Teaching kids to read and helping those who struggle

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Order the Reading Rockets Launching Young Readers PBS Series

Reading Rockets offers a wealth of reading strategies, lessons, and activities designed to help young children learn how to read and read better. Our reading resources assist parents, teachers, and other educators in working with struggling readers who require additional help in reading fundamentals and comprehension skills development.

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Effective Reading Instruction

Phonemic Awareness

Hear, identify, and manipulate sounds of spoken words

Phoneme

Isolation

• Recognizes individual sounds in words

• Identity

  Recognizes word with odd sound in a set of words

• Categorization

  Recognizes word with odd sound in a set of words

• Blending

  Combines sequence of sounds into a single word

• Segmentation

  Breaks a word into separate

Phonics

Know relationship between letters of written language and sounds of spoken language

Explicit and Systematic Instruction

• Identify useful series of sounds.
• Teach them in a logical sequence.
• Apply sounds to reading and writing.

Fluency

Read text accurately and quickly

Bridge between word recognition and comprehension

• Provide models of fluent reading.
• Provide repeated and monitored oral reading.

  Increase practice through audiotapes, peer guidance, tutors, *use of technology

• Provide a variety of short text passages at student's independent reading level.

Vocabulary

Words used to communicate effectively or use/recognize in print

Indirect instruction

• Students engage in oral language, listen to adults read to them, and read extensively on their own.

Direct instruction

• Teach individual words and word learning strategies.

  Teach use of dictionaries, glossaries,thesauruses, how to use word parts, and context clues.

Comprehension

Understand what is read

Comprehension strategies

• Teach students to be aware of what they do and do not understand, & the fix-up strategies.
• Use graphic and semantic organizers.
• Use text explicit/implicit and scriptal questions.
• Teach students to ask their own questions.
• Teach story structure.
• Use summarizing.