Letter Reversals

We are continuing our series of posts by Beth Guadagni, M.A., who teaches students with dyslexia in Colorado. Today, Beth looks at what happens -- and what teachers and parents can do -- when a child reverses letters. 

Most dyslexic kids reverse letters (and even whole words) when reading and writing, but so do most young learners. Parents frequently panic when they see a child flipping b's and d's, assuming that this is a sure-fire sign of dyslexia. More likely, the child simply needs more practice and better practice. Multi-sensory strategies (learning opportunities that stimulate a child’s auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic senses along with their vision) are extraordinarily useful in giving kids the practice they need to get comfortable with directionality.

First, let’s take a look at why reversals happen. During a young child’s life, he learns that an object seen from one side is the same object seen from another side. Whether he’s standing on the left or right of the blue armchair in the living room, it’s still the same armchair, even if the image appears to be reversed when he moves from one side to the other. When he begins school, he has to unlearn that concept; applied to letters and numbers, directionality can really change things.

This ability to appreciate mirror images is really useful—in most settings. On the page, it presents problems. Here are some ideas for helping your child:

Letter Formation – It Matters!

Watch your young child as he is writing and insist that he form letters the same way every time. This is particularly important with b and d. Many parents and educators skip this step, thinking that as long as the letter looks right in the end, how the child wrote it isn’t important. This is far from true. Remember:

• To make a lowercase b, the child should write the line first, starting at the top and moving downward. The loop is added next, so the letter takes two separate strokes.
• To make a lowercase d, the child should write the loop first. Then, without lifting her pencil, she can sweep upward to form the line, then down again for the tail.

Why does this help a child stop making reversals? Following the same sequence of motions each time embeds letter-writing in muscle memory, so a child can store that information along with the physical appearance of a letter. This helps with writing and, believe it or not, reading, too.

We worked with a young boy whose insightful mother came up with a mnemonic to help him with b's and d's. When he wrote a b, he said “bat to the ball” to himself. The “bat” was the stem of the letter, which he had to write first. The “ball” was the loop. When he wrote a d, he said “dog to the door” to remind him to write the “dog” (the loop), then the “door” (the stem). This clever strategy marries the auditory and kinesthetic senses.

Resource: Handwriting Without Tears

If you’re worried about letter formation, we love Handwriting Without Tears. Its step-by-step instructions are easy enough for parents with no training in early education to follow at home.

Sight Words – Part Five: Games!

We're winding up our series on sight words with some games to play in class or at home. 

Games can make for the best practice! Here are some fun ways to drill sight words in a playful way that will keep kids engaged. As a bonus, you can use sight word flashcards for many of them, making the set-up that games require less time consuming.

Tic Tac Toe
There are two variations of this game. Both begin with sight word flashcards face down in a pile. To play the simpler version, each player must draw a card and read it aloud before marking either an X or an O on the board. To make it more challenging, be sure each player has a pen in his own color. The first player will draw a sight word card and read it aloud to the other player. Instead of writing an X or O, the second player must spell the sight word in the square he chooses.

Fishing Game

There’s no competition here, but kids think this game is tremendously fun anyway. If you’re pressed for time, put a paperclip on each sight word flashcard. If you have time to really get into the theme, cut out simple paper fish and write a sight word on each, then slide a paperclip over each fish’s head. Put all the prepared words into a very large bowl or bucket. Now you need a fishing pole: tape a piece of string 18-24 inches long to a ruler and affix a magnet to the end. Give the pole to the child and show him how to dip the magnet into the “pond.” He should read the word on each fish he catches, then go back for more!


Memory 
This old favorite is great for practicing sight words. You’ll need two sets of flashcards with sight words written on them. Eight to ten pairs seems to be a good number—fewer than that is too easy, and more than that is overwhelming. Mix the cards up and turn them face down, arrange them into a rectangle, and take turns looking for matches. Make sure each player reads the words aloud as he turns the cards over. For extra practice, when the game ends each player should read their cards aloud while counting them to determine the winner.

Go Fish
You’ll need quite a few sight words for this game - at least twelve - but the good news is you can use the pairs of cards you made for Memory. Give each player three or four cards, which he should keep hidden. If you’re using flashcards, these will be unwieldy to fan out in one’s hand like playing cards, so cut a file folder in half and give a piece to each player. The folder can be propped up in front of the player so that he can spread his cards in front of him in secrecy. The rest of the cards go face down between the two players. The first player should ask the second if he has a particular word. If he does, he must give his card to the first player. If not, the first player must “go fish” by drawing from the pile in the middle. The game continues until someone runs out of cards, and at that point the one with the most matches wins.

Sight Words – Part Four: More (Fun) Practice

Struggling readers need lots and lots of exposures before they start to recognize sight words automatically. It’s important to make practice fun, though, because the more of it a child is willing to do, the more she’ll benefit. Here are some ideas I’ve used in private tutoring and classrooms:

Sensory Practice
Let your student go beyond just seeing and writing words and recruit her tactile systems by:

• giving her something with texture, like a sand tray, piece of carpet, or section of wall, and letting her trace words with her fingertip.
• tracing a word on her back and asking her to guess what it is. Start with short words (“it,” “am,” etc.) If this is really tricky, ask her to say each letter as you trace it before you move on to the next one.
• shaping the letters in the word with modeling clay rolled into ropes.
• skywriting the word (tracing huge letters in front of her so that she has to use her whole arm), or writing the words in large letters on a dry erase board (or on a window with a dry erase marker or fingerpaint), chalkboard, or on a wall or sidewalk with a wet sponge or sidewalk chalk.

Cut-Out Flashcards
This one will work better for some kids than others, but it’s worth a try. Print out the sight words you want to practice in large font, then cut around the outside of the word, hugging the border of each letter as closely as you can. Don’t cut the letters apart; you want to cut around the word as a single unit. Discard the word itself and keep just the silhouette. Glue this onto a dark piece of construction paper and use these cards for drills. This format helps some students appreciate the shape of words so that they recognize them as whole units more readily.

Letter Mix-Up
Give the student a handful of Scrabble tiles or magnetized letters that spell a sight word and let her unscramble them. If she’s new to this, tell her what the word is before she begins. If she’s an old pro in need of a challenge, simply hand her the letters and challenge her to figure it out.

A note about the next two strategies: You need to mark in books for these, so I suggest either making photocopies of the pages or investing in temporary highlighting tools. I really like these erasable highlighters, and you can also try this removable highlighting tape.

Sight Word Hunt
Open a book so that two pages with text on them are visible (or hand out photocopies of different pages) and race to see who can find the most sight words you’ve studied on their page. Students can mark the words on the text, or write a list.

Real-World Reading
Let kids who love stories help you read them. Ahead of time, go through a book you plan to read to the student and highlight or circle all the sight words you’ve practiced. Then read to the child, using your finger to track so she can see where you are in the sentence. When you come to a highlighted word, pause to let her say it for you.

Sight Words – Part Three: Daily Practice with Timed Drills

More on sight words by Beth Guadagni ...

OK, I know what you’re thinking: This doesn’t sound fun. Students hate being timed. The pressure makes them panic. Bear with me! I use this drill all the time with my severely dyslexic students. If anyone is going to have anxiety about reading, it’s them. And my kids like it! There are a few tricks I use to make sure this is a rewarding experience for them:

1) Choose the material to be drilled thoughtfully. If the student can’t read the list/phrases/text you’re drilling with at least 90% accuracy, it’s too hard. I try to pick texts they can read even more easily than that. Remember, we’re practicing fluency here, not decoding skills, and they can’t get faster with a list that’s simply too hard.

2) Make their progress visible to them. This is really the part that matters. I keep a piece of large-grid graph paper for each list/text the child is practicing. After each reading, we write the date at the bottom of a column and then the child colors in the number of squares that shows how many words he read correctly. In the end, we have a bar graph that shows day-to-day progress, so it’s easy for the child to see how much he’s improving (and since you’re using the same list over and over again, he will improve if you do this drill almost every day). Don’t be afraid to do two or even three repetitions in one sitting either—that’s where you’ll really see the numbers jump. Bonus: This is a great introduction to graphs!

I recommend doing this as a warm-up to each instructional session. If your student isn’t practicing sight words every day, this drill should be a daily exercise anyway because consistency is critical when it comes to fluency. It can take as little as one minute!

Procedure
Start with a Dolch list (see our previous post, if you missed it). Be sure to pick one the child can read with very good accuracy. I like to have a student read the list at a leisurely pace before introducing the timer to be sure the level is right. If even the lowest Dolch list is too hard, pick all the words he read correctly and just a few that he missed and make your own list by mixing these up. It’s okay to repeat the words several times on one list if you need to make the list longer without making it harder.

• If the Dolch list is too long, break it into two lists. 
• If you’re giving the child 30 seconds to read, you want somewhere around 20-30 words per list. 
• If you’re giving the child 60 seconds to read, you want somewhere between 40 and 60 words per list.
• Arm yourself with two copies of the list, plus a pencil, a piece of large-grid graph paper, and a stopwatch or timer.

Give one of the lists to the child and ask him to read it as quickly as he can for a set interval of time. I suggest 30 seconds for kindergartners and 45 seconds to one minute for older kids. Set the timer and let him loose! As he reads, use the other list to keep track of his errors. Any words he self-corrects should NOT be counted as errors, though note them for your own benefit because these are words that he needs to practice more. (Future posts will give you lots of suggestions about practicing.) When the timer goes off, congratulate him on a job well done! Now go over the list with him and show him the words he missed. I like to mark on the child’s list to help him the next time he reads. For example, my niece read “there” as “the” during one of our drills, so I underlined the last two letters to remind her to look at the whole word.

Next, do a little math. To calculate the number of words he got right, use this formula:

Total Words Read – Errors = Correct Words Read

Ask the child to help you count and do the subtraction if you want to make this a multidisciplinary exercise! Now, give him a marker and help him color in the graph to show how many words he read correctly. I like to do at least two trials per session because there’s always a huge bump after the first one that makes kids feel good, and I’ve even had students beg for a third try!

Leveling Up
Once your student is reading somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 sight words per minute correctly, it’s time to increase the challenge. Before you go to the next Dolch list, though, I suggest you introduce the lists of phrases, made from the grade-level Dolch words, which were included at the end of my previous post and use them for drills. Here’s why: the jump from lists of individual words to pages covered with sentences can be daunting for some kids, so reading with these short phrases is a good intermediary step. They provide practice with phrasing, too. I wrote these, but feel free to invent your own! Make sure, if you do, that you stick to words you know the child can decode easily.

As the phrases begin to become easier, you can introduce the next Dolch list; having two separate drills going at once is just fine.

I hope your young reader enjoys this as much as my students do!

Tune in next time for some fun ways to practice sight words.

Sight Words – Part Two: The Dolch List and Teaching Brand New Words

Before we get into ideas for teaching sight words, you’ll need lists of words to teach. Luckily, when it comes to sight words the work has been done for you here.

Although the whole-language theory of reading instruction has been debunked in favor of phonics, the Dolch lists, which were compiled by whole-word proponent Edward Dolch, are still an excellent resource for sight words. Dolch combed through children’s books and made a list of the 220 words he saw repeated most often. Some of the words are decodable and others are not; what they have in common is frequency. The list, which was first published in 1936, is obviously not exactly current, but children’s literature hasn’t changed much, so it still serves as a good starting point; in fact, almost all teachers of early elementary grades use it in their classrooms. Since its first publication, the list has been broken into grade-level lists, beginning with Pre-Primer (the beginning of kindergarten) and going through third grade. These 220 words are where I’d start.

Keep in mind that although the words look short and easy, 220 is a lot! Young readers, particularly those in the earliest stages of literacy, will need to be taught just a few at a time. If you’re going to teach words the child has never seen before, stick with just one or two per session, and be sure to pick words that are visually different from each other, like “little” and “you.” Pairing words like “is” and “it” may lead to confusion.

Once you’ve chosen your words, here is a series of steps I like to follow when I’m teaching a child a brand new sight word.

1.      Write the word three times, then pass the paper to the child. The child should trace each word one letter at a time, saying the letters as she traces them. Tell the child that she is “telling her hand what to do.” (What she’s really doing is combining the visual input of the letters she sees, the motor input she gets from tracing the letters and from moving her lips and tongue to form the letter names, and the auditory input she gets from hearing herself say the letters. The more senses that are involved in a learning experience, the more likely a person is to remember what they learn.) When she gets to the end of the word, she should say the whole word (e.g. “y-o-u, you”).

2.      Next to the three words the child has just traced, ask her to write the word three times on her own. Again, she should say each letter as she traces it, then say the whole word when she gets to the end.

3.      This third step is optional but can be very valuable for kids. Ask the child to write the word three times in a way that will engage her gross motor system or feel more tactically engaging. This could be writing the word three times in huge letters on a whiteboard or on a wall with a wet sponge, using a fingertip to “write” the word on the carpet or in a sand tray, etc. Try out a few and let the child do the one she likes best. No matter what she chooses, be sure she goes through the routine of saying each letter, then the whole word.

4.      Now, back to the paper you were using before: turn it over so that she can’t see the spelling and ask the child to write the word three times, saying each letter, from memory. If she has to peek at the spelling on the opposite side, return some of the earlier steps in the process to help her ingrain the sequence more deeply in her memory.

5.      The fifth and last step is the most fun! Ask the child to close her eyes and write the word three times again, saying each letter as she does. Students, even my high school group, love this step; there’s something inherently entertaining about reaching the end and opening one’s eyes to see that the word has appeared, slightly wobbly but almost always surprisingly legible! The value of this part goes farther than just giving kids a giggle, though. When someone doesn’t watch their hands writing, the movements themselves seem to become discreet from the letters, becoming a series of motions instead, so that they get anchored in memory in a different way. You’re teaching the child’s hand to write the word by allowing muscle memory to step in.

This routine seems long, but once you (and your student) get the hang of it, it takes less than five minutes per word. And in my experience, kids really like the process. Focusing on writing the words instead of just recognizing their appearances makes the learning experience more multi-sensory for kids, and it’s also quite useful because sight words can be among the trickiest to spell right. And in the end, if a child can spell a word, recognizing it while reading is a piece of cake.

One exposure to sight words though, even one as thorough as this, isn’t enough. To build automaticity, you’ll need to spend a lot of time practicing the words you’ve taught. Next time, I’ll cover some of my favorite games and activities for helping kids learn to recognize these words instantly. In the meantime, here is a list of Dolch Fluency Phrases, broken down by age from pre-primer through second grade, that expand somewhat on the individual Dolch list words.

Pre-Primer Fluency Phrases

come and help
the little blue dog
up and away
a big jump
we can come
it is down here
find it funny
go for help
here I am
look up and down
in here
one little jump
look and see
make my bed
we can play
you and not me
one, two, and three
red and yellow
run away
said the cat
where to look
jump up
you can go

Primer Fluency Phrases
eat it all
a new ride
ate a cake
who I am
want it to go well
all very good
must be with me
black and brown
came but did not go away
did not do it
eat four buns
get good books
like to play
have to go into class
he and she
pretty please
she said no
go out now
on our mat
saw it and ran
they say so
must go so soon
that little brown hut
here and there
this and that, too
under the yellow sun
want to jump
all was well
went away
what we will do
who she will go with
yes or no

First Grade Phrases
you could go
every last one
after the game
fly from the nest
ask any friend
do it again
an easy test
go by the rule
give me my toy
going to have fun
had to play
her blue book
his little white dog
come find him
see how it is done
have just five more
know when to stop
live and let live
may open the box
three of them
old brown hat
ride once a day
put on a pretty dress
a round, white egg
some new cars
stop and say thank you
take them home
must think hard
walk to the park
three were red
see then do

Second Grade Phrases
always be around
because he said so
been there before
the best wish
would buy both
call us first
found five funny hats
gave many gifts
comes and goes
green and yellow
get its food
write many lists
pull it off
gave just one
made it right
many of these
these or those
sit and read
sing her to sleep
tell their tales
once upon a time
wash very well
use some but not all
the one that will work
why your game is good
would eat four more
which you have now

Sight Words – Part One

We're delighted to welcome back our blogger Beth Guadagni, M.A., who shares her expertise in reading and working with students with dyslexia.

My niece is in first grade. She has always loved to listen to stories, but when we were together to celebrate Christmas at my parents’ house this year, she was reluctant to read books herself. When I finally convinced her to read with me, it was clear why: While she knows her letter sounds cold, nearly every word was a struggle. Sure, she recognized words like “the” and “is” with good automaticity. But she needed to sound out lots and lots of common words (like, well, lots) every time she came across them. A big part of the problem, I saw, was with sight words.

 While there are some differences in opinion about what the term “sight words” really means, nearly all educators agree that recognizing them automatically is critical to fluent reading. Some educators like to explain that sight words are words that don’t “follow the rules” and so just have to be memorized. “Have” is a great example. Kids learn that when there is a vowel-consonant-e pattern at the end of a word, the first vowel is long. But in “have,” the a sounds short, despite the e at the end. English has a lot of words like this, and unfortunately most of them are among our most common words.

Other educators say that sight words are simply common words that kids should recognize immediately because they occur so frequently in texts that sounding them out each time would be laborious (as my niece discovered). Words like “her”, “get”, and “open” are examples of words like this: they “follow the rules” and occur frequently.

Regardless of the definition one uses, sight words are important, and knowing how to read and spell them without much conscious thought or effort is enormously helpful to young students. Luckily, there are lots of ways to make learning sight words fun.

Over the next few posts, I’ll share some ideas that I’ve found to be very useful, even with severely dyslexic students. Stay tuned!

Dyslexia Instruction That Works

A diagnosis of dyslexia can bring with it a range of emotions. Some people are crushed, thinking that their, or their child’s, potential is irrevocably limited. Some are relieved: There’s something empowering about being able to name a condition and, of course, it’s validating to have a professional verify that the affected student isn’t “dumb” or “lazy.” But one of the most common reactions is confusion. Parents may feel overwhelmed and lost. Is there a way to teach literacy skills to a child with dyslexia that really works? If so, how does one find it?

We are happy to say that the answer to the first question is an emphatic “yes!” There are several thoroughly researched, time-tested instructional methods that can help students with dyslexia make sense of language. This instruction can occur in a variety of formats, but parents should always look these indicators of a highly-effective program:

• Curriculum is multi-sensory, explicit, and structured. Orton-Gillingham, and programs based on it, is the gold standard when it comes to instruction for students with dyslexia. There are lots of curricula (Wilson, Lindamood-Bell, Barton, etc.) that are O.G.-based, so don’t be thrown off by names. But research the curriculum to be sure it is grounded in this solid, well-researched approach.

• Curriculum includes training in phonemic awareness by itself. Phonemic awareness (skills needed to recognize and manipulate the sounds in language), is a key component of good early childhood instruction, but older students with dyslexia need this kind of instruction, too; their brains are less able to develop these skills simply from exposure to language. Recent research shows that phonemic awareness instruction should happen by itself, not in conjunction with written letters, to be most effective. In other words, both phonemic awareness (sounds) and phonics (sounds plus letters) should be part of instruction.

• Curriculum is administered by a certified reading or literacy specialist, or by an educator certified in an O.G.-based curriculum. No matter how talented, smart, or well-intentioned, standard classroom teachers and even special education teachers are not trained in the kind of reading instruction children with dyslexia need. (Trust me on this; I used to be one! It wasn’t until I obtained a masters degree in literacy, then was trained in Orton-Gillingham, that I was prepared to teach individuals with dyslexia.) 

• Other parents give the curriculum a thumbs-up. Ask to speak with parents of other children with dyslexia (not just struggling readers) who have received instruction from the provider you are considering.

So now that you know what to look for, how do you find it? That’s often a little more complicated. High-quality instruction for students with dyslexia can occur in a few different formats.

Services in Public School

Your child is entitled to a free, appropriate instruction from her school, often referred to by the acronym FAPE. This will probably take the form of pull-outs, meaning that a special education teacher or reading specialist will take your child out of her mainstream classes to work one-on-one or in a small group of similar students. Please note what we said above about the qualifications of your child’s instructor. If your district doesn’t provide a qualified reading specialist, you may need to do some research and be prepared to demand that your child receive instruction from someone who is properly trained; this should be set out in your child's IEP.  Most special education teachers are not trained in the specific reading instruction students with dyslexia need.

Dedicated Schools

Special schools for children with dyslexia are few and far between, but if you’re lucky enough to live near one or are flexible and up for a new adventure, this might be worth considering. (Some families even move to new cities in order to be near top-notch institutions!) The benefits of a quality school that is dedicated to dyslexia instruction are enormous. Not only are the teachers knowledgeable and experienced in reading instruction, but curriculum that benefits students with this profile is woven into every subject. Most schools also teach students how to self-advocate effectively and use helpful technology that can assist them in college and beyond. And, perhaps most importantly, students become friends with other bright, creative, dynamic, wonderful kids who share their struggles.

Private Instruction (e.g. Tutoring)

Sending your child with dyslexia to a special school isn’t feasible for lots of families for a variety of reasons. For kids who need help beyond what the special education services in their public school provide, private instruction is a great option. This usually occurs through two channels: established organizations or private practitioners.

Tutoring companies that specialize in reading disabilities, like Lindamood-Bell, can be good options for families. Look for an office that administers lots of benchmark assessments throughout instruction that clearly demonstrate that your child is making progress. Avoid tutoring companies that don’t specialize in reading disabilities; most of these organizations (Kumon, Sylvan, etc.) may provide great homework help for typically developing readers but don’t staff the specially trained teachers students with dyslexia must learn from.

Private practitioners vary enormously in training and quality. One surefire way to find a good one is to check out the International Dyslexia Association’s provider directory. Even if one of these professionals can’t take on another student, they may be able to point you in the direction of someone who can. Another suggestion is to speak with the administration at a school for students with dyslexia or students with language-based learning disabilities. The expert teachers who work at these schools often tutor on the side. If they don’t, chances are the principal knows someone who will.

A few words about scheduling, no matter where your child goes for private instruction:

• Set up at least two sessions a week initially. For younger children, shorter sessions (30-45 minutes) two or three times a week are better than an hour-long session once a week. Remember that your child will be working hard, and an hour in one go, even for older kids, may be too much at first.

• Your child will likely be worn out at the end of a school day, so morning sessions work better than after-school sessions for some families. 

• Some tutors will travel to your child’s school to work with him during instruction from which he gets little benefit, like spelling. While this can be an efficient use of time, some students feel self-conscious about being pulled out of class, making it hard for them to learn.

                                 

Summer Learning Opportunities

Summer slide, the tendency of kids to lose some of the skills they worked to gain during the school year, hits students with dyslexia particularly hard. It’s tempting to give kids a break for the summer, but they need at least some opportunities to keep their skills sharp to prevent frustration when school begins again. The summer months are a great opportunity for multiple weekly sessions at Lindamood-Bell or with a tutor. For older learners, excellent schools like Kildonan, the Landmark School, the Brehm School, and the Gow School offer residential summer camps that blend expert literacy instruction with opportunities to explore the arts, play sports, and have fun getting to know  peers with dyslexia.

Look for our post next week on high-tech tools to help learners with dyslexia (and adults!) with literacy demands.

Choosing Nonfiction Texts

Classroom read-alouds are a tradition, but they’re changing with the times.

Educators, including the team that drew up the Common Core Standards, are realizing that a focus solely on fiction doesn’t serve children well. Stories are wonderful, of course, and serve an important purpose. But most upper-level reading material is expository, and students often struggle when they haven’t had much experience with informational text.

There is evidence that hearing non-fiction texts in the early grades helps prepare children for the time when they will switch from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” Expository texts also build kids’ background knowledge, helping them to make more sense of both texts they read themselves and the world around them. In short, kids need more exposure to non-fiction texts, and many teachers are beginning to add them to the read-aloud repertoire.

Knowing what one should do and knowing how to do it are not the same thing, however. Where do teachers, whose expertise often lies in fictional storybooks, begin when looking for non-fiction texts to read to classes? And how can parents find engaging, factual texts to read at home? Here are some ideas for teachers; parents should look for *s that indicate which ideas will work at home, too:

*Ask the librarian where to begin. They’re experts on texts of all kinds and will be overflowing with ideas.

*Look for a hook. Non-fiction texts are often fascinating and enjoyable, but there are some dry ones out there. Look for texts that begin with an exciting proposition or describe a situation to which your students can relate (or one that is exciting to imagine).

*Go beyond books. Magazines and websites are great sources for articles about all sorts of topics and the only good sources for current events. We like Time for Kids (3rd grade+), National Geographic for Kids (2nd+), Muse (4th+), and Ranger Rick (2nd+). (Note: grade levels correspond to the age at which kids can comprehend orally presented text, not the age at which they can read from these sources independently.) Additionally, educators can choose a level of complexity for news articles from Newsela so that content is available at just the right reading level for nearly any age.

Read non-fiction during your usual literature block. Ask students to treat these texts the way they would novels or stories: They should make predictions, visualize what they are hearing, and pay attention to the way the author uses language.

Keep a log of what you read aloud. List the name of the book or article, the source, and your students’ response. This will be a great personal resource to turn to year after year, and may help other teachers come up with ideas for their own classrooms, too.

Make listening less passive by getting kids thinking before you begin reading. Quiz students about their prior knowledge first or list facts they “know” about the topic. After reading, ask the class whether the text confirmed those facts.

Non-fiction texts are wonderful models for writing because students are assigned more and more expository pieces as they move through the grades. Exposure to explanatory language, which students use to display their understanding of what they learn, will make it easier for them to generate similar sentences themselves. Teachers might try using promotional texts, like destination campaign pieces from a travel agency, as models for writing persuasive essays.

*Remember that it is fine to read only parts of nonfiction texts. Since there’s no need to see a story to its conclusion, teachers should feel free to pick and choose sections of longer texts that seem most appropriate. You may want to have a few extra copies of a text on hand, though; curious students may want to learn more on their own!


This post contains our own ideas, with inspiration from veteran teacher Tony Snead.

Reading Recovery Works!

The Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) has released a promising evaluation  of Reading Recovery, a popular program used for early intervention with students at-risk for low literacy outcomes. The intensive program pairs low-achieving first graders with a trained Reading Recovery teacher for 30 minutes of one-on-one work over a period of 12 to 20 weeks.

Because of positive results from a previous study, the US Department of Education granted funds to expand the program in 2010, and the evaluation took place during this period of growth. Resources were used to train over 2,000 new Reading Recovery teachers, allowing more than 23,000 students to receive individualized services. In addition, nearly 114,000 children received from whole-class or small-group instruction.

The results were impressive. Reading Recovery students outscored the control group on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) by an average of 14 to 16 percentage points. In addition, ITBS indicated that these students had attained 1.4 months’ worth of reading improvement more than a control group, which was taught using a different curriculum.

CPRE’s findings are even more striking when one considers that the Reading Recovery students were previously identified as being at-risk. Early detection and remediation of reading difficulties is critical, and we’re delighted that this simple program can strengthen the potential of the most vulnerable kids.

Learn with Homer: Reading App Review

Recommended Ages: 2 to 6

Content Areas: Early Reading

Price: Free (with in-app purchases). A web-based version has a 30 day free trial and then a monthly subscription fee.

Why We Love It:
Learn with Homer was created by Stephanie Dua, a Brooklyn mother and Harvard Public Policy graduate who spent her early career working in educational policy and reform in New York City. When Ms. Dua’s eldest daughter began searching for engaging at home reading resources, she realized there was a need for a high quality, research backed digital foundational literacy program.

The Homer Method infuses the best research on how children learn to read, with high quality, engaging art and storytelling to create a program that supports children in becoming successful readers. You don’t have to just take their word for it; the team behind Learn with Homer publishes all the research that underpins their program, so parents and teachers can assess it for themselves.

The program is designed to be a sequential, step-by-step learning process where the child progresses at his or her own personalized pace and each new skill builds upon those previously mastered. The program starts with the basics of sounds and letters before moving on to words, ideas and knowledge. The program includes original artwork from talented illustrators, songs, rhymes and game-based learning theories to truly make the reading experience enjoyable for a child. Each of the stories and activities are thoughtfully created or illustrated for the Read with Homer Program, making it an incredibly comprehensive and robust early reading application. It is easy to see why Learn with Homer has been the recipient of so many awards and acknowledgements.

For Parents
Beyond teaching your child the fundamentals of reading, Learn with Homer will also expose your child to music and rhymes from a variety of cultures to help them learn correct pronunciation and verbal timing. Science, history and art are also infused in the non-fiction reading resources to teach new vocabulary. Writing is also an element of the Learn with Homer App through their Pigeon Post which allows your child to compose, send and receive digital postcards from loved ones. Extensions beyond the digital space are also available through printed projects which include craft ideas, writing practice activities, coloring pages and puzzles. Through the parent dashboard, you can also keep track of the progress your child has made and see his or her growth over time.

For Teachers
Learn with Homer has a classroom dashboard which allows teachers to track the progress of their entire class in real time. As a former classroom teacher, I found this aspect valuable for my formative assessment, as it allowed me to identify the strengths and weaknesses in my individual students. This, in turn, helped inform any subsequent reading interventions and activities I employed. Furthermore, you can feel confident in utilizing this tool in your classroom, as the team behind Learn with Homer has done all the work of linking their program to the Common Core standards for you in a document published on their website.

Rhyme to Read App for Beginning Readers

Ask reading teachers what books they use to teach youngsters to decode and they’ll almost unanimously mention controlled texts. These simple books are excellent tools for helping young children gain fluency and automaticity with words. 

Controlled texts tell short, simple stories using a combination of patterned words and sight words. For example, a book that focuses on the “–et” letter pattern might feature a character named Bet and tell a story using words like “wet,” “pet,” “jet,” “get,” etc. alongside common sight words like “the,” “and,” etc. Rhyming words are easier to read because children don’t need to sound out each word in its entirety; they can read many words easily by simply adding a new beginning sound to /et/. The repetitive nature of the wording in the stories helps, too. By reading the same words over and over again throughout the book, developing readers learn to recognize the words by sight instead of having to sound them out each time.

For parents hoping to give their children confidence with decoding, controlled text series can be purchased from many bookstores and websites and even downloaded from the Internet. One of the best is the Bob Books series, and Starfall also offer some good options. One of our favorites, however, is called Rhyme to Read, which is available as an app.

It’s no wonder that Rhyme to Read is great; it was developed by two expert educators. Sara Hines, who has a Ph.D. in Special Education with a focus on learning disabilities, has over 25 years of experience teaching reading and has even spent time teaching at Hunter College. Lynn Laiman, the second author, has a Master’s Degree in reading and has worked in schools for 20 years as both a classroom teacher and reading specialist. Their brainchild gives families access to a wonderful set of digital, controlled texts with the touch of a button.

In the series, new words are introduced on the left page of each book, and children can read sentences containing the words on the right page. This format makes it easy for parents or teachers to preview new words with kids so that they’re more likely to feel successful when they encounter the words in the context of the story. A list of all the words introduced in each book is available on the last page, too, offering a chance for seamless review. The books increase in difficulty throughout the series, and kids will come across words they’ve already learned as they progress to more advanced books.

The first book in the series is free, and the remaining 19 books can be purchased for $9.99 from the iTunes store. As far as apps go, Rhyme to Read is on the pricier side, but this well-designed program is well worth it. It’s far less expensive to buy the digital “books” than it is to purchase a set of leveled readers, for one thing. And Rhyme to Read has capabilities paper books simply don’t. For example, children can tap words to hear them read aloud. Target words, the ones that follow the featured pattern, are read in one voice, and sight words are read in another. Even more ingenious, tapping on the word on the left page, where it is first introduced, plays the word in a segmented way (i.e. “c-at”). This helps them to understand how to attach the new beginning sound (/c/) to the familiar pattern (/-at/). On the right page, though, they can hear the word read fluently (“cat”).

Rhyme to Read has received rave reviews from users, and we are very impressed as well! We hope this thoughtful resource is helpful to you and the young children in your life.

Literacy Lessons from Teachers College – Part III Reading Comprehension

I recently attended an exciting two-day conference on literacy in the elementary and middle grades hosted by faculty from Columbia University’s Teachers College. Through lectures, readings, discussions, and collaborative group work, I learned a great deal about the implications of current research on literacy assessment and instruction. In this four part series, I am sharing what I learned about phonics, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and writing with readers of the Yellin Center’s blog!

Nearly every teacher, and many parents, would like to help their students improve their reading comprehension. Making meaning from the words on a page is critical for success in all content areas in school and in nearly every career after graduation. Here is some compelling information about reading comprehension from the literacy conference at Teachers College:

Background Knowledge

Alongside vocabulary knowledge, background knowledge is the biggest factor that influences reading comprehension for readers who don’t have trouble decoding (i.e. sounding out the words). Background knowledge allows readers make meaning from what they read by connecting incoming information with their own understanding of the world.

It’s helpful if teachers provide students with background knowledge but this is not always possible. Luckily, it’s not always necessary, either. Good instructors will help students activate relevant background knowledge, no matter what it is, prior to reading. For example, a text about the hardships of farm life may not resonate with inner city teenagers who have never plowed a field or fed a cow. But those teenagers probably have knowledge that can help them contextualize the passage anyway. For example, those who have kept pets understand the work that goes into caring for an animal, and kids who balance schoolwork with an after school job know what it’s like to juggle multiple responsibilities. Students can be prompted to think beyond personal experiences, too. Perhaps they remember scenes from Field of Dreams and can apply those images of cornfields to their reading. Or maybe they remember reading Esperanza Rising in middle school, which taught them about the labor needed to harvest crops. Students may not realize the value of their prior knowledge, but what they bring to a reading can vastly improve their understanding of it.

jepoirrer via flickrcc

Close Reading 

Close reading is a worthy goal for any instructor, no matter the content area, to select for his or her students. Research on close reading, or reading for a specific purpose, showed that students who did not demonstrate decoding or fluency difficulties were able to make large gains in comprehension. When students successfully read a text closely, they preview the text systematically, taking note of its structure and other relevant information. Then they read and reread carefully, self-monitoring all the while. Next, they reflect on what they’ve read to determine what’s most important. Finally, they synthesize the information and draw conclusions about it.

This complex process takes requires lots of modeling and support (and patience!) on the teacher’s part and practice on the students’ parts. But it can improve comprehension enormously. Some instructional sequences worth checking out are THIEVES (Manz, 2002 – Title, Headings, Introduction, Every first sentences, Visualize and vocabulary, End of chapter questions, Summary); TELL (Cummins, 2013 – Title, Examine, Look, Look); HIP (Hearaver, in Cummins, 2013 – Headings, Introduction, Prediction); and CATAPULT (Zwiers, 2004 – Covers, Author, Title, Audience, Page 1, Underlying message, Look at features, Time/place/important people).

Note that this kind of intensive reading is not necessary for every text. Because the process can be time-intensive and laborious, students must understand that they should reserve these strategies for dense texts that give them difficulty. Effective instructors will help students to understand which texts demand particularly close reading.

Marking Texts

Annotating a text can be a very effective way to improve comprehension. Most students benefit from learning particular ways to do it, however; simply underlining or highlighting can quickly become a passive process, and the results are difficult to navigate when the student returns to the text later. In addition to helping students understand what to underline, teachers can invent their own system of symbols for quick annotation in the margins, such as:

• Star – Information that seems very important
• Exclamation point – Something you found surprising
• Check mark – Something you agree with
• X – Something you disagree with
• Question Mark – Something you don’t understand
• Heart – Something you can connect to personally
• V – New, important vocabulary word

Stay tuned for the final post in the Teachers College Literacy series, about best practices in writing instruction!

Literacy Lessons from Teachers College - Phonics

I recently attended an exciting two-day conference on literacy in the elementary and middle grades hosted by faculty from Columbia University’s Teachers College. Through lectures, readings, discussions, and collaborative group work I learned a great deal about the implications of current research on literacy assessment and instruction. I look forward to sharing what I learned about phonics, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and writing with readers of the Yellin Center’s blog!

Phonics instruction, which teaches children to appreciate the sounds that make up language and link those sounds to letters, is one of the first steps along the path to becoming a reader. It was, therefore, a fitting topic to begin the conference at Teachers College. Some of the main points covered were:

The Reading Wars

Beginning in 1870 and continuing for more than a century, two opposing schools of thought debated the best way to reading. Proponents of phonics instruction believed that teaching alphabetic coding skills was the best method. They felt that a systematic approach to the decoding process was the only way to achieve word recognition skills. Whole language disciples, on the other hand, believed that reading evolves naturally, like speech, when children are exposed to rich, high-print environments and that the focus of instruction should be on making meaning rather than on learning decoding procedures. Current research indicates that an either-or approach isn’t the answer, however.

What Works

Studies suggest that reading instruction should incorporate systematic, explicit phonics instruction alongside lessons about strategy use; in other words, good instruction should include elements of both phonics and whole-language.

Readers form connections between the spellings of words and the way they are pronounced. These connections are facilitated by an understanding of two things: 1) phonemic awareness, or the ability to understand the discreet sounds that make up language, and 2) knowledge of the alphabetic system. Put another way, word recognition is helped by phonics. But developing readers also rely on pre-existing knowledge about language, like knowing word meanings and grammatical sentence structures. This proficiency with language allows kids to use meaning to help them make predictions about words. For example, most children with no literacy knowledge could probably guess what word probably completes the sentence “Yesterday, David XXX a sandwich for lunch.”

Importantly, good instructors teach not only the rules but show beginning readers when and how to use them. Young children should have an arsenal of strategies ready at hand when they encounter an unknown word and should recognize when to use each one. If they can’t sound out the word, perhaps they can look at the pictures for help. If there are no pictures, they may be able to look at the first letter and think about the meaning of the sentence to guess what word probably belongs.

Unfortunately, no single curriculum is best for every student. Different kids will find it easier to be successful with different methods. But curriculum that provides a balance is likely to be most effective.

The Best Texts

Finally, studies show that students need to interact with various kinds of texts. So, controlled texts (books used only for instruction that contain words that follow carefully chosen patterns) are excellent instructional tools but should not be used in isolation. Children should have the chance to read authentic texts, too, across a variety of genres.

Stay tuned for additional posts about vocabulary, reading comprehension, and writing!