaching PreK through third grade (and��includes the printables in my new product, Phonemic Awareness Games & Activities).

Free printables on The Measured Mom

Which one starts with a different sound?
Say the sound games
Ways to build phonological and phonemic awareness
Printable list of CVC words
Elkonin boxes

Subscribe & review in iTunes

Are you subscribed to my podcast? If you���re not, I want to encourage you to do that today. I don���t want you to miss an episode!�� Click here to subscribe in iTunes!

Now if you have an extra minute, I would be really grateful if you left me a review over on iTunes , too. Those reviews help other people find my podcast, and they���re also fun for me to go in and read. Just click here to review. You’ll need to click to “Listen on Apple Podcasts” and “write a review.”�� Let me know what you appreciate about the podcast. Thank you!

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Quick tips for teaching letter sounds

TRT Podcast#15: Quick tips for teaching letter sounds

Do you have learners who struggle to remember letter sounds?

Discover two daily activities that will make the biggest impact.
Get ideas for teaching letter sounds in small groups.
Learn how to teach letter sounds with resources you already have.
Check out my brand new (free!) intervention tool to help kids learn letter sounds.

Full episode transcript

You are listening to Episode 15: Quick Tips for Teaching Letter Sounds. This is part two in an eight-part series about teaching struggling readers. Today we're going to focus on what to do when you have learners in late pre-K or kindergarten who are struggling to remember letter sounds.

The first thing to do is to find a song that's catchy and repeat it often. Bonus points if the song includes actions. As I was looking for videos to share with you, I found a wonderful example on YouTube. It has a young teacher with his adorable class, and they're very into this song. He starts it by saying that he loves the alphabet so much he likes to eat it. Together, they sing the Eating the Alphabet song, which they've clearly sung before, because they were very good at it.

It goes something like this: "I've got the A, /a/ /a/, in my mouth. I've got the B, /b/ /b/, in my mouth. I've got the C, /k/ /k/, in my mouth, and I'm learning to read." And then, you just repeat it with every set of three letters. It's adorable. You've totally got to check that out. I will provide a link to that in the show notes, or maybe I might just embed the video in the blog post.

That's not the only option. There are many different alphabet songs in all different musical genres. You might choose a YouTube video that you watch every day with the kids actively out of their seats, singing along and doing the actions. You'll find some ideas for these in A Teachable Teacher's blog post, which I'm going to link to in the show notes.

The next idea is from Alison of Learning at the Primary Pond, and she suggests having your students chant an alphabet chart with you every day. I'm sure you've seen alphabet charts. It's a printable page, usually with about five letters per row arranged in a table format. And each little box has the letter in uppercase, lowercase, and then a picture.

Every day, you could pull that out, and the kids use their own alphabet chart, they move their finger along the rows, and they chant the chart with you. "A, apple, /a/. B, ball, /b/," and so on. After you chant it, you can play games with the chart. You could say cover the letter that says /m/, or cover the letter above the letter that says /s/.

Our third idea is to make sure you do even more multi-sensory activities. Getting out of their seats, singing, and moving with a song, that's definitely multi-sensory. Something else you can do is have kids look at letter cards, and then trace the letter in a container of salt or sand, and as they trace it with their finger, they're making the shape in the sand, they say the name of the letter and the sound. So, "N, nnn". And you teach them how to do that; practice that with them so that they can do that on their own.

Something else you can do is to modify alphabet games to focus on letter sounds. Take the alphabet games you already have, and just alter them a little bit. Instead of kids naming the letter, have them name the sound. For example, on my blog, I have four in a row where kids name the letter and put a chip or color it. And then, whoever has four in a row first wins. You could change it, so that instead of saying the name, they say the letter sound.

In my Alphabet Games and Activities Bundle, which is on my blog in my shop, you can use the Name the Letter game, but have kids say the sound instead. That's a really great game for this purpose, because it only focuses on a few letters per game. And since the game is editable, you can just type in the letters whose sounds your students need to practice. I've also included an editable bingo game in that bundle. You could use the game that only includes nine letters, and you could put the letters in there whose sounds kids are working on -- always, of course, including a good number of letters whose sounds they already know, because you want to mix up what they don't know with what they already do know so the game isn't too overwhelming. And then, when you're calling letters for them to cover on the board, instead of saying the letter's name, you say its sound.

Our next tip is to do letter and sound recognition activities in small groups. You can certainly do that YouTube video with the whole class every day, you can certainly chant the alphabet chart together every day, because those don't take a lot of time, but you don't want to do a ton of letter sound activities with the whole class, because everyone doesn't need to work on the exact same sounds.

It's better to do an assessment to find out which sounds particular children know, or perhaps how many they know. So, you might have a group of kids who know all their letters and all their sounds, and you may have a group of students who know only three or four, and then maybe a group that knows none of them. In those small groups, you can do an activity like one that I saw on DeeDee Wills' site, which is called Mrs. Wills' Kindergarten. You use magnetic letters, that's really important, so kids can feel the shape of the letters. And you could take a cookie sheet that you get from the dollar store and write all the capital letters on it in permanent marker. And then, kids match the lowercase, magnetic letters to the uppercase letters on the board, saying the letters' sounds as they do so. They might each have their own cookie sheet with a bag of letters and you slowly add more letters to their bag. You don't give them all at once. So, if a child knows three letters, you always include those three letters in the bag and you add maybe two letters every time you meet or until they've mastered them. And then, you add two more. And with that, kids are practicing what they know and adding more letters. So, they'd pull letter out of the bag, say its name and its sound, and then match it to the uppercase letter on the board.

My last tip for you is very one-on-one. This is to use a letter sound intervention book with individual students. This is something I just recently created, and I'm going to explain it to you so you can picture what it looks like. Imagine a piece of paper landscape, so you're holding it the long way. And imagine it divided into three equal sections going across. So, three long strips of paper. Each of those strips is the length of the book. And you're going to have a total of 26 pages, one for each letter, stapled together. And each page, each of those strips, is going to feature an uppercase letter, lowercase letter, and two pictures of a mouth about to say that letter's sound. So, if it's for B, you would see big B, little B, two mouths with the lips together, because that's where we are when we're about to say /b/, and then a space for a picture. And you would have a bag of pictures, one for each letter sound.

What you would first do is look at the book with each individual child and glue down all the pictures if the child already knows the letter sound. And so that way the child can read the book, only reading the pages that have the pictures. So, if a child knows the B and the B sound, they would read that page like this, "B, B, /b/, /b/, ball."

There are little black dots under all the parts of the page. So, they would point to the dots under the big B, the little B, the first mouth, the second mouth, and the place where they glued the picture. And what you would do is you would slowly add more pictures as you teach more letter sounds. And every day, the child is going to read through that little intervention book, just reading the pages that have the pictures. And eventually, the whole thing will be full and they'll know all their letter sounds. So, this letter sound intervention book is free on my blog. You can find it in the show notes.

Let's review the tips that I've talked about today for helping kids who struggle to learn letter sounds. The first thing to do is to find a catchy song that you like, that you know is going to work for your students, and repeat it often, hopefully every day. And in the show notes, I will provide a link to some possibilities.

The next idea is to print an alphabet chart for every child and chant that chart every day with your students. They look at the picture and the letter and they say, "A, Apple, /a/," and they go all the way through the chart every day.

The next tip is to make sure you're doing lots of multi-sensory activities.

Next, we talked about modifying the alphabet games you already have, so that instead of saying the letter name, kids say the letter sound.

I recommended doing letter and sound activities in small groups like that cookie sheet game, where they match the small letters to the uppercase while saying the letter name and sound.

And I talked to you about using a letter sounds intervention book with individual students, which I'm going to link to in the show notes.

One more thing you can do to help kids who are struggling to learn letter sounds is to strengthen phonemic awareness skills. That's a really big topic though. And we're going to talk about that in next week's episode. You can find all of the resources I talked about today in the show notes at themeasuredmom.com/episode15. Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you again soon.

Resources and links mentioned in this episode

��

Other recommended alphabet songs ��(A Teachable Teacher)
When letter sounds just won’t stick (Learning at the Primary Pond)
Free four-in-a-row letter game
Letter recognition activities (Mrs. Wills’ Kindergarten)
Alphabet games and activities bundle��

Free letter sounds intervention book (pictured above)

Subscribe & review in iTunes

Are you subscribed to my podcast? If you���re not, I want to encourage you to do that today. I don���t want you to miss an episode!�� Click here to subscribe in iTunes!

Now if you have an extra minute, I would be really grateful if you left me a review over on iTunes , too. Those reviews help other people find my podcast, and they���re also fun for me to go in and read. Just click here to review. You’ll need to click to “Listen on Apple Podcasts” and “write a review.”�� Let me know what you appreciate about the podcast. Thank you!

There are many ways to listen …

Subscribe in iTunes
Subscribe in Spotify��
Subscribe in Stitcher

Looking for the entire podcast library?

Click here to see all episodes

© 2020, Anna G. All rights reserved.

The post Quick tips for teaching letter sounds appeared first on The Measured Mom.

Printable for teaching letter sounds

If you’re wondering how to teach letter sounds, you’ll love this free printable and video tutorial!

Today I’m sharing a printable that I’m using with my four-year-old to help him master letter sounds.

And it’s working!

Here’s how it works.

Print the letter sounds book.


Cut apart the pages and staple together on the far left.


Print the pictures and cut them apart. Save them in a zip-top baggie with a glue stick.

Sit down with your learner one-on-one.


If your learner knows any letter sounds, glue down the pictures for those letters.

Each time you sit down with the book (ideally every day, but at least 3-4 times a week), have your learner name the letter, sound, and picture for each page that has the image glued down.


If your learner is confident with all (or most) of the sounds you’ve introduced, teach a couple more and glue down the pictures.


Keep practicing until your learner knows all the sounds.

Check out this video to see how it works!

 

© 2020, Anna G. All rights reserved.

The post Printable for teaching letter sounds appeared first on The Measured Mom.

How to teach letter sounds (free printable!)

If you’re wondering how to teach letter sounds, you’ll love this free printable and video tutorial!

Today I’m sharing a printable that I’m using with my four-year-old to help him master letter sounds.

And it’s working!

Here’s how it works.

Print the letter sounds book.


Cut apart the pages and staple together on the far left.


Print the pictures and cut them apart. Save them in a zip-top baggie with a glue stick.

Sit down with your learner one-on-one.


If your learner knows any letter sounds, glue down the pictures for those letters.

Each time you sit down with the book (ideally every day, but at least 3-4 times a week), have your learner name the letter, sound, and picture for each page that has the image glued down.


If your learner is confident with all (or most) of the sounds you’ve introduced, teach a couple more and glue down the pictures.


Keep practicing until your learner knows all the sounds.

Check out this video to see how it works!

 

© 2020, Anna G. All rights reserved.

The post How to teach letter sounds (free printable!) appeared first on The Measured Mom.

How to help learners who struggle to learn the alphabet

TRT Podcast#14: How to help learners who struggle to learn the alphabet

Do you have learners who are in PreK or kindergarten and are struggling to remember the letters of the alphabet? This episode is for you!

Learn how to get started with letter learning.
Discover what to look for in an alphabet curriculum.
Get links to free printables for teaching the alphabet.
Find out about my new collection of alphabet activities and games that make letter learning more fun than ever!

Full episode transcript

You are listening to episode 14, How to Help Learners Who Struggle to Learn the Alphabet. This episode kicks off an eight-part series for teaching struggling readers, but we're actually starting way back at the beginning with pre-reading. Today's episode is sponsored by my new digital product, Alphabet Activities and Games. Learn more at themeasuredmom.com/abc.

So teaching the alphabet ... Personally, I've found that teaching my kids their letters has been one of the most fun things I get to do as a parent. I have six kids, and they've all learned their letters at different rates and at different ages. My oldest, who is somehow 13 years old, knew all her letters and sounds before she turned two. My youngest is almost four and a half, and he only recently learned to recognize the last of the letters. We're just getting started with letter sounds.

I haven't felt any pressure or panic as I've taught my kids their letters because they all learn them as toddlers or preschoolers. If they struggled to learn a letter, I just talked about it more, pointed it out more, and generally called more attention to it. But it can feel very different when it's right before kindergarten or during the kindergarten year and a kid is struggling to learn letter names.

In this episode I'll share some things you can do to help learners struggling to learn the alphabet. Before we get any further, I just want to say that this episode is about teaching letter names, not sounds. I considered talking about both in the same episode, but I decided to split them up. So this week, we're talking about letter names, and next week we'll go on to letter sounds.

Today's episode is going to be about two things: teaching learners who struggle to learn the alphabet in Pre-K, that year right before kindergarten, and kids in kindergarten who struggle to learn the alphabet.

So let's start with kids in Pre-K. They are four or five years old, kindergarten is on the horizon, and those letter names aren't sticking. What I always recommend is to start with the letters of the child's name. And personally, I like to use a structured approach, such as letter of the week. Not everyone agrees with me here, and that's fine. But I do feel that a letter of the week approach can be very good for children in Pre-K when you are flexible. By that I mean you don't do just one letter every week. You focus on one or more letters, and then you always review the letters you've already taught. You skip ahead if a child knows a whole bunch of letters, and you do hands-on activities instead of a pack of worksheets every week.

Letter of the week tends to work better at home because it's easier to be flexible with one or two learners, versus in the classroom when you have a whole bunch of kids at different stages of their letter learning. So if you follow this approach in a classroom, I think it's best done in small groups and centers.

If you're looking for a letter of the week program, makes sure it's flexible, incorporates review, and is not simply a series of worksheets. Variety within structure, that's you're looking for. You'll find that in my letter of the week curriculum for preschool and Pre-K, which I'll link to in the show notes.

As I've said, one thing you really need to do as you're teaching the alphabet to kids in Pre-K is to constantly incorporate review, and you'll find some great resources for that in my Alphabet Games and Activities bundle that I mentioned at the beginning of this episode. The great thing about it is a lot of the games are editable, so you can type in maybe three letters your learner knows and then one new letter. Play the game a few times to help reinforce that new letter.

Another thing to do with a child who is not yet in kindergarten and struggling to learn the alphabet is to read lots of alphabet books. I recommend books that have the letters large and prominent on each page so children can point them out and name them. I have a blog post in which I reviewed my 50 favorite ABC books for kids, which you can also find in the show notes.

If you'd like, you can also use DVDs in moderation. Now, if you know me, you know this is pretty much the last thing I recommend. I'm not a big believer in using DVDs for teaching young children. I just think they get enough screen time as it is. However, many people have had success with the Letter Factory DVD. We own it. We got it years ago when my big kids were little. It came in a bag of hand-me-downs. They watched it a bunch of times. They liked it. I find it annoying, but it can be helpful for kids in Pre-K.

I also really like the Heidi Songs DVDs and CDs. Heidi is a kindergarten teacher, and she has created a huge variety of songs with actions that help young children learn basic concepts. I'll link to those too in the show notes.

So far, we've talked about starting with the letters of a child's name, using a structured but flexible approach that incorporates constant review, reading alphabet books, and if you like, watching letter DVDs. I also recommend making the time that you learn letters a routine. I know how hard it is to do this when you're a busy parent or a busy Pre-K teacher. But if you set a time every day to sit down with your struggling learner or your whole class to focus on letters, your kids will be more receptive to it. It's better when they come to expect it.

And we don't need to use flashcards. In the Alphabet Activities and Games bundle, I have editable bingo games, editable board games, road tracing mats they can use with cars, play dough mats, and more. Use those activities to make letter learning fun. I recommend spending about 10 to 15 minutes every day. Especially at home, children will be more receptive to alphabet learning if they know it's coming and it's not just thrown at them because on that particular day you're suddenly starting to feel anxious about it. Make it a part of your daily routine, and it will go much better.

So those are my top tips for helping kids in Pre-K who are still trying to remember the alphabet. What about kindergarten? In America at least, this is the year we're starting to teach reading, and that's hard to do if a child doesn't know the letters of the alphabet.

So what do you do? Well, when you're teaching a class of learners or even just one-on-one, you always start the year by giving everyone a letter name assessment so you know exactly what your learners need to know. And I've included one of these in the Alphabet Activities and Games bundle. Giving this assessment will help you know what specifically to work on with each learner. You do not want to do whole class letter of the week in kindergarten. There are many reasons why you shouldn't do that in kindergarten, but a big one is that in kindergarten that's going to be moving too slowly. I would say you need to move at a faster pace, probably three letters a week in your phonics lesson.

But mostly, letter learning should be done in small groups because kids have such a variety of needs. Let's say you start the year and you've got half your class knows the alphabet and the sounds. They're ready to start to learn to read. Meanwhile, over here, you've got a few kids who know some letters and a few children who don't know any letters at all. Those children who are still learning the alphabet will benefit from doing an alphabet tracing book every day. This is not my idea. This comes from Jan Richardson in her book The Next Step Forward in Guided Reading.

On my blog, I've shared an alphabet tracing book like the one she recommends. You can find a link to that in the show notes. What you would do is you would have children trace a letter using their finger, not a dry erase marker, because this helps them to memorize how the letter is formed. And every day, they would trace each letter in upper and lower case and say the featured picture's name. Most likely, of course, if they're learning their letters still, they're going to need someone to help them with the letter tracing book. So this would be a great task for a parent volunteer or an aide to do with those children every day. This won't take long, just a few minutes per child.

At the beginning, you may need to hold their hand while they trace and help them name those letters. And over time, they'll be able to name more and more letters on their own. As I mentioned earlier, you want to make sure that you build on what your struggling learners already know. So mix in the letters they know with the new ones. If you're only working on new ones, they're going to reach frustration very quickly.

I recommend using an alphabet intervention book, and this is an idea from Kim Adsit of KinderGals. I attended a wonderful presentation she gave about teaching the alphabet at a conference a few years ago. I've created my own alphabet intervention book, which I've included in the Alphabet Activities and Games bundle. Here's how it works. So you have each child have this little book of letters and each page has big A, little A, and then a space for a picture. And you have a bag of pictures. So what the child does is you help them choose the pictures for the letters they know and glue them in. So let's say a child only knows letter B because his name starts with B. On the B page, he would glue down the picture of the ball, and then he would read the book to you, but he would only read the pages with the pictures. So he would read B, B, ball. And then you would add more letters each week, and he would always read those to you, with help if needed, until gradually the whole book is full.

I used this with my little guy right about when he turned four because there were still some letters yet that he needed to learn. He knew about half when we started, and this really worked. At first, he was a little reluctant to read each page by naming the letters and the pictures, but he very quickly looked forward to it and actually requested it. And before long, he knew all the letters. So again, that's included in the Alphabet Activities and Games bundle.

Let's review the things we talked about when it comes to helping kids in kindergarten who are still struggling to learn the alphabet. Start the year with a letter name assessment so you know exactly what letters they need to learn. Have those kids who are struggling trace the alphabet every day using an alphabet tracing book, link in the show notes. And build on what struggling learners already know by incorporating the letters they've learned with the new letters. A great way to do that is to use an alphabet intervention book, which is included in the Alphabet Activities and Games bundle.

That wraps up this week's episode about teaching the alphabet to struggling learners. Check out the show notes where I share a link to my Alphabet Games and Activities bundle, to my online membership, which actually includes all the printables in the bundle, and to some free resources on my blog, such as letter find pages, printable letter books, and a whole lot more. You can find all of these in the show notes themeasuredmom.com/episode14.

Thanks for listening, and I'll be back next week with tips for helping kids who struggle to learn letter sounds. I'll talk to you soon.

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Featured resource

Coming this week!

Resources and links mentioned in this episode

Letter of the week curriculum
50 of the best alphabet books for kids
Letter Factory DVD
Heidisongs CD’s and DVD’s
Free letter tracing book
The Measured Mom Plus , my online membership site which contains hundreds of printables for teaching PreK through third grade (and��includes the printables in my new product, Alphabet Games & Activities).

Free printables on The Measured Mom

Alphabet bingo cards
Mini alphabet flip book
Find the letters pack
Letters: Four-in-a-row
Alphabet action cards
Rhyming alphabet books
Letter books with real photos

Subscribe & review in iTunes

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Now if you have an extra minute, I would be really grateful if you left me a review over on iTunes , too. Those reviews help other people find my podcast, and they���re also fun for me to go in and read. Just click here to review. You’ll need to click to “Listen on Apple Podcasts” and “write a review.”�� Let me know what you appreciate about the podcast. Thank you!

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The post How to help learners who struggle to learn the alphabet appeared first on The Measured Mom.

5 Strategies for teaching struggling readers

TRT Podcast#13: 5 Tips for teaching struggling readers

Teaching struggling readers is immensely rewarding. But it’s not without its challenges!

In this episode I share five must-use strategies for teaching struggling readers.

Full episode transcript

You are listening to episode 13: Five Strategies for Teaching Struggling Readers. This episode is sponsored by Teaching Every Reader, the online course for teaching reading in K-2. I created this course with my colleague, Becky Spence. You may know her from her amazing blog This Reading Mama. Becky, like me, is a former classroom teacher with a master's degree in education. She has a special heart for teaching struggling readers and much of what I'm sharing today in this episode is directly from her struggling readers bonus module inside Teaching Every Reader. To learn more about our course, Teaching Every Reader, you can visit teachingeveryreader.com or visit the show notes for this episode at themeasuredmom.com/Episode 13.

Before we dive into the five strategies, let's talk about what we mean by struggling readers. These are students who struggle with reading in some way for a variety of reasons. It may be because English is not their first language. It may be that there are holes in their phonemic awareness or phonics skills. They may lack background knowledge, which hurts their comprehension. Or they have difficulties processing language or even a diagnosis like dyslexia. No matter the reason that a child is struggling in reading, we can use some effective strategies to help.

The first teaching strategy is using multi-sensory activities. This means that we want our learners actively participating in their learning. They could be using manipulatives, talking through strategies with us, or spelling words out loud. I love this quote from Becky in Teaching Every Reader. She says, "We want you to think of the brain as a highway system with lots of on and off ramps. There can be multiple ways to get to one location. If there's heavy traffic on the interstate you can grab your phone and find an alternate route. Learning happens in much the same way but for most of our struggling readers, their brain has a traffic jam and they've left their phone at home. If we continue to teach into the traffic jam, we aren't going to get to the other side. We want to find alternate routes. Multi-sensory teaching can help us find other routes in the brain so that learners can make meaningful connections with information."

For example, if you're teaching your learners phonemic awareness, you want them to hear the individual sounds in words. Elkonin boxes are a great multi-sensory way to do this. You give children a picture of a three-letter word and then you show them how to use manipulatives to push one forward for each sound. For example, if they see the picture of a cat, they would move one counter forward for each sound. C-a-t. In the show notes for this episode, you will find a link to a free set of Elkonin boxes. Another time multi-sensory teaching comes is handy is when you're teaching kids who are struggling with letter recognition. You can provide actual magnetic letters to students that have the shapes of the letters. I'm talking magnetic letters, not letter tiles. The nice thing about the letters being magnetic is that they can feel the shape of the letter. And this can be helpful, for example, when they're sorting letters. You might have them sort them by letters that have a long side and letters that are completely curved. Eventually, they'll use these letters to build words.

Strategy number two is systematic teaching. This means that we teach in a logical and organized way. We want to keep our routines consistent and mix in older concepts with newer skills. This is often called spiral teaching; when you mix in new concepts with old ones. And it's really important to help prevent gaps in learning. For example, you could have a systematic way for teaching letter sounds. There is not one perfect order for teaching letter sounds, but we like to recommend one particular order that is great for struggling learners and other learners, too. In this order, you're going to make sure you introduce vowel sounds early on, but you're going to separate the vowel sounds so children aren't easily confused. You'll start by teaching M, A, S, P, T, N, I. You see there was a big set of consonants before we got to the second vowel. And those letters at the beginning that we taught can be used to make many different words. Go ahead and head to the show notes, themeasuredmom.com/Episode13 for that full order of teaching letters.

Another place systematic teaching is important is when we teach students to blend sounds to make words. There are different ways to teach blending. One way that's often used is by teaching kids to recognize word families at the end of the word and then adding that ending to the beginning sound. For example, if you're teaching the word family ap, children can read cap, map, tap and so on. You can also teach blending by individual letter. So, in the word cap, /k/ /a/ /p/. Cap. But a really great way to teach blending that comes in especially handy when you're teaching struggling learners is called successive blending, and this is really good for kids who try to sound out words but then forget the sounds they've already said and then come up with a totally unrelated word at the end.

For example, if you're teaching someone to sound out map, instead of doing /m/ /a/ /p/, you teach them to put those first two sounds together and then add the ending. So, mmmm-a. Mmmaa-p. Map. Map. I have a video which comes with a free printable for teaching successive blending. Again, you'll find a link to that in the show notes for this episode.

Strategy number three is explicit teaching, and that's when we clearly show a skill or strategy. This is so important when teaching reading because so much of what we do when we read isn't seen. Processing is done silently in our heads, and it's up to us as the teacher to make this visible for our students. For example, if you're talking about the strategy of asking questions as you read, you could create a T-chart. On the left side of the chart, you could list the qualities of good questions that make us want to read more. On the right side, you could list the qualities of not so good questions. These might be questions that may be too specific or even off-topic that don't compel us to keep reading. And then you can use passages to help your students practice whatever reading strategy it is that you're teaching. You're going to want to start with short passages that very obviously lend themselves to this strategy.

For example, if you're teaching visualizing you could start with a short poem that very clearly helps students make a picture in their mind. Or if you're teaching main idea, you could start with a very short paragraph that states the main idea in the very first sentence. Then you're going to move on to longer passages that clearly help them use the strategy. Finally, move on to shorter and then longer passages that aren't so clear. If you're teaching main idea, you might use a short passage that has a main idea, but it's not stated in a direct sentence so students are going to have to infer it.

A great way to do explicit teaching is through a think-aloud. Talk aloud about your thinking as you comprehend text. This works really well in a whole class read-aloud or in a small group setting. Ahead of time, pick a text and focus in on what you're thinking as you read. Take notes on sticky notes. And then, when you read the book to your students, pause to talk about the what you're thinking as you read it, referring to those sticky notes that you wrote earlier. Explicit teaching also comes in handy when teaching sight words to struggling readers. Talk about the easy and hard parts of the word. Listen in as I show you an example of teaching students the word was.

Let's look at this word. Was. Listen as I say the word slowly. Was. I can hear the /w/ in the word. Can you? /w/, /w/, was. I'm going to highlight the W with green because it makes the sound I would expect to hear. /w/. Green means go with the sound it makes. The W is highlighted. Now let's listen to the rest of the word. W-aaas. There's something tricky about the A and the S. They don't make the sounds I expect to hear. I hear /u/ and /z/. I don't hear /a/ and /s/. The word doesn't say wahss; it says was. I'm going to highlight the A and S in yellow. Yellow warns me that these sounds are tricky.

Explicitly teaching can feel like over-explaining, but it's not. And you'll get more comfortable with it in time.

Let's move on to strategy number four, a strategy that is often skipped. And it is guided practice. After we've given instruction using multiple senses and in an explicit, easy to understand way, our learners need to practice the skill or strategy. But it's easy to skip this step. We like to put an activity at a learning center or give a worksheet for independent practice and expect our students to do it independently without guided practice first. They need this important step. During guided practice, you review what you've already explicitly modeled and then you serve as a coach as your students try it. You help them get back on track when they need it, and you provide cues or remodel a skill or strategy again.

Let's say you're teaching your students about beginning, middle and end, and you want them to fill out a graphic organizer for a book they've read. Don't just give them the graphic organizer and expect them to be able to do it. Instead, model its use during whole class read-aloud over several days. The first day, you might do it all by yourself as they watch. On the later days, you're going to have your students offer suggestions as you fill in the chart for different books. And then finally, before you expect them to do it all on their own, they're going to take over most of the work during your whole class or small group lesson.

Finally, strategy number five is monitor and adjust. As Becky states in our struggling leaders module, "sometimes it feels like one step up and two steps back with our struggling readers. We think they've mastered a concept and then we realize they're still struggling with it." That's why this final step is so important. We've got to monitor their learning and adjust our teaching and then support them as needed. Ask yourself, what concept has this learner completely mastered? Where does this learner have partial understanding? Answers to those questions will help you know where to go next.

Today we've talked about five effective teaching strategies. Those strategies are using multi-sensory activities, systematic teaching,, explicit teaching, guided practice and monitoring and adjusting. These effective teaching strategies will benefit all your struggling learners but you may have some that quickly catch on and move way ahead to be some of your best readers. It's like the missing puzzle piece is found and the picture becomes clear. These are the great moments of teaching. But there's also the flip side of the coin. You will have some struggling readers who seem to move slower than a snail even when you're using effective teaching strategies. And we know this because we've received many emails from you as your heart goes out to these kids who just don't seem to be moving forward. This can be disheartening, but we have to remember that teaching reading is a marathon, not a sprint. We are working towards lifelong reading skills, not just reading for the next assessment.

Teaching struggling readers can be a very rewarding job. Today, in this podcast episode, I've just given you the top level of the bonus module inside the course. Inside the full bonus module, you get lots of specific teaching tips for teaching phonemic awareness, alphabet knowledge, phonics, comprehension and fluency to struggling readers. But that's not all. Teaching Every Reader is designed to help you teach every reader in your K-2 classroom: your struggling readers, your on-level readers, and your advanced readers.

One of our students who teaches first grade had this to say. "I absolutely love this course and have recommended it our entire district. For the first time ever, I feel confident knowing that I have the tools I need to teach reading well."

Teaching Every Reader will help you pinpoint what your students need to learn with easy-to-use assessments so you know exactly what to do next. You'll become a pro at giving small group lessons that accelerate student learning. You'll master one-on-one reading conferences that help you meet students exactly where they are. You'll learn to create year-long, easily differentiated centers that keep the rest of the class learning and don't take all weekend to prepare. You'll discover new tips and tricks for teaching phonemic awareness, phonics, sight words and comprehension and you will save hours of time with a huge variety of low-prep activities so you can get your life back while doing the very best for your students.

As of this recording in April of 2020, we are offering a free sample course of Teaching Every Reader and you can find that in the show notes for this episode, themeasuredmom.com/episode13. I hope this episode has been helpful and given you some things to think about as you teach your struggling readers. And I also hope you'll sign up for that free sample of Teaching Every Reader. I'll talk to you again soon.

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Free sample of Teaching Every Reader

Other resources mentioned in this episode

Free Elkonin boxes
A recommended order for teaching letters and sounds: m, a, s, p, t, n, i, d, r, c, f, b, o, h, g, e, l, k, w, u, j, x, v, y, q, z
Video and free printables for teaching successive blending

Other helpful blog posts

Quick tips for teaching struggling readers: a 10-part series

Subscribe & review in iTunes

Are you subscribed to my podcast? If you���re not, I want to encourage you to do that today. I don���t want you to miss an episode!�� Click here to subscribe in iTunes!

Now if you have an extra minute, I would be really grateful if you left me a review over on iTunes , too. Those reviews help other people find my podcast, and they���re also fun for me to go in and read. Just click here to review. You’ll need to click to “Listen on Apple Podcasts” and “write a review.”�� Let me know what you appreciate about the podcast. Thank you!

There are many ways to listen …

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© 2020, Anna G. All rights reserved.

The post 5 Strategies for teaching struggling readers appeared first on The Measured Mom.