Category Archives: reading tips

Use wordless picture books to teach reading and writing

Posted on November 12, 2024 | Leave a comment

Wordless picture books are just what they seem to be—beautifully illustrated picture books without any words. Most tell stories with everything you’d expect from a story—a setting, characters, a plot, a crisis, and a resolution. Wordless picture books are a great way to teach reading and writing.

How can you use them to teach?

For a nonverbal toddler, show the pictures and ask the child to show what is happening by acting out the story. Let the child linger over the pictures to gain as much meaning as possible.

For a verbal preschooler who cannot write, show the pictures one at a time, and ask the child to tell you what is happening. To round out the child’s observations, ask questions about emotions shown, relationships of people and animals, and predictions of what will happen next. Ask if the story is scary or silly or serious.

For a child who can write a little, show the pictures and ask the child to write one sentence about each page. Focus on the content of the sentence. Encourage the child to figure out the main idea of a page and write about that. But remind about capital letters and punctuation.

For older elementary grade children, look at the pictures first. Discuss what happens at the beginning, middle and end. Ask about the setting (time and place), what problem needs to be solved, who is the main character/s, who or what opposes that character, and how the character overcomes the problem. Now ask the students to write an outline—not sentences, but words or phrases to remind the students what they want to include in the story. You might share a check list of elements to include. Now have them write the story.

For middle school students, show the story to them once for them to get the gist of it. Then ask the students to write (one word/phrase to a line) the following situations: exposition, inciting action, rising action, crisis, falling action, resolution. Review these words if students seem forgetful. Now show the pages of the book again, slowly, and ask the students to identify what happens in the book for each situation. When done, discuss the student choices and help students match the scenes in the book with the six situations. Now ask the students to write the story.

Where can you find wordless picture books? Search online or, if you have a children’s librarian at your school or public library, ask the librarian. Look for books with enticing illustrations that tell a story with a beginning, middle and end. Two of my favorites are The Fisherman and the Whale by Jessica Lanan and The Farmer and the Clown by Marla Frazee.

You can also use wordless films. A favorite of mine is La Luna by Pixtar.

Leave a comment

Posted in reading tips, teaching tips, wordless books

Transitioning from short vowels to long vowels

Posted on March 28, 2024 | Leave a comment

Today I worked with a kindergartener who has mastered CVC words with blends at the beginnings and ends of words (for example, “slept” and “brand”). It was time to move on to long vowels.

I started with two-letter words ending in “e” (be, he, me, and we). I explained for small words ending in “e,” the “e” is pronounced differently. Even so, the child wanted to say the words as if they ended in a short e.

In one way this was satisfying to me, her teacher. She had learned the rules about pronouncing short vowels.

But in another way it was frustrating. Her brain was saying she didn’t accept the logic of one letter representing two sounds. Until now every letter of every word we have read together has had one sound only. But now I am changing the rules. It’s like I am telling the child that until now your little brother has had one name, but from now on he is going to have two names, and you have to remember when to call him John and when to call him Fred. Huh?

Some students learn sight words in school at the same time they are learning phonics. For them, words like “me” and “go” are memorized rather than sounded out. But my student has not learned sight words, so I needed to switch gears.

I stopped focusing on two-letter words. Instead, I focused on words ending in “ee.” It was easier for my student to accept that “ee” represents a different sound from “e.” So, we worked on reading words like “bee,” “fee,” “lee,” “see,” and “tee.” I added nonsense words like “dee,” “pee,” “vee,” and “zee” as well to extend the practice.

At our next class I plan to continue delaying two-letter words like “he” and “me.” Instead I will continue with “ee” words, adding ending letters and blends. “Bleed,” “creek,” “heel,” “seem,” “green,” “sleep,” and “feet” are some examples.

Until now, my student has moved quickly in acquiring reading skills. But I may need to slow down now and make sure she can go back and forth from short-vowel words to long-vowel words and vice-versa. For some students this is easy. For others, it takes months. We will see.

Leave a comment

Posted in blends, CVC words, exceptions to phonics rules, letter sounds, long vowels, phonics, pronunciation of words, reading strategies, reading tips, short vowels, sight words, teaching tips, vowels

Don’t stint on advanced reading skills

Posted on March 7, 2024 | 1 comment

One of my students is a high schooler still learning English as her second language. She has learned so much in the few years she has lived in the US, but she struggles with reading.

She has pretty much mastered how to read one-syllable and two-syllable words which follow the rules. But three-syllable words confound her. Instead of stopping to figure out big words, she slurs over them and keeps reading almost as if they aren’t there.

That works when the reading level is at the second or third grade level because not many three- or four-syllable words are in books meant for that reading level. But my student is in high school. She is confronted with long words in almost every sentence she reads in text books. Like many older students I have taught, she thinks she can get by skipping over words. Now that she is preparing for the SAT, she realizes she can’t.

In late elementary grades students learn about root words, prefixes and suffixes. Knowing words can be dissected leads good readers to break apart words rather than skipping over them. My student thinks this is too time-consuming, so she is reluctant to do this on her own.

She is a wiz with computers and can look up the meaning of a word faster than I can. But sometimes the synonyms are long words too. Or sometimes one synonym works in one context, but not in another context. Or sometimes, most times, she doesn’t bother.

What’s my point? Reading instruction can’t stop after a student learns basic phonics rules. This is especially true for impatient students who would rather finish quickly than finish well. The tedious work of learning how to break words into syllables can’t be skipped. Nor can understanding the meanings of prefixes, suffixes and roots.

Reading is probably the most important skill we learn in school. Don’t stint on it.

1 Comment

Posted in phonics, reading readiness., reading strategies, reading tips

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in blends, consonants, digraphs, double vowel words, guessing at words, letter sounds, long vowels, phonemes, phonics, picture books, reading research, reading strategies, reading tips, short vowels, silent "e" words, sounds of English, syllables, vowels

Teaching kinesthetic learners how to read

Posted on January 9, 2023 | Leave a comment

Have you ever taught a student who acts like this?

Changing positions frequently—sitting on a folded leg, kneeling on a chair, or wriggling her shoulders?
Responding to a question with gestures—thumbs up, a face showing precise emotions, drawing a picture in the air?
Reading out loud when he should be reading silently?
Miming a situation or a reaction?

These students might be kinesthetic learners, people who need to engage their whole bodies to learn optimally. Some are hyperactive, tempermentally unable to sit still. Some are dyslexic, unable to read or to learn to read the usual way. Some are autistic, non verbal or preferring repetitive motions or intensely focused on one activity. Some are artistic, preferring to draw in almost every situation. Some are actors, dramatizing their responses. child making letter T with his body

The younger the child, the more apt he is to be a kinesthetic learner. Males tend to be kinesthetic learners longer than females. Children with highly focused hobbies or interests—assembling Legos for hours at a time, enjoying sports practice several times a week, wanting everything Spiderman, drawing and coloring every day—are probably kinesthetic learners.

The problem for kinesthetic learners is that most classrooms are made for the auditory learner, the person who sits still and listens to the teacher, the person who reads silently to learn, not for the person who roams, fidgets, mumbles, acts out, or plays games to learn.

Child sitting with legs outstretched, forming the letter L

So what hands-on activities will help your beginning reader to learn the alphabet and easy words?

Ask the child to act out the letter shapes, that is, form the letters with her body.
Allow nonverbal responses—pointing, gesturing, showing facial emotion, performing.
Use games—letter tiles, for example—that offer the child the opportunity to pick up, arrange, and invent. Or hold letter “bees” in which the children form teams and the you hold up letters or words for a team member to identify.
Teach using puppet shows—two characters debating what a given letter is, or how to hold a book, or if “fun” rhymes with “fan.”
Let groups of students create an ABC book . The artist in the group might draw and color pictures while other students might cut out pictures from magazines and paste them.
After you have read a story to students, ask some to act out the story to test comprehension. Let other students join in.
Create an alphabet from Play Doh or Legos or pipe cleaners.
Create word family books with drawings or cut-and-pasted pictures.
Take a scavenger walk in the neighborhood to see shapes of letters in tree branches, sidewalk cracks, clouds or roof lines.

dhild running with book in hands

You might think, these activities take time and slow down the learning process. Yes, they do take time, and yes, they do slow down the initial learning process. But since this kind of learning sticks, you need to do less reteaching and may gain time in the long run. Just as importantly, students who are reprimanded for not sitting still or for being unable to leave a task they like are praised for their learning. These students become leaders, helping other children who are not as kinesthetically gifted.

Leave a comment

Posted in ABC's, kinesthetic learning, learning, reading tips, teaching tips

Learning to read, one sound at a time

Posted on May 8, 2022 | Leave a comment

A six-year-old kindergartener learning to read VC and CVC words worked with me yesterday for the first time. We met the day before via zoom. He was nervous, sitting on his grandmother’s lap for support.

I started by assessing his phonics skills. Because he doesn’t know me and has not worked online, his responses to the phonics assessment I did might not be spot on. After a few lessons, when he is more relaxed, I will have a better idea of his skill level.

But for now he was able to show me he knows letter names, consonant sounds and short vowel sounds. He can sound VC words easily. When he reads CVC words, he cannot “slide” all the sounds together to form words. So that is where my reading instruction will begin.

Yesterday we worked using letter tiles. I put before him the word “at,” and then I added one onset letter sound at a time, forming words like “fat” and “rat.” He sounded out words from several word families using short a, o, and u. After 20 minutes, his squirming became excessive, and we ended the lesson. Today I will teach him again for another short lesson.

His grandmother showed me a “beginner” picture book the boy has, but as is often true, that book is not a good “beginner” book for students learning phonics. In that book, advanced reading words are mixed in with sight words and CVC words. I recommended she set it aside for a few months.

She wondered if she should use flash cards with words printed on them to help her grandson learn. If the words are sight words which cannot be sounded out phonetically—words like “are” and “the”—then yes. But if the words are capable of being sounded out, I said the student should learn them by sounding them out. Otherwise he might think he should memorize the look of a word to pronounce it.

Should he guess at words? No. If a child learns to read following the rules of phonics, eventually he will be able to sound out almost any word, even long words like “dinosaur” and “alphabet.” Teaching a child to guess introduces a habit which will hobble him the rest of his reading life.

This student has learned to read the way phonics experts recommend, sounding out each letter. With time, almost all CVC words will become sight words for this student and he will no longer need to sound them out. But to reach that stage of reading, he needs practice sounding out words.

Leave a comment

Posted in books for beginning readers, consonants, guessing at words, letter sounds, letter tiles, methods of teaching reading, phonics, practice reading skills, reading strategies, reading tips, short vowels, sight words, teaching online, teaching tips

Teach ŭ before teaching ĕ and ĭ

Posted on April 18, 2022 | Leave a comment

Suppose you have taught your child VC (vowel-consonant) and CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words using ă and ŏ and the 16 consonants that always sound the same at the onset of words. You have had your child read lists of words with ă and ŏ shuffled. Your child is able to pronounce those words correctly.

Now it is time to move on to ŭ. I recommend teaching ŭ before teaching ĕ and ĭ. In my teaching experience, children recognize the sound associated with ŭ quicker than the sounds of either ĕ and ĭ. Some children do have trouble pronouncing ŭ, but they don’t confuse the sound with either ĕ or ĭ. They can distinguish a difference between ŭ and ĕ / ĭ. Children have a harder time distinguishing between the sounds of ĕ and ĭ. So I recommend teaching ă, ŏ and ŭ in that order.

Some of the commercially available support materials you might use with your child do not sequence the short-vowel words in this order. In that case, I recommend you jump ahead to the ŭ word section and return to the ĕ and ĭ sections later.

Sample ŭ VC and CVC words include:

up	hub	pub	rub	tub
bud	dud	Judd	mud	Rudd
bug	dug	hug	jug	lug
dull	gull	hull	lull	null
but	cut	gut	nut	rut

Sample ŭ VC and CVC words with ă and ŏ in sentences include:

Judd cut a nut.
Rudd dug up a bug.
Tess can run in the mud but not Tom.
Tom dug a rut.
Jan can hug a mutt.

Leave a comment

Posted in phonics, reading strategies, reading tips, short vowels, sounds of English, teaching tips, vowels

How to teach words using ă and ŏ

Posted on April 11, 2022 | Leave a comment

Suppose you have taught your child the 16 consonant sounds which don’t vary at the beginning of words: b, d, f, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, qu, r, t, v, x, and z. Now you are ready to teach vowel sounds.

Explain what vowels are

Because you will be using the words vowel and consonant with your child as you teach, make sure you take time to explain what these words mean. Vowel refers to five letters all the time (a, e, i, o, and u) and two letters sometimes (y and w). Consonant refers to all the other letters and to y and w most of the time. For now you can leave out the y and w, but when you teach small words like by and now, mention that y and w act as vowels sometimes.

Should you say short / closed vowels? Or long / open vowels?

Today many support materials refer to vowels followed by a consonant in the same syllable (cat, hot) as closed vowels. Years ago these vowels were called short vowels, and they were pictured with a curve over the vowel as in ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ and ŭ. Similarly, vowels coming at the end of a syllable (go, hero) are today called open vowels by some reading support workbooks. Previously they were called long vowels and pictured with a horizontal line over them as in ā, ē, ī, ō, and ū. I will use the terms short and long since those are the terms most parents recognize. I will use markings over vowels such as ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ and ŭ when referring to a particular short vowel sound and ā, ē, ī, ō, and ū when referring to a particular long vowel sound.

Naming vowel sounds as short or long is important because we need a vocabulary to use with children when we refer to vowels pronounced like their letter names and vowels pronounced more softly. Whichever terms you use, make sure your child understands them.

Teaching words with a ă sound

While you are teaching the 16 consistent consonant-letter sounds, you can begin to teach one short vowel sound. I recommend starting with the letter ă because almost all phonics support materials start with the vowel ă, and because ă might be the easiest short vowel sound to master. The support materials I suggest for my students are the Explode the Code series. That series starts with ă words.

When I am teaching in person, I use flash cards with pictures of words beginning with ă such as alligator, astronaut, and apple. I recommend you teach your child to say “ă as in apple” to reinforce the letter connected to the sound.

Choose five or six consonant letter sounds your child has mastered. Using letter tiles, form two and three letter words such as am, an, at, bat, bam, tan, and mat, etc. Place the letter tiles for one word an inch or so apart and ask your child to say the sounds, keeping the picture of the apple on the table too, for reference. Repeat saying the sounds as you slowly move the letters closer and closer together until the child says the word. It might take many tries, but usually there is a Eureka! moment when the child realizes she is reading a word, not just letter sounds. Reading teachers call these tiny words CVC words, meaning consonant-vowel-consonant words.

Gradually add more consonant sounds and form more words with ă as the vowel sound. If the child loses interest, one way to extend the lesson is to use her name and write a goofy sentence such as Kim is a pan or Kim is a map. Another way is to use your name and have her end the sentence. Mom is a ____. Teach her that the vowel goes first or in the middle. Try mispronouncing a word she writes and ask her if you said it correctly.

You can buy magnetic cards which you can cut into small rectangles to attach to the back of letter tiles. Then you can work in a metal lasagna pan or pizza pan or on the refrigerator. If your child is four or five, a short lesson (ten minutes) teaching in one mode followed by another short lesson in another mode (writing words on an iPad or laptop, writing in a workbook) might be all she can handle for one session. I have given one-hour lessons to a four-year-old, but I needed to have six mini-lessons to sustain her interest.

Teaching words with a ŏ sound

When, after several days or weeks, you are sure your child can read ă words, move on to ŏ words. Create a reference card—an octopus, for example. Work on two and three letter ŏ words such as on, off, odd, Oz, nod, fob, and Bob, etc. After several days or weeks—whatever it takes—mix ŏ words with ă words.

To reinforce your work, read together picture books. When you come to a word she can pronounce, point to it and ask her to say the word. Two or three times are enough to show her that what she is learning applies to her real world.

Leave a comment

Posted in consonants, CVC words, Explode the Code, letter sounds, letter tiles, long vowels, phonics, reading strategies, reading tips, short vowels, sounds of English, teaching tips, vowels

Increase comprehension by using the SQ3R method

Posted on April 10, 2021 | Leave a comment

Ever hear of the SQ3R* (or SQRRR) reading method? SQ3R is a method of reading which improves comprehension.

S means Survey headlines, subheadings, bold and italicized print, and graphics before reading a passage. Also read the introduction and conclusion. From them, develop an understanding of what the text concerns before you read.
Q means Question. Write down questions you have about what you will be reading. One way is to turn the headlines and subheadings into questions.
R means Read. Answer the questions you asked while you read. Take notes, highlight, and draw diagrams to help you understand and remember what you read.
R means Recite. Say out loud what you have learned from your reading. Use your own words. This process helps move the information into your long-term memory.
R means Review. Save your annotated text or notes and study them many times.

SQ3R has evolved into SQ4R for some readers, who suggest the fourth R should be Rewrite. Write a summary of the passage in the margins, on post-it notes, on notebook paper or on computer/tablet/phone.

Can this method be used with young readers? Absolutely. If you are reading a book about whales to your preschooler, for example, first survey the cover, read the title, page through the book, and look at the pictures. Ask what the book is about and what the youngster hopes to learn from the book. Then read the book. Ask the child to tell you what the book said. Later that day and the next day, again ask the child to tell what the book was about or to draw a picture of what the book was about.

*SQ3R was developed by Francis P. Robinson and described in his 1946 book Effective Study.

Leave a comment

Posted in asking questions, comprehension, diagrams, methods of teaching reading, reading comprehension, reading strategies, reading tips

Techniques for teaching a young beginning reader

Posted on October 6, 2020 | Leave a comment

I learned to read when I was in first grade, when I was six years old going on seven. But so many of the beginning readers I teach today are much younger. Right now I am working with a five-year-old kindergartener, one of the youngest boys in his class. Although he is bright and ready to learn to read, he is also fidgety and inattentive.

Maybe you are working at home during the pandemic with such a kindergartener? How do you teach such a child without both you and he becoming frustrated?

The answer is to have multiple ways of teaching the same concept, so when attention wanes, you can try different approaches.

Suppose you are teaching blends at the beginning of short-vowel one-syllable words. For such a child, I would schedule either multiple ten-minute lessons, or a thirty-minute lesson divided into three parts. What could those parts include?

Review using lists for five minutes. Reading lists of words is a good way to begin. Reading lists is boring, so move on quickly. If the words are printed in large type with lots of white space, that helps the words to look “friendly.”
Using flash cards make great reviews too. They also can become boring quickly.
Making words of letter tiles covers a lot of words in a short amount of time.
Reading words on BINGO-like cards of words turns learning into fun. Nine words per card (three words across by three words down) is few enough not to overwhelm the child. Ask the student to cover a word when you pronounce it. Then ask the child to pronounce the word and you cover it. Pennies or tiny candies used as markers offer incentive to play this game.
Reading cartoons in workbooks can be fun. The drawings attract the child, but sometimes they offer clues to words which the child does not sound out, so be careful.
Working on appropriate workbook pages from a supplementary series is another approach.
Having the child handwrite words reinforces them and improves printing skills.
“Writing” words in a dish of sand or sugar can seem more like fun than learning. I would use this type lesson at the end of the time period because other approaches might seem boring in comparison.
The same goes for online learning. Often it is more attractive than “analog” methods. But old-fashioned methods can target the child’s specific needs quicker.