Struggling to Teach Your Kid to Read? Do this ONE Thing First!
If my child was struggling to read, the ONE thing I would change TODAY is ensure that my child could quickly recall specific alphabet letters and sounds (phoneme-grapheme relationships) on autopilot.
INSTEAD of memorizing tons of sight words. That’s it!
BECAUSE, if YOUR child cannot look at the letters ‘ch’ at the beginning of the word chip and instantly say /ch/, and starts reading that word with these sounds, /c/ – /h/, then, “Houston, we have a problem!”
Your struggling reader has significant gaps in her phonics foundation. The good news? This is fixable!
So, how can you teach your struggling reader automaticity of sound-symbol relationships, so that she can accurately read words?
Struggling to Teach Your Kid to Read? 3 Things to Do NOW!
Here are 3 things YOU can do as a mom if you’re struggling to teach your kid to read. Clearly, your child is struggling with the phonics skill of decoding. Decoding is the phonics term teachers use interchangeable with reading. By the way, that’s why I call the stories in each phonics less inside my course ‘decodable texts’, because you’re asking your child to decode and read words that make up sentences based on the phonics skills you’ve taught her so far.
DECODING is where your daughter sees letter symbols from left to right in a word, quickly recalls the sounds for each symbol, then quickly blends those symbols together to read a full word. If YOU want your child to read a sentence, she must first be able to read whole words.
Struggling to teach your child to read? 3 Things to Do NOW:
Quick Recall of Letter Names
Say a letter sound from the alphabet, and have your child quickly drag up the correct magnetic letter or write the letter on a whiteboard.
Quick Recall of Letter Sounds
Show your child a letter symbol, and have your child quickly say the letter sound!
Fluency Grids to Increase Reading Speed
If I was struggling to teach my kid to read, I would practice reading with fluency grids! Picture a grid with 4 rows and 5 columns. Print one alphabet letter per box. Have your child read the alphabet letter names the first time through. Then, have her say the alphabet sounds out loud. Up the anti with a timed fluency grid reading challenge. Kids LOVE times challenges!
So, these are 3 things I would do immediately if I was struggling to teach my child to read.
