Do you have learners who sound out CVC words, but do it oooh sooo slowwwlly? Cat isn’t “cat.” It’s “/k/ /ă/ /t/.” Or maybe they mix up their middle vowels. Sip becomes “sap.” I’m currently working with a group of sweet, bright first graders for about 20 minutes each morning before they start the school day. Before our first session, their teachers had told me that they needed help with basic reading…
How to get started with literature circles
This post contains affiliate links. Have you ever been part of a book club? A number of years ago (pre-kids and gray hair), my sister taught kindergarten and I taught first and second grade. Though both of us had started our careers with older learners, we loved our young students – and we constantly sought out ways to improve our teaching. But we also knew that our content knowledge was…
Free hands-on printable for words with blends
Last week I had the privilege of working with a small group of first graders who need help with basic phonics skills. Their teacher is teaching beginning blends to the class, but these children needed extra, focused help in a small group. I gave each of them a phonemic awareness assessment (the one included in my online course, Teaching Every Reader), and I learned that they struggle with hearing beginning blends. I…
15 Free memory games for short a word families
I’m always looking for new ways to teach short a word families. This matching game was a big hit at our house! Now that she knows all her letters and sounds and has other important pre-reading skills, I’ve been teaching my daughter (4 years, 9 months) to read short vowel words. I’m not going to tell you she’s been jumping up and down about it. In fact, until recently, she…
How to teach blending sounds
This post about blending sounds contains affiliate links. I’m currently teaching my younger daughter to read. She knows all her letters, most of her sounds, and has all the pre-reading skills I recommend before teaching a child to read. But we’ve been hitting a little bit of a wall with blending sounds. She’ll see a word like this: wag, and she’ll say the sounds /w/ /a/ /g/ … “Pat?” Woah ……
Free cut & paste worksheets for short a word families
I’m teaching my daughter to read CVC words, so I created these simple worksheets as a way to get extra practice. Since she is only in preschool, she does these worksheets with me, and only after we’ve done a more hands-on blending activity. I cut out the words at the bottom of each page (of course, she could do this herself, but since I knew the activity would be challenging I…
15 Free printable sight word games (for all the Dolch lists!)
My blog subscribers have been asking for sight word games – so I created a set of games that feature all the Dolch sight words … from the preprimer list all the way to the third grade list. I even created an editable version so you can type in any words you’d like! There are 5 main lists for the Dolch sight words: preprimer, primer, first, second, and third grade. Since…
Free clip cards for ending sounds
Teach your learners to identify ending sounds with these fun clip cards! My four-year-old does really well identifying the beginning sounds in words, but ending sounds are a bit trickier. My match the ending sound cards helped quite a bit, but I’ll keep creating activities until this is easy for her. Today I’m sharing a set of free ending sound clip cards. I showed my daughter each card and helped her…
How to teach kids to have thoughtful discussions about books
Do 3rd to 5th grade teachers have time to read aloud to their students? Last week I talked about the importance of interactive read alouds with kids in the intermediate grades. One reader let me know that “this method of teaching is quite common and not something new.” While I agree that discussing books with our students is nothing new (and I’m positive that some teachers do it often and…
Check out this fun way to teach reading comprehension in grades 3-5!
This post will show you a fun way to build reading comprehension in grades 3, 4, and 5! When you think about teaching reading comprehension in the intermediate grades, what comes to mind? Worksheets? Graphic organizers? Reading comprehension passages? I’ve used all of the above when building reading comprehension, but today I’m sharing something simpler and, frankly, more fun. Picture books. Yes, picture books! You’ll be amazed at how a…
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