Early Literacy
Early Literacy is a highly effective short-term intervention that consist of group and one-on-one tutoring for low-achieving first graders. It is most effective when used as a supplement to good classroom teaching. In Early Literacy, individual/group students receive a half-hour lesson each school day for 12 to 20 weeks with a trained Reading teacher. As soon as students can read within the average range of their class and demonstrate that they can continue to achieve, their lessons are discontinued, and new students begin instruction. In addition to individual instruction, a student may be placed in a group of three to four students to receive instruction.
Many of the strategies given on this web-site are taken from When A Child Reads and The Partners Handbook
1. Talk and sing with your child.
Eight Important Guidelines To Follow In Helping Your Child Learn To Read
2. Read to or with your child every day.
3. Provide materials that prepare your child to write or draw about a subject.
4. Limit television viewing and watch appropriate shows with your child.
5. Provide plenty of opportunities for time to play and explore.
6. Be a role model by showing your love of reading.
7. Get a library card and check out book.
8. Help your child instill a life-long love of reading, point out the STOP sign along the road, talk about the words on the cereal box. Words are everywhere and the more exposure your child has to them the sooner s/he will start to read.
Learning to Spell
Get Set For Spelling
Learning to spell helps your child be a better reader and writer. Put studying for spelling quizzes into her/his weekly schedule with these suggestions:
Help your child plan a different study routine for each weeknight.
Example:
On Monday, quiz him/her while she swings at the playground. On Tuesday, toss magnetic letters in a cookie tin so s/he can spell words on the way to soccer practice.
When A Child Reads
Your child is learning to read. It is an exciting time and you want to help in any way you can. There are no magic formulas to instantly transform your child into a fluent, effective reader. When your child was learning to walk, first he crawled, then pulled himself up, and finally took that first step. You were thrilled at each and every stage. Readers go through stages too. Some reader put everything together so fast that it is almost impossible to observe each stage of development. Others need to do it step-by-step with support and encouragement during each stage. There are a lot of things you can do to help your beginning reader. Over the next few weeks I will go over some of these strategies that will help your child to become a good reader. However, one of the most important is to READ to your child.
Picture Reading and Predicting
Studies have shown that a child who has been read to grasps the idea early on that print contains a message. Storybooks have a language all of their own. So, the more stories that are read to your childbetter for him. Bedtime stories not only provide a world of adventure; they give a child wonderful memories of a sense of closeness with a loved one.
Encourage your child to read to you. Ask him to bring books home from school. Have him look at the pictures of a book first and make a prediction about what will happen next. The prediction may not be right, but if helps the reader to get involved in the story.
If your child does not want to read, you might try reading one page and having him read the next one.
After reading the story, discuss what happened. This helps your child to think about what has been read.
Remember, reading extends beyond story time. Cereal boxes, store signs, even those bills that come in the mail can be a window of opportunity for the young reader.
Is My Child Reading or Memorizing?
“My child seems to be memorizing the books he brings home. Is memorizing reading?”
Memorizing is an early part of a child’s reading development. Think of it as a stage. Toddlers benefit from memorizing nursery rhymes. Beginning readers often match their speech to the printed words in a familiar rhyme. Repeated phrases in more difficult books are easily memorized by the child. This is actually a helpful strategy as the reader can now focus on the changing parts of the story and move quickly through the predictable lines. A child’s memory for text builds fluency and helps him read smoothly.
Why does the teacher encourage my child to point to the words in the book?”
Pointing is one of the first strategies a beginning reader can use to check his reading. Teachers sometimes use words like “self-monitoring” to refer to this technique. This simply means that pointing helps to remind your child to really look at the words carefully. Some children do not realize that words convey a message. Pointing helps the child to focus and to notice the details of our written language, for instance, where one word ends and the other begins.
Try watching an adult reader. Even he will point to sort out a particularly difficult passage or to keep his place. As your child develops his reading skills and grows in confidence, you will see him pointing less frequently. He will be able to “point with his eyes.” Eventually his eyes will move quickly across the lines of print. Pointing is just another tool to help your child read.
“What are some of the ways I can help my child when he doesn’t know a word?”
There are many things you can do to help him figure out a word. First of all, help your child before he becomes frustrated. Have your reader check the pictures for clues. Tell him to look at the first letter of the unknown word, say the letter sound, and make a guess that would sound right. Always encourage him to make the story sound right or make sense. Have him go back and re-read the sentence and often an unknown words will become a known one. If your child continues to miss the word and is still struggling after 5-6 seconds, simply tell him the word before the both of you become frustrated.
“Should I make my child sound out words he doesn’t know?”
Knowing the sound a letter makes is very important. But if we sounded out every word, reading would not be much fun. Today children are introduced to words within the context of a story and not in isolation. (Except for sight words.) Easier stories tend to have a pattern with very supportive pictures and perfect materials for phonetic practice. For example, in the book The Cat Who Loved Red, the text reads, “She loved to play with a ball of red yarn.” Using this book, a teacher might ask the child what letter she expects to see at the beginning and at the end of the word “red.” In this way, the letter-sound identification is reinforced for the early reader within the task or reading a real book. Knowing how to use beginning and ending sounds, as well as the context of the story and the picture, prevents your child from needing to “sound out” every word.
Remember that phonetic skill is another one of the many tools a reader uses. To practice letter-sound identification, use alphabet books or flash cards with a letter and a corresponding picture.
As books become more difficult, the reader uses many phonetic strategies. This could be searching thorough a word, using word patterns, or prefixes and suffixes. You’ll see your reader grow and use many different strategies.
When A Child Reads To You
There are many things you can do to help your beginning reader. Always remember, reading should always be fun—so relax and enjoy, do not push your child to the point that both of you are frustrated. A frustrated reader is a reader who is not going to take the necessary risks to improve her skills. A reader is very much like an athlete. The more a child reads the better her reading becomes. Above all, praise your child’s efforts. Each “mistake’ is another chance to learn! Each success, no matter how small, is a building block toward her future success as an independent reader.
Forming Letters In Writing
Give your child practice in forming letters at home. Letter knowledge and the ability to write the letters easily give a child more confidence in writing. There are many activities you can do to practice letters. Writing in shaving cream and in sand or salt is always fun. Forming letters out of clay gives the child a hands-on experience. Try practicing letters by writing simple words. Buy a set of magnetic letters and put them on the refrigerator within easy reach of your child. These ideas are fun, easy, and inexpensive and a great way to study spelling/sight words.