The One with Reading Tips

Hi there! I now am getting into the mode where I am trying more intentionally to teach my little ones a little bit of alphabet and reading skills. I thought I would share some of my top basic reading tips that I learned while teaching 1st grade/attending phonics seminars/being in college. Some of this might be way old news to you, but it might be good to know if you are a mom that doesn't have a background in elementary education. Here goes...

1. Stick with lowercase letters initially 
I'm not saying that you should avoid capital letters altogether. If you think about it, 90% of the letters we see in real life are....lowercase! As you teach your child letters I always recommend lowercase first. Why do manufacturers only make blocks and puzzles and stuff with capital letters? Beats me! I guess they seem more "primary"? Who knows. So, if you see any lowercase magnet letters at the store, snatch them up! They are a more rare find! Same thing with lowercase puzzles, etc. If you have things with capital letters, don't get rid of them though! There are lots of fun games that you can play in which you match the capital and lowercase letter together.

 (Foam lowercase puzzle for $1 at the dollar store, 

lowercase magnetic alphabet strips from Lakeshore on clearance!) 

2. Isolate the single sound of a letter.
What I mean by this is when you are telling your child what sound the letter makes, don't add an "uh" sound to the end. This is a super pet peeve to some teachers/reading professionals!

For example: /m/ says "mmm", not "muh"

              /b/  says "b", not "buh"

           / t / says "t", not "tuh"

If you add the "uh" sound to the end of each letter sound, it is going to be very hard for your child to be able to decode (sound out) words. For example, if we added "uh" to letters, the word 'cat' would be sounded out like "cuh-ah-tuh". This is why some kids have a hard time sounding out words. (I sure as heck don't know what a "cuhahtuh" is!)
I attended workshops in which the lecturer made us practice just isolating the initial sound. It's tricky! Don't feel dumb if you have to practice. It feels like you are trying to say the letter and somebody interrupts you and cuts you off. Sounds like," /m/ and /z/ and /s/ " are a lot easier than sound like, /j/ and /b/ and such. Oh well. It helps kids read!

3. Teach the short vowel sound before the long vowel sound. 
Long vowels are when the letter says it's name. "a says a"  and "i says i"  and so on. Pretty simple.
It's best to teach the short vowels first because they are trickier to remember.

/a/ says "ah" as in apple

/e/ says "eh" as in elephant

/i/ says "ih" as in igloo

/o/ says "oh" as in octopus

/u/ says "uh" as in umbrella

Whats tricky to find are alphabet books and flash cards that teach short vowels first. Many have long i (ice cream) rather than short i (iguana, igloo, etc). The reason we teach short vowel sounds first is so that your kids can start reading CVC words!

4. Once they know letter sounds, work on CVC words!
CVC stands for "consonant, vowel, consonant". They are the most basic words like, "cat, pet, dog, pig, run, cup" and so on. These CVC words always have a short vowel in the middle. You can search on Pinterest for all sorts of fun CVC word learning ideas! You can also teach them in the form of word families. The  _ug family has mug and tug and dug and rug and all sorts of other words. Sometimes it is easier for kids to recognize the end of the word and easily insert a new initial letter.

5. Some words cannot be "sounded out".
If you tried to phonetically sound out the word "was" or "the", they don't follow the typical phonics rules. These words are typically referred to as "sight words", in which the child should just recognize the word by sight, rather than trying to decode it. These words are best taught by memorization games. You can do things as simple as flash cards all the way to sight word Twister or other fun ideas. Again, Pinterest has great sight word games and ideas to fit your needs.



I hope these helped! They aren't necessarily ground breaking concepts, but they are here in one place for you! Love you guys!