Supporting Your Child's Reading at Home

Early Reading Strategies

Frequently Asked Questions and Answers

Video demonstrating Reading Strategies

Reading Strategies bookmark

What is Shared Reading?

Whole class instruction to introduce/teach reading strategies.

• Big Books, Charts with Poems/Songs/Rhymes

What is Guided Reading?

Small group instruction with teacher acting as guide to help students practice the strategies they have learned

• Each child in the group has a copy of the same book to read
• After the book has been read during Guided Reading, it is brought home to read to a family member (who signs the reading log indicating that the child has read the book)

 

Early Reading Strategies

1. Concepts of Print

• Ability to identify front cover, title page.
• Print is always read from left to right.
• Difference between a letter, word, sentenc
• Where to start reading again when a line of text ends (return sweep).
• Different punctuation marks have different purposes.

 

2.  One to One Matching (Unicorn Beanie "one finger pointing")

• Important to point to words initially so that students "stay on the page".
• Each time students say a new word, their finger should move to the new word (voice matches the print).
• Small stickers or dots are often put under each word.
• Students place finger on these stickers or dots as they are reading.

 

3. Picture Clues (Eagle Eye)

• Look at the picture on the page to help figure out unknown word.

 

4.  Look at First Letter in Word (Lips the Fish)

• Getting their mouth ready to say the first sound in a word.
• We often have student look in a mirror so that they can see what their mouths look like when saying different sounds.

 

5.  Looking for "Chunks" in Words (Chunky Monkey)

• Students look for familiar chunks in words (e.g. an, it, ing).

 

6.  Stretch or Sound Out the Word (Stretchy Snake)

• Start at the frst letter and say all of the sounds together.
• If they have identified a "chunk", then this gets said as one part when stretching the whole word.
• We often use the actual beanie snake to illustrate this "stretching" -- rubber bands work well too!

 

7. Try the Other Vowel Sound (Flippy the Dolphin)

• Each vowel has a short and a long sound.
• When sounding out a word, you may need to "flip" to the other dounds that the vowel makes if the word is still tricking you.

Example:  If a student sees the word "boat" and has not learned the vowel pattern "oa", he/she may be able to figure out the word by trying both sounds that "o" can make.  ("bot" doesn't sound right, but "boat" does!)

8.  Skip the Word and Read On (Skippy the Frog)

• Some tricky words may have to be "skipped" so that you can read the rest of the sentence for help.

Example: The girl put on her pajamas before she got in her bed.  (This might be read as "The girl put on her "blank" before she got in bed." Oh - it's pajamas!)

9.  Give it a Try (Tryin' Lion)

• Try a word that makes sense

10. Ask for Help (Helpful Kangaroo)

• You know what they say when all else fails...Ask for help!

NEVER LET THE WORD WIN!