Beginning Reading Help: December 2011

Saturday

Ending the Year with One Post From Each Month of 2011

It's been a great year here at Beginning Reading Help!

I'm growing as a blogger and learning from others. I will continue into 2012 sharing my knowledge and improving on my delivery of helpful information for parents and teachers to support beginning readers. Thank you to everyone who has supported me and/or added to my knowledge in 2011!

I've selected one post from each month of 2011 to bring this year to a close.

January - Teach Blends with Magnetic Letters

February - Reading Longer Words?

March - Common Two Letter Phonograms to Learn and Practice

April - Crayola Dry-Erase Crayons and Sheet Protectors

May - Have You Read Any Robert Munsch Books to Your Children?

June - Free Online Stories

July - Books to Read to Young Children

August - Practice Short Vowel Sounds

September - Do You Share? Do You Share Read?

October - Is There a Better Way to Teach "Sight" Words?

November - Hearing Separate Sounds in Words

December - Parents Can Test Reading Levels and Find Book Levels to Match

Best wishes to you and yours in 2012!

Thursday

I'm a Proud Ambassador for LitWorld's World Read Aloud Day

Yes! It is official. I'm helping with a charity that is doing amazing things to improve literacy in the United States and Worldwide!

You can get involved with LitWorld on Facebook. LitWorld on Facebook

World Read Aloud Day - March 7, 2012

I will be setting up an event in Billings, Montana to promote World Read Aloud Day and do some fundraising. My goal is to raise at least $100 for Litworld. The ambassador who raises the most money will be honored at LitWorld's Gala in May of 2012. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

I ordered 250 bookmarks to celebrate World Read Aloud Day.

Helping this growing organization meet it's goals is very exciting.

What will LitWorld Accomplish?
By 2014: Help one million children learn to read.
By 2016: Equip ten thousand literacy leaders to effect change that will impact ten million children across the globe.

Check out this video and visit LitWorld's website to learn more.

Here is a video of Pam Allyn sharing about LitWorld's mission.

I was given two of Pam Allyn's books as a thank you for being an ambassador.

Here's an interview with Pam Allyn, the founder of LitWorld, talking about one of her books.

I'm going to get Pam's newest book next!

Tuesday

Teach an Early Reader with the Free Printable Book - Building a Bird House

This post is part of a series combining high frequency word flashcards and free printable books for early readers. You can learn more and get caught up here.

The words in Building a Bird House that go with the free flashcards from this series are I, am, we,
with, my, bird, house, have, and a.

Did you print the flashcards? You can teach an early reader these words with the sounding out tips on the back of the cards. Magnetic letters are an excellent way to teach a child to separate and blend sounds in words. Use the sound the letter or letter combination makes when working with magnetic letters rather than the letter name when possible`.

Here are three videos I created to help you teach an early reader with this free printable book.

Page One of Building a Bird House and sounding out tips for high frequency words found on the page:

Page Two of Building a Bird House and sounding out tips for high frequency words found on the page:

Video to go with pages 3 - 8 of Building a Bird House:

Here's a link to all posts in this series starting with the most recent and working backward.

Separating and Blending Sounds in Words from the Free Printable Book Go Car Go!

Many early reader books have sentences that repeat except for a few changes like in the free printable books I've shared with you for this series of posts combining free flashcards and early reader books. The free printable book Go Car Go! has easy to sound out words for early readers to practice separating sounds and blending sounds. Magnetic letters work great to help a child separate and blend sounds in words. You could use alphabet puzzle pieces or letters written on cards if you don't have magnetic letters.

The words boat and car and a few others in this book can teach an early reader to see letters that work together. Practice separating the sounds in these words if you think a child is ready. If learning letter combinations is too hard, you can show the beginning sound of harder words and the picture from the book to help a child "read" some of the harder words in the book Go Car Go.

I'm separating the videos by the level of difficulty of words. If you think a child is ready to sound out the harder words, give it a try. The level 2 or harder words can be used to teach a more advanced reader or used to introduce and model sounding out longer words to an early reader.

Level 1 - Easy Words:

Level 2 - Harder Words:

You can show separating sounds in other words from the book not included in the videos I made. Follow your child's lead. Play with a few words, but don't overwhelm is my philosophy. Encourage a child to read early reader books many times. Listening to an adult read and pointing under words is a valuable activity too.

I hope you have printed the flashcards and free printable books. Only you will know when your child is ready to start taking over reading all the reading or parts of the reading from these books. Feel free to move onto other books and use your intuition and advice from these first posts.

I'll continue to share videos and teaching ideas. Please sign up with feedburner to get all new posts sent to your email.

Saturday

Parents Can Test Reading Levels and Find Book Levels to Match

Parents don't have to leave testing reading levels to schools only. Parents now have a low cost option to test a child's reading level for an entire year with high quality fiction and non-fiction passages.

Total reader will give a child reading practice and provide a Lexile reading level to help in selecting books at or close to a child's reading ability. Children can get online from any computer and read passages of their choice to find out their Lexile reading levels as often as they like for an entire year for under $40. Total Reader makes this possible.

Parents can search for the Lexile reading level of books their children want to read at Lexile's Find a Book page. Scholastic Book Wizard helps parents and teachers search for books a child may want to read based on interests and similar books a child likes. Scholastic Book Wizard shows the Lexile level for books and lets you search by Lexile level. When you visit the Scholastic Book Wizard page you can select the Reading Level System by clicking on the arrow next to the words, Grade Level Equivalent.

Many parents get frustrated finding books their children can read. Books have levels, but there are different systems for leveling books. I've written a page to help parents make sense of reading levels you may want to check out. Reading Levels

Total Reader is for readers above a second grade reading level. Please check out Good Books for Beginning Readers to find a combination of phonics books and authentic text books I recommend for early readers if you think your child is below a second grade reading level.

Disclosure:
I have a contract with Total Reader and make a percentage of every subscription made from the link found on this page. I highly recommend Total Reader.
Launchpad Learning is coming soon. (I hear it will be ready March 2012.) There will be fundraising opportunites for PTA's and other organizations. Launchpad Learning is planning to combine this testing system with leveled ebooks and an easy to use fundraising system. Stay tuned!

Teach an Early Reader with the Free Printable Book Go Car Go!

This post is part of a series. You can get started here and catch up.

Visit this link to print the book. - Go Car Go!
(I put a little clear packing tape over my staples to keep the staples from snagging things or cutting fingers.)

Visit this link to print flashcards to go with the series.

This post will cover a number of things an early reader can learn. You'll find short videos demonstrating things you can teach an early reader with this free printable book. Choose the ones you think your beginning reader needs.

Teach words.

Teach the word an and two ways to pronounce the word a.
(The word a is a good introduction to the schwa sound.)

Teach syllables.

The next post in this series will have videos showing teaching separating and blending sounds with magnetic letters and words in Go Car Go! There will be two levels of words.

Sign up with Feedburner in my sidebar to make sure you get to read the next post. You may want to read this post to learn more about separating and blending sounds.

Teach a Child to Separate Sounds in Words

Hearing separate sounds in words is an important early reading skill. This skill can be taught even before letters of the alphabet are taught. Hearing separate sounds is words is called phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is part of a larger set of skills called phonological awareness.

One way to teach a child to hear separate sounds in words is to use objects for each sound in a word. Sometimes it is hard for an adult to separate sounds in words. Here's a resource from The Reading Genie to help adults working with children learn to separate sounds in words themselves before attempting to teach it.

Try separating and blending sounds in words with objects.

You can help a child practice taking words apart by using toys or objects. You may want to use something edible like cereal or candy. Give as much support as necessary. First think of a word. Decide how many sounds it has. Line up that number of objects. Say a word such as cat. Have your child push forward one object for each sound in the word while saying each sound aloud.

Say /k/ and push an object forward,

say /a/ and push an object forward,

say /t/ and push an object forward.

You can work on blending sounds together also. Separating sounds is needed for spelling. Blending sounds is needed for reading. Say a word that you think your child with be able separate the sounds. Ask your child to show you the sounds in a word by putting an object out for each sound. Help if needed. Ask him to count the sounds. Then have your child touch or move each object as each sound is made. Then have him slide his finger under the objects and stretch and hold out the sounds as he blends them.
The word no would be an easy word to use to start. The letter n and o are continuous sounds.

Here are some videos of a child separating and blending sounds.

Separating Sounds:

Blending Sounds: