Reading

fluency is key on literacy Read the Playroom

One thing that I have in my playroom at home is a poster of the alphabet in two places on the wall. This may seem like a teacher-thing to do, but I recommend posting an alphabet on your child’s eye level.

Fluency is KEY in literacy throughout every stage of proficiency. When children “read” things, it means that they realize print carries a meaning. So if you pass the Burger King sign and your child says “I know what that says….it says Burgers” you can encourage them that they are so smart and they are learning to read words. All of their understandings, like the example given, are preceding their literacy foundations.

Today’s activity is one that will hopefully be posted on the wall, right in your little one’s view, to read and practice as often as they choose to do so.

Materials you will need (you may need to shop/order online; each of these are on my homepage under “fav. things”):
-sentence strips (these are long strips of cardstock material…but you can also cut a posterboard into strips)
-marvelous tape (tape that doesn’t peel off paint when you put it on your wall)
-pointer (a cutesy one online or even a fly swatter lying around your house)

Activity:
Write the Alphabet twice (one set uppercase, another set lowercase) onto sentence strips in a pen. Let your little one trace over the letters using a highlighter. Tape them at eye level in your little one’s bedroom or playroom. Encourage your little one to use a pointer of some kind to “read the room.”
Each day you think of something new, or your child reads something (like the word Cheerios on the box) add one new thing to read around the room. Cut out “environmental print” such as the Cheerios box top, the fruit by the foot box cover, etc. and post them in the playroom at eye level. Have a blast!

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Timing for Rhyming

I shared in my post “Why Rhyme?” that rhyming is a tier on the reading ladder because it gives children an awareness of sounds in words – words that sound the same versus words that sound different.
After you start working with them on distinguishing whether words rhyme or not (a listening activity), you will want to help your child listen to a string of rhymes and come up with a new rhyming word that would continue with the same ending sound.  For example, “What is a word that would rhyme with cat, mat, and hat?”  This is a great way for your little one to put into practice their rhyming skills.

But before we do that, I am including an activity that is going to introduce this concept without the “coming up with a new rhyming word” part.  Today, your little one is going to practice the first level skill by identifying which word in the group of rhyming words does not belong.  So your little one will determine if the which words rhymes with the other words (and which one doesn’t).  For example, “Cat, Mat, Sat, shoe?”  Which word doesn’t sound the same at the end of the word?  ________ (shoe)

I wanted to post another activity for rhyme identification so that you can help your little student master the skill before moving on to a more challenging rhyming activity.

Rhyming Match

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Clap it Out

In the last reading post “Chunks, syllables, and sounds…,” I talked a little about working with your kiddo on breaking down words into parts. This process helps your child start to segment words and one of your goals with your future reader is to have them segment a word into sounds.
So, for now they will “play” with words by breaking a word into syllables like jess-i-ca but later on they will be able to break it down into sounds like /j//e//ss//i//ca/.
Don’t get ahead of yourselves though; they have to master all the pre-reading skills first because there is a sequence of segmenting sounds that I will teach over time.
On that note, we are going to start with listening for syllables in words by clapping along with a word’s “parts” and your child will count on their finger each time you clap. Then you will write that word. You can even extend the activity by asking him/her which word is the longest, shortest, the same number of parts, etc.
Clapping syllables

The answers are: backpack (2), computer (3), book (1), watercolor (4), chalkboard (2)

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Chunks, syllables, and sounds…what’s the difference?

There are soooo many things that I will share about teaching your child to read, but I have to start with the basic pre-reading info to give you a well-rounded understanding of how reading skills are acquired.

So for now, I am going to introduce a new aspect of reading development which also has to do with hearing chunks (word parts) within words….

The more you play with words the more children will get the idea that a word is made up of sounds, the more they will be listening for those sounds.  This gives children experience putting sounds together to make a word.  So, eventually you will be able to say the sounds /c//a//t/ and they will finally hear the word “cat”.  But there are several things we have to establish first, and one of them is parts of a word.

A beginner reader needs to know that some words have chunks in them where they could hear a word (or words) inside of a word.  For example, “cupcake” has the word “cup” and “cake” in it and “bedroom” has “bed” and “room” in it.  As adults, we just label these words compound words, but to children this can open their eyes to what a word can be made up of.

A syllable on the other hand is a way for a child to count how many groups of sounds are in their name or other words.  One way you might teach your child they have syllables (or parts) in their name is by clapping while simultaneously saying the sound “jess (clap)- i (clap) – ca (clap)” and let your child hold up a finger every time you clap and then ask “How many parts are there?”

Then of course there are sounds…every spoken consonant, vowel, or blend like “sh”, “ch”, etc.

I will post more on all of this soon, but for now, here is an activity to help your child start hearing words within words:

compound pictures

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If you have had a chance to do any of the activities with your child, or if you plan on it, please TAKE PICTURES 🙂
With your consent, I would love to post some pictures of you and your child working on an activity, or a modification of the activity, on my visitors share page.

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