Beginning Reading Help: July 2011

Friday

Brand New Readers Red Set: Some of My Favorite Books for Beginner Readers

Brand New Readers are some of the best books I've found for early readers. These books also offer support for parents helping a beginner reader. The front cover has a scripted introduction for an adult to share before reading the book. This engages the reader and improves comprehension. The back cover has suggestions for adults to make first-time reading easy and fun.

An entire version of The Chase is available for free online.
Check out this free copy of The Chase

The Chase is just one of ten books included in the Brand New Reader Red Set. Did you check it out? The introduction gets a new reader ready for the story and some of the words he or she will be reading. What did you think about the Helping Your Brand-new Reader tips? These tips are for readers who cannot sound out all of the words. Early readers benefit from these types of books, but I strongly encourage some phonics teaching and sounding out training.

You can teach phonics and sounding out in these books. I suggest making words with magnetic letters, writing words, and/or pointing to some words to help a child learn some phonics rules and letter to sound relationships. One very important tip included on the back cover of these Brand-New Reader books is: "Give your child lots of chances to read the story again and again. The more your child reads, the more confident he or she will become."

I'm including this post as part of my Phonogram Friday series. I've shared free common two letter phonogram flashcards for you to print and practice in a previous post titled, Common Two Letter Phonograms to Learn and Practice: Video and Flashcards.

Here's a list of common two-letter phonograms you can teach in each of the ten stories from the Brand-New Readers Red Set.

The Chase - ou, ay, er
Edna's New Coat - er, ew, oa, oo
The Big Fish - ou, oo, ow
Tabby Cat at Night - ee, ay, ai, al, ng, ow
Edna Dances - ur, ng, ar, oo, ee, ea
Piggy's Bedtime - ea, oo, ow
Snow Mouse - ou, er, or, oa, ar, ow
Water Balloons - er, oo
Yucky Ball - er, ew
In and Out - er, ou, ay

These books are a bargain. If you purchase $25.00 or more from Amazon of Free Super Saver Shipping eligible items, you won't have to pay shipping. Check out my Amazon Store divided by categories for more books for your beginner reader.

Should Children Read Words by Phonograms or Sight?

Many teachers and parents teach sight words. It is helpful for a beginning reader to have a few words to use as anchor words when reading early reader books, but I don't think children should be taught lists of unrelated sight words. I think children should learn to read words by individual sounds or phonograms. I've steered away from this controversial topic for some time as not to offend anyone.

If you disagree with my opinion, please read some of the information I'm sharing in this post. I strive to keep an open mind and modify my thinking based on new information and results. Making learning to read easy for children is close to my heart and if I can help a parent or teacher find the easiest ways for a child to read I've helped a child I haven't met.

Here's some information that may make you re-evaluate your ideas about teaching sight words.
Beginning Reading by Mary Fitzsimmons
Learn to Spell by Phonograms, not Letters by Maeve Maddox
My Daughter's Path to Reading by Michelle Breum
Overview: How Children Learn to Read Words by Bruce Murray (The Reading Genie)
Teach a Child to Read with Phonics by Michelle Breum

Here are a few parents' comments about sight word learning I found in a forum online.

1. "My son keeps getting "it" and "the" confused for some reason. He was able to get them both almost right away, but as soon as he learned the second, he seemed to unlearn the first. We are trying to teach him rhymes at the same time (one of the sight words is "look", so we also teach him "book" and "cook" at the same time, even though they aren't on his list)."

2. "I'm actually a fan of sight-reading rather than sounding out (though I hate the Your Baby Can Read sight-word crap). English isn't spelled phonetically, so while there's some merit in being able to break a word down into it's syllables and then put them all together to read the word, sounding it out doesn't always work. Skilled readers will need to know how to recognize words on sight rather than pausing to sound them out. (/end rant)"

3. "Yes - my kids' schools used a combination of sight-reading and phonics to teach the kids to read. I think it's nice to balance it like that, to try to reach all of the kids, no matter how they learn."

4. "My daughter is in kindergarten, and she does sight words. My son was in kindergarten 5 years ago and he had sight words!!
Next up will be red words, which are common words, but ones that you can't sound out. Phone maybe an example as new readers will not yet have learned that PH together make the F sound."

5. "They've been doing it for at least 10 years now, I did it when i was in kindergarten, I think they always did it, but just recently decided to give it a tacky name."

6. "Yes. It drives me insane. Personally, I worked with my kids and taught them to read before they started kindergarten. I find memorizing words by sight is just an easy way out. Just wait until she starts the "new" math. It will blow your mind."

7. "Yes, sight words are taught starting in kindergarten. It will make reading so much easier if she knows high frequency words by sight and sounds out the other words."

8. "Yes, my kids have "sight words" starting in Kindergarten, and it continues on through first and second grade, for reading and spelling."

I'm only interested in what makes reading easy for children. Many times Kindergarden and First Grade Teachers see success in early readers when they learn sight words. Children are not stumbling over words and slowly sounding out words. Children appear to be reading fluently. They know some words by sight and guess at the others based on beginning sounds and picture clues. What happens when there are more words and less picture clues? If a child has not learned to "read" words, that child will struggle like my daughter did in the middle of first grade. Some children will learn to sound out or decode words on their own, but children like my daughter who grab onto the sight word learning and guessing will be left behind.

Some children learn to see patterns in words. They are able to "read" sight words and learn them easily. My daughter was not taught sight words according to similarities or how to sound them out. She learned sight words by the picture or shape of the word. Her brain could only learn so many words like this before it became overwhelming. She looked in the air when she read trying to remember a word. It makes sense to teach children to "read" or sound out words. I read somewhere that sounding out a word and recalling a word by sight uses a different part of the brain. I think it would be difficult for a child to read fluently while constantly switching his or her brain activity.

The article that helped me feel confident in my stance on not teaching unrelated sight words is something I read in The Reading Genie's Overview. Instant recognition of words happens after a child has learned to decode the word. Bruce Murray shared a study of word recognition and children who were taught to decode or sound out a word recognized it after 4 exposures on average. Children who were taught by sight recognized a word after 35 exposures on average.

Even words that aren't able to be sounded out entirely have some letters or letter combinations that make sense. Here's a video made by an individual who is opposed to sight word learning. You may also want to watch this video from Elizabeth Brown of The Phonics Page. I'm not endorsing all opinions in these recommended videos. It's just food for thought.

I'm trying to show parents and teachers ways to teach a child to read on this blog and collecting helpful resources for my readers while balancing my life. This blog is more of labor of love than a money maker. I hope I'm helping a few readers and children. Please check out my Reading Resources page for more help.

Tuesday

Ways to Teach a Child to Read and Encourage a Child Read This Summer

Are you having a fun filled busy summer?

Are your kids reading as much as you think they should?

Have you taught your beginning reader as much as you'd like?

This post has ways to sneak in more reading and links to some of my best posts to teach a child to read.

Here are a few ways to sneak in some extra reading time.

Check out some audio books from your library. Many libraries let you do this online. My kids like to draw, ride in the car, or relax on the couch or their beds when listening to stories. We download them onto their mp3 players. Sometimes we check out the book, so they can follow along.

Watch some free online stories. Free Online Stories for Children

Does Dad read? Have your kids pick out books they think Dad would enjoy. Get your kids to approach their dad with the books to be read. My husband reads with our kids sometimes, but it usually takes a little encouragement. Maybe Dad is the primary reader of the family. Then encourage Mom, Grandma, or Grandpa to read a book or two.

Give each of your children their own gallon or two gallon ziplock bag to pack a few books they are reading or want to read. This is a safe way to transport books. Encourage your children to keep their bags of books handy. These take along books will be available to read during car trips, visits to friends and relatives, waiting rooms, and more. My kids read more when we pack books along. It might even keep your kids from doing the typical entertaining themselves by fighting and bugging each other. Kids who can't read yet can pack a bag of favorite books too. If a child has had a book read many times, the child will look at the pictures and remember the story. Pack a book for yourself too.

Here are a few things I've written you may find helpful if you are looking for ways to help your children learn to read.

Children's Books for Beginning Readers
Create a Collection of Books for Rereading
Develop Vocabulary in Early Readers
How to Help a Child Use Letter-Sound Relationships
Learning Letters
Phonemic Awareness Games
Short Vowel Sound Books
Teach a Child to Read and Spell Early
Teach Blending Sounds to Read Words
Teach Blending the First Two Sounds in a Word
Teach Consonant Blends
Teach Reading Comprehension with 7 Keys to Comprehension
Two Simple Phonics Rules for Vowel Sounds
Use Phonics Rules and Patterns

Enjoy the rest of your summer! Thanks for reading my blog. Have you subscribed to my blog with Feedburner yet? You can in my sidebar.

Free Lessons to Teach Pre-reading Skills to Children

I searched the terms TEACH READING with google and found an amazing site to share with my readers.

Building Blocks for Literacy Click on the link to access the site.

Parents, educators, and child care providers can watch videos to learn about ways to help young children acquire early reading skills. There are two options to sign up. You can register as a parent/other or educator/provider. I signed up as a parent/other and started the lessons. Wow! I love the way the information is quickly shared with high quality videos. There were a few times that the videos took a little while trying to load. I tried refreshing the page, and it worked like a charm. The video started working immediately. Let me know what you think of this site in a comment.

This is a site you will want to check out and share with others.

Friday

Phonogram Videos

Beginning readers benefit from learning more than one letter phonograms early. Phonograms are defined as one or more letters that represent a sound. Lately on most Fridays I make a Phonogram Friday post for anyone interested in teaching phonograms. Here's a post with free common two letter phonogram flashcards for you to print and use.

Here are some videos you may find useful if you are teaching phonograms.

Here's a link to Bioline Educational Resources' blog Teaching Ella to Read.

I found a post that suggests teaching babies and toddlers phonograms and words. If a toddler shows interest in learning the alphabet, I think teaching more than one letter phonograms would be a good idea too. I suggest allowing a child to practice and really learn a few letters and phonograms at a time. Here's a post I made showing ways you may want to teach and practice letters and phonograms. Phonograms and Blends

Wednesday

Books to Read to Young Children

What are good books to read to children? What books do children like the most? When a child asks for a story to be read many times, you know you've found a good book.
Watch this video from a librarian to give you some help finding good books to read to your child.

Here's a previous post with books I think young children like. A List of Stories for Young Children

I recently went through my family's books and pulled out my children's favorite books. I read these stories soooo many times.