How to Teach Reading

Start teaching a child to read by following these simple steps!

Once students have memorized the sounds for the focus letters we start blending two and three letters to read words. When my students are reading three-letter words easily we move on to reading a few short phrases and sentences. Then it is time to teach another set of sounds. Take as much time as your child needs and only move onto the next step when they are reading easily and accurately.

Be patient and practice a few minutes each day. Play the letter sound song video before each lesson. The daily routine is letter sound song, teach and review the focus letter sounds, practice blending with the word video and games, and finally read connected text.

2. Teach the Focus Sounds

If you are tutoring a first or second grader in reading, they may already be familiar with a few letter sounds. However, in order to fill in all gaps, you should start from scratch. Older students will also benefit from this comprehensive phonics review.

Beging by modeling how to pronounce the letter sound, /a/ /a/ apple. Have your reader point to each as they say the simple chant. Repeat this process with each new letter. It is important to model how to say each individual phoneme (unit of sound) without adding /uh/ on the end. After each session of practice, work with the student on proper handwriting techniques. Dictate the sounds for the letter sounds so that the student can apply reading to print.

We focus heavily on the lowercase letters. Writing is mostly written in lowercase letters and this helps to kids jump into reading words faster. We will continue to expose students to the capital letters throughout the program.

When the student is able to easily and accurately say each letter sound, they are decoding! Move onto two and three-letter words.

4. Review With Word Lists

Model how to blend two and three sounds. Have the student read and provide assistance as needed. Have the student read down and across from the word lists. You can also write these words on index cards.
Complete dictation exercises after reading. 

6. Play Slow-Paced Games

After students know a few letter sounds and can blend sounds to read simple words, begin introducing high-frequency words. We start with the words a and I because they are easy to teach and learn. Well, that might be debatable, but that’s been our experience so far!
Practice decoding with slow-paced games before you start doing fluency exercises. We have several games to choose from, but if you’re not a subscribing member, you can create a tic tac toe board easily. It’s important to build accurate reading skills before doing speed drills.

7. Read Phrases and Sentences

Now, your student can read a couple of little books! The books are organized into short phrases before the student reads the entire sentence. I recommend reading the book in single page mode. Click on the arrows to view the book on full screen mode, then click on the 3 dots to view one page at a time.  Remember to keep things simple. Reading will continue to get complicated, so be patient with your young reader. Moving from step 1 to step 7 will take a few days or weeks. Review any skill as many times as needed. The next step is to teach a new vowel and a new set of consonants. We teach short o and n, b, r, and g next.

Until next time, patience and practice! Angelica