Strategies
Strategies for summer reading for children with Reading Difficulties
The parent plays a critical role in the child’s education during the summer and especially if the child has Reading Difficulties. Without the parent’s help, children are more likely to forget what they learned last year. The parents need to help their children remember what they learned in school. That way the child can start next year caught up or even ahead of the other students in class. Parents are required to encourage the children to read for pleasure and not the same as the pressure they get in the classroom.
Summer Strategies to help children with Reading Difficulties remember that they learned in school:
Summer Strategies to help children with Reading Difficulties remember that they learned in school:
- Give them material that motivates them to read, even though they might find it hard to do. (eg. comic books, mystery stories etc)
- Support them as they read. Read their book aloud to them, help them decode, and make it easy for them to get the meaning.
- Give them easy reading. Summer is supposed to be relaxed. Let them succeed and get absorbed in the book.
- When you read with them, make it your goal to enjoy the book together.
- Use technology. If you have a computer, equip it with software that reads aloud.
Playing with word sounds: Stretch and Shorten
When children begin to read and sound out words, they slowly say each sound in a word (b-e-d) and then they say the sounds quickly together so that they can “read” the word (bed). Teachers often refer to this as blending in reading. Blending which means combining sounds and segmenting which means separating sounds are phonological awareness skills. Phonological awareness skills are necessary for children while learning to read. An important part of developing the child as a reader is by developing his phonological awareness. According to many research studies, it’s proven that kids who have weak phonological awareness also have weak reading skills.
There are numerous of ways that families can work on to develop their children’s phonological skills and most activities don’t even require a paper or a pencil. As the child to listen to you while you stretch our sounds in words. Make the child say the word at regular speed. At the beginning, it’s best to start with short two-sound words then work your way up to longer words. Your main goal is to make it fun to learn, if the child is finding difficulties in a word, try using a word with fewer sounds. Once the child has gotten some practice in saying the word at regular speed, it’s time to switch roles. Now is the time for the child to say a word slowly, stretching out each sound, and you to guess what word is being said. |
Here are some words to stretch and shorten:
2 sounds at (ă–t) up (ŭ–p) it (ĭ–t) off (ŏ–f) 3 sounds map (m–ă–p) lip(l–ĭ–p) night (n–ī–t) van (v–ă–n) 4 sounds mint (m–ĭ–n–t) club (k–l–ŭ–b) speak (s–p–ē–k) groan (g–r–ō–n) 5 sounds stroke (s–t–r–ō–k) stream (s–t–r–ē–m) frost (f–r–ŏ–s–t) plant (p–l–ă–n–t) |
Developing Fluency
Fluency is the ability to read a text correctly and quickly. Fluency is important because reading fluency is a child’s ability to read a book or other text correctly yet quickly and with expression. When a student is fluent at reading, he doesn’t have to stop and “decode” each word. He tends to read most of the words automatically. This allows the reader to focus his attention on what the story or the text is talking about. Fluency is critically important because it is the decoding words and understand what has been read. Through practice fluency can be gradually developed.
Alphabet Matching
It's important to teach the children about alphabets because letter naming s a strong predictor of later reading success and it helps children develop their understanding of the alphabetic principle. Also, learning letter names helps children learn letter sounds.
Example: Matching Uppercase and Lowercase letters
Matching Letters allows students to know the difference between the uppercase letters and the lowercase letters. There are loads of activities parents play with their children to develop this skill. One of the activities consists of cards and matching the uppercase mothers with their lowercase babies.. The parents will print out Uppe case and Lowercase letters and cut them into cards. Next, the parent will ask the child to help the "Mama animals" which are the uppercase letters find their "babies" which are the lowercase letters.
List group label
List group label is both a vocabulary and a comprehension strategy. Which helps kids develop various of skills. Some of these skills are develop categorizing skills, build background knowledge, activate critical thinking skills and grow vocabulary. The video bellow is a strategy that parents can use with their children at home. Parents aren't limited in the amount of strategies and activities to do at home, they can always ask the child's teacher of the strategies they use at school and use the same strategy at home.