Monthly Archives: May 2023

You can teach your child to read. Start with a phonics assessment.

Posted on May 21, 2023 | Leave a comment

Are you are planning to teach your child how to read this summer, either starting at the beginning or filling in the gaps? If so, where do you start?

I suggest you give your child a pretest to see what reading skills your child has learned well, and what ones he has not yet grasped. The words on this pretest are more or less divided into four kinds of words in this order: 1. Short (closed) vowel, one-syllable words. These include one- and two-letter words, words beginning or ending with blends and digraphs (black, church) words which end in twin consonants (fell, jazz), words which end in “ck,” and words to which an “s” can be added to make plural words or certain verbs (maps, runs).

2. Long (open) vowel, one-syllable words. These include words ending with silent “e,” words with double vowels which have only one vowel pronounced (goes, pear), and certain letter combinations (ild, old). They also include words with “oi,” “oy,” “ow” and “ou” letters. 3. Two– and three-syllable words which follow the above rules (catnip, deplete) and two- and three-syllable words which don’t follow the above rules but which follow a pattern (light, yield). These words include words with certain suffixes (le, ies) and words with a single consonant between two vowels (robin, motel).

4. Exceptions. These include words with silent letters (gnaw, lamb), words from other languages (debris, cello), and words which fit no pattern (business). Ask your child to read the words in the pretest below. Each row across tests a particular phonics skill. If you child hesitates at all, that is the place to begin teaching him or her phonics. I will talk more about how to teach these four groups of phonics skills in my next blog. Phonics assessment bad, hem, fit, don, pug, am, if, lass, jazz lock, Mick, bills, cliffs, mitts, catnip, Batman grand, stent, frisk, stomp, stuck chuck, shun, them, branch, brush, tenth star, fern, birds, fork, purr, actor, doctor, victor muffin, kitten, collect, pepper, gallon complex, helmet, falcon, napkin, after tantrum, muskrat, constant, fulcrum, ostrich skate, bike, Jude, mole, dare, shore, tire, pure need, cheer, aim, hair, bay, pie, boat, oar, Joe, low, soul fruit, few, child, blind, fold, colt, roll, light, high earn, worm, rook, pool fault, claw, all, chalk, Walt boil, so, pound, down comet, dragon, liver, salad, denim total, ever, student, basic, demon, vital apron, elude, Ethan, Owen, ideal, usurp inside, nearly, absent, unicorn, degrade, tripod advance, offense, fence gripped, planned, melted, batted, handed sweeping, boiling, thinning, flopping, biking, dating rapper, saddest, finer, bluest, funnier, silliest easily, busily, massive, active, arrive, wives keys, monkeys, armies, carried action, section, musician, racial, crucial, nuptials brittle, pickle, carbon, dormer parcel, decent, gem, urge, badge lose, sugar, nature, sure graph, Phil, then, moth bomb, thumb, gnat, gnome, high, sign whip, whirl, echo, ghoul, knee, knob could, calf, folk, hustle, listen, wrist alone, bread, bear, chief, young, squaw, swan, waltz, word decision, exposure, gigantic, polarize, occupant, quarantine If you want to help your child learn to read, one of the best things you can do is not to let him guess. Most words can be deciphered if the student has a phonics background. Also, don’t let your child depend on pictures for meaning once the child starts to read. Most adult reading material is not accompanied by graphics. Students must learn to gain meaning from the text alone. If you have decided to help your child read this summer, good for you. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to help your child read better. Years of research show that the best way to teach reading is to start with letter sounds (phonemes) and then to combine those letter sounds into words (phonics). If you do this in a systematic way, such as following the four-part sequence I describe above, your child will learn to read.

Hi-lo books attract English language learners

Posted on May 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

A mother contacted me about recommending summer reading for her rising eighth grade son. Her son is learning English as a second language. His reading level is probably late fourth or early fifth grade.

The typical middle grade books I might suggest won’t work for this boy. He needs “hi-lo” books—books with high interest appropriate for his age but with low reading difficulty. Such books exist, but matching the reading level with the student’s age and interests is hard.

What do I look for in hi-lo books?

Characters the student can relate to and care about. Usually this means characters of the same gender and age as the reader or one or two years older.
Characters easily distinguished from other characters. All names should begin with different letters. Characters should have different body types, interests, idiosyncrasies and goals.
A story that holds the reader’s interest. Students who like video games like adventure and danger in their stories. They like characters who get into trouble but figure out how to extricate themselves.
Books that are not too long. How long is too long? That depends on the typeface (bigger is better), the spacing between lines (more space is better), page margins (more white space is better) and the size of the page (typical paperback size or bigger is okay).
Books with short chapters. A book with 30 chapters containing four pages per chapter is better than a book with 15 chapters containing eight pages per chapter even if the content is identical.
Books whose plots move quickly. This means more action and less description, more dialog and less backstory.
Plots that follow chronological order without flashbacks. Surprises are okay, but sudden plot twists are not. No secondary plot lines.
Good guys who are good and bad guys who are bad. The reader should know which is which.
Stories with one point of view only.
Books with dark, easy-to-read typefaces and no hyphens at the ends of lines.
Sentence structures that reflect the way people talk: subjects before and close to predicates; prepositional phrases later in the sentence, complex sentences with just one subordinate clause placed at the end of the independent clause.
Simple vocabulary except for new words important to the story’s topic. New or difficult vocabulary should be used many times to reinforce its meaning.
Books that look like any other book without identifying themselves as “special.” They should have no more illustrations than books aimed at the same age group. They should attract good readers who appreciate a good story.

Largest US school system to change how reading is taught

Posted on May 9, 2023 | Leave a comment

With half its students unable to pass reading tests, the City of New York has decided to change the way it teaches reading.

Starting this fall in some schools and in the fall of 2024 in others, “the science of reading” will ground all reading instruction. This means that students will focus on learning sounds associated with letters (phonemes) and on joining those letter sounds (phonics) to form words.

Chancellor David C. Banks will announce the change today (May 9, 2023). He hopes the new approach will change the current outcome in reading instruction in which half the city’s third through eighth graders are not proficient in reading.

The city’s schools are divided into 32 local districts. Each district can choose one of three acceptable reading programs, all of which focus–to varying degrees–on phonics. Research has shown that a phonics-based approach to learning to read produces the best results for primary grade students.

The city’s principals’ union is opposed to a one-size fits all approach in the city’s 700 elementary schools. Teachers say they need training.

Local school districts within the city will have some choice in how to proceed. They must choose one of three reading programs: Into Reading, Expeditionary Learning, and Wit & Wisdom. They can and in some cases must supplement these programs with more systematic phonics instruction.

One advantage of the unified approach is to provide students who transfer from one New York school to another a single reading curriculum. Another is to follow the mandate of New York’s Mayor Eric Adams, who has dyslexia, to teach reading using a phonics-based approach. Still another is to provide teachers with materials that have been shown to work, so each teacher doesn’t need to seek materials independently.

The change will start this fall in city school districts showing the least proficiency in reading.

New York is the latest and biggest school district to show dissatisfaction with the way reading has been taught and to turn to a research-supported approach. Poor student performance on reading tests, parents’ demanding change after Covid 19 educational losses, and a growing cohort of students who cannot read are propelling changes in reading instruction throughout the US.