Reading instruction does not need to stop when the bell rings. Using out-of-school time (OST) can be an effective way to boost academic skills while engaging students outside of the classroom. Education research lab McREL reviews effective afterschool and summer programs that focus on reading, and identifies the components that make them successful.
Before children learn to read print, they need to become aware of how the sounds in words work. They must understand that words are made up of individual speech sounds, or phonemes. A child’s skill in phonological and phonemic awareness is a good predictor of later reading success or difficulty.
Words that you can read instantly are called sight words. Orthographic mapping is the process of storing a word permanently in memory for instant retrieval — and key to effortless, accurate, and fluent reading.
School psychologists play a critical role in the lives of children who are struggling to learn. More and more, for example, school psychologists are leaders in developing and carrying out the assessments and placements decisions that impact students from the beginning of their school careers. With your help, schools can reduce the number of students who lag behind grade level and increase the number of successful readers.
Apps are fun and motivating for kids! Let Reading Rockets help you find the very best educational apps that provide practice with essential skills in alphabet knowledge, phonics, spelling, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing. We’ve also included apps to support children with dyslexia, ADHD, and autism.
Administering informal assessments on a regular basis throughout the school year provides useful information that can help teachers to identify the individual strengths and weakness of each student — and most importantly, guide the next steps in instruction.
Children take their first critical steps toward learning to read and write very early in life. Long before they can exhibit reading and writing production skills, they begin to acquire some basic understandings of the concepts about literacy and its functions.
Sight vocabulary instruction as being less about memorizing a list of words, and more about learning how to recognize and remember words. Research shows that as students get better with decoding, remembering sight words becomes easier.
Find answers to 14 commonly asked questions about teaching reading fluency, including the amount of fluency instruction, the benefits of paired reading, and choosing texts for fluency practice.
