Category: Reading & Literacy

Posted on

Why Understanding Onset and Rime is Essential to Reading

Onset and rime are terms that technically explain the phonological units of a spoken syllable. Syllables are normally split up into two parts, the onset and the rime.

Onset-  the initial phonological unit of any word which contains the initial consonant or consonant blend. However, not all words have onsets.

Rime- the string of letters that follow the onset which contains the vowel and any final consonants.

E.g. In the word cat, c- is the onset and -at is the rime.

Understanding onset and rime, and rhyming, builds learners’ awareness of common word parts. Exposing learners to word families lays a foundation for automaticity in decoding and helps with spelling and writing. Beginning to blend and segment by onset and rime sets the foundation for the advanced phonological awareness assignments of blending and segmenting by phoneme, leading to decoding.

Why Do We Use Onset and Rime

Onset and rime are used to improve phonological awareness by helping kids learn about word families. Phonetical awareness is an essential skill used to hear sounds, syllables, and words in speech. This can help learners decode new words when reading and make it easier for them to spell words when writing.

What are Word Families?

Word families are clusters of words that have a common feature. E.g. cat, hat, sat, and mat is a family of words with the sound and letter combination “at.” Being able to recognize common phonetic sounds is the foundation for creating strong spelling skills.

There are many combinations of word families, these are 37 of the most common:

Ack, ake, all, ale, an, ame, ain, ank, ap, ash, at, ate, aw, ay, eat, ell, est, ice, ick, ight, ill, ide, ill, in, ine, ing, ip, ink, it, ock, op, oke, ore, ot, uck, ug, unk and ump.

What strategies do you use to teach kids about onset and rime?

Posted on

Using Pre-Reading Stage to Develop Great Readers

 Pre-reading is a stage typically included in lessons that aim at helping learners develop receptive skills. It is the pre, while and post sequence of activities to help learners become better readers and listeners.

The objective of this stage is to help learners prepare for reading or listening to a text by dealing with the topic, its genre or language.

There are several ways in which this can be done, some of the many common being:

  • Stimulating learners’ schemata or prior knowledge of the topic through image exploitation, elicitation, etc.
  • Pre-teaching vocabulary is essential for the comprehension of the content.
  • Having learners engage in the subject through focused interaction (discussions, info-gap etc.).
  • Encouraging predictions related to the context and material of the content.

Pre-listening or pre-reading activities mirror real-life situations to some extent. For example, the  brain of a fluent  reader  knows what to expect when we  read a magazine the same way that our brain prepares itself and evokes prior knowledge when the newscaster says, “Now let’s hear about the weather!”

Some teachers think pre-teaching vocabulary may be a way of ‘cheating’ because learners are unlikely to obtain a list of keywords before reading the content or listening to something in real life. Others believe that pre-teaching can be helpful if the words being taught are essential to comprehending the fundamental meaning of the message and can lessen learner anxiety.

An effective pre-listening or pre-reading stage  has one or more of the characteristics below:

  • It infuses learners with the topic and generates interest in the content.
  • It focuses learners’ attention on characteristics of the specific text rather than the broad topic.
  • It gives opportunities for learner-learner interaction instead of relying solely on teacher-whole group patterns.
  • It allows learners to recall (or learn) vocabulary that is in the documented or written text.
  • It provides awareness of the characteristics of the genre.

Example of a pre-reading learning experience:

Learners from an elementary group are going to read a listing on Craigslist. Some possible pre-reading activities are:

  • Displaying the Craigslist logo and asking learners what they know about it.
  • Asking learners what they expect to see in a Craigslist listing.
  • Displaying an image of a list and asking small groups to brainstorm characteristics they expect it to have.
  • Asking learners to match images of different ads to noun phrases.

How can I use it in a lesson?

Many modern textbooks already involve pre-reading or pre-listening activities, typically in the form of a question for group discussion or an activity that teaches new words. Teacher’s books also involve procedures that can be used before listening or reading.

If you want to use authentic content or design your own pre-listening activities for content in the coursebook, here is some advice:

  1. Listen to or read the content yourself and think about its characteristics (genre, purpose, intended audience, level of formality, etc.).
  1. Think about the prior knowledge that your learners have on the topic or genre.
  1. Try to predict challenges learners might have when reading the content.
  1. Create  questions or learning experiences  that will  help learners discuss  what they know about the topic, predict possible contents of the text, or minimize the issues you’ve predicted
Posted on

The Six Basic Story Elements

pass or fail

Story elements are foundational features that make a story, such as characters, setting, problem, and solution. These pieces work together to form the plot. Some lists of story elements only consist of 5 of these, other lists have 7 or 8, but the following story elements are the most foundational.

Characters – Characters are the central figures in any story. Of course, they can be people; they can be people and animals, or even cars. Any actor in the story who has thoughts and motivation and takes action is a character.

Setting – Where the story takes place. Many stories have a single setting: a room or a city or mountain. Some stories move from one setting to another as the characters move through time and space.

Plot – The plot includes the events that take place in this story. They don’t always occur linearly, and often we see them from various points of view, but they are the trials and tribulations the characters live through and participate in, driving them – and the story – to its conclusion.

Conflict – In a story, conflict is the battle that happens between opposing forces. Conflict can be external: Like Lucy pulling that football away from Charlie Brown just as he is about to kick a field goal.  Conflict can be internal: Charlie Brown is trying to decide if he wants to trust Lucy this time. It’s the conflict that makes the story exciting

Resolution – The resolution is just the ending of the story. It’s the tying up of each of the loose ends we followed as we read along. The treasure is found. The friends reunite. The lost dog comes home. A satisfying resolution is a reward we get for reading a story through to the conclusion.

Theme – The theme in a story is harder for younger kids to understand because it is abstract. The theme of a is the main idea the author is attempting to get across. It’s the “truth” the story is designed to demonstrate.

What did I miss?

Posted on

RTI And Reading: Response To Intervention In A Nutshell

Every year, thousands of students are diagnosed with learning disabilities. For these students, it isn’t easy to study, learn and retain information. In fact, they often struggle drastically with their school work if their disability is not picked up on from an early age. 

For this reason, experts have coined and developed the term ‘Response To Intervention.’ In this article, we will be discussing exactly what this means and why it is so important. More so, we will mention a few ways teachers can use this approach to benefit students with learning disabilities. 

What Is Response To Intervention (RTI)?

In short, Response To Intervention (RTI) is an approach in which teachers screen, track and monitor students who have learning disabilities. More so, this includes providing optimal support and guidance to these students from very early on – this is all done to improve their learning and meet their academic needs. 

Before this approach was used, many students who had these disabilities could not keep up with their classmates. This can have a massive effect on their confidence and future. For this reason, teachers had to do something to provide them with a better opportunity. 

Screening

The first thing that teachers need to do to provide better opportunities to students who struggle with learning disabilities is to identify students with these troubles. 

More so, they must monitor these students from very early on – this is done to ensure that the students have a good understanding of basic skills, such as producing the different sounds. 

Teaching

When teachers know exactly which students have learning disabilities, they can alter their teaching methods for these particular students. Often, one of the biggest challenges that these students face is learning to read. 

For this reason, educators should be very supportive when developing the reading skills of these students. The RTI approach discusses the importance of intervention – in other words, teachers should also be monitoring students and intervene when they notice a mistake. 

On top of this, it is recommended that teachers use what is known as progress monitoring. This involves giving the students small tests to track the progress made during lessons. If little progress is made, the teacher will need to change up their teaching methods accordingly. 

Concluding Thoughts

Teaching students who struggle with learning disabilities is a significant challenge for educators. For optimal success, they should use the RTI approach – this involves screening and monitoring students who have these disabilities. More so, these disabilities must be identified from an early age.

Posted on

Teaching Kids About Story Elements

Think about a story you loved. It can be a piece of fiction or a whole novel. What comes to mind first? Maybe the characters or what happened to them. Where the story took place, maybe. When it took place. Challenges the characters faced. All of these aspects of the story come together to shape the fictional world in your mind as you read. These are the “story elements.”

What are story elements?

Think of story elements like the building contents that go into constructing a home. If you’ve ever driven by a construction site, then you’ve seen the piles of contents nearby: boards, piping, shingles. They’re just heaps of raw contents at first, but a talented craftsman – the carpenter – takes each of these, shapes them to fit the needs of this project, and then uses them to create a solid structure.

The same is true when an author writes a story. Each story starts with the same building blocks from the simplest picture book to a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The author takes the story elements that each story must have and then uses them as scaffolding to hold up the story up.

Children are typically well aware of the characters in their favorite books and the events that happened to them. But, to understand a story, we need to look deeper into each of its nuances and depth. To the many different parts of that house, our carpenter’s  building adds dimension; the story’s elements add dimension.

Story elements let us understand what our favorite characters are going through, help us understand why those characters make their choices, and let us enter the story world, pulling us into its unique place and time.

Activities for teaching story elements

Knowing what story elements are and how to identify them can help your kid get the most out of the stories they read. Here are a 3 activities to help them identify the story elements in some of their favorite books.

Build a story framework – Explain to your kid that they’re going to build a house from what they know about the story they just read. Give them construction paper and let them cut out the house’s building contents, like flooring, windows, and walls. As they build the house, have them label the story elements. The floor can represent the theme, the walls can represent the setting, and the windows, the resolution. After the house is complete, they can even cut out the main characters and place them inside.

Become an investigative reporter – Each reporter knows the 5 W’s of good reporting: who, what, where, when, and why. Let your kid put on a journalist’s hat and “investigate” a story they’ve just read, answering the questions the 5 W’s ask. Once they’ve done that, show them how they translate into story elements. Who did it? The characters. What did they do? That’s the plot. When and where did the story take place? You guessed it, setting. And why? That’s our conflict, and the conflict drives the characters to make the choices they make.

Puzzle it out – a blank puzzle with 5 or six large pieces. Label each part with the story elements you plan to discuss, then explain to your kid that like each good puzzles, the elements of a story fit neatly together to make a whole. Now have them write some details from a story they’ve read on each piece. On the “character” piece, they can put the names of the main characters. On the “setting” piece, they can write a few words to explain where the story took place. Once they have written something on each piece, they can put the puzzle together, and you can emphasize how each of the pieces was needed. If one was missing, the puzzle would not be finished.

Posted on

Summer Reading Loss Amongst Children and Ways to Curb it

“Once students return from summer break, so much of our time is spent on reviewing stuff that was taught during the previous year.” Complaints like these are common from teachers who find out that students do not read at home and fall back on their reading skills while they are at home. 

While students are away from formal classroom settings and are not revising the studies, they go through a summer reading loss. Continue reading and learn what summer reading loss is, why it occurs, and how parents can ensure that their child does not struggle with this.

What is Summer Reading Loss?

Summer reading loss is the deterioration of children’s reading skills during summer vacation when children are not participating in formal literacy programs. Studies show that all students who do not read at home suffer from this loss, while low-performing students and those students belonging to a lower socioeconomic class are most impacted by this.

Why Does Summer Reading Loss Occur?

The question arises that if a student has already learned how to read, why is it that a break from studying during the summer holidays reverses this progress? It is because reading is a skill like any other, and mastering it needs practice. 

When low-performing students stop practicing, their progress is quickly hampered. Students from low-income households are particularly at risk because they often do not have access to reading materials outside class. In some cases, even when children wish to improve their reading proficiency, parents themselves are not aware of the benefits of reading at home, and therefore fail to provide reading materials to their children. 

Ways to Curb Summer Reading Loss:

Parents must realize the importance of reading with children and make sure that they have the reading materials to provide to their children. Here are some ways that parents, teachers, and the school could work together to ensure that students do not suffer from summer reading loss. 

  • The schools should conduct workshops for parents to communicate the importance of reading. 
  • Teachers could make a list of the books available at the local library that would interest the kids and share it with parents, 
  • Teachers could assign students the task of reading three to five books and sharing their thoughts about it once school reopens. 
  • Parents can watch movies based on books with their children that may pique their kids’ interest in the books. 
  • Parents could strengthen their children’s reading skills by asking them to read things around them, such as grocery lists, cereal boxes, menu cards, etc. 
  • Elder siblings could read to and with younger siblings.

Concluding Thoughts

Summer reading loss is a common occurrence, but it is something that can be avoided. Small steps from teachers and parents can ensure that the loss does not occur. Instead, when students return from summer vacations, their reading skills could be polished further, and they could kickstart the new academic year with invigorated spirit and enthusiasm.

Posted on

A Guide to Developmental Reading Programs

After years of education, the ability to easily read, digest, and comprehend content may still be a struggle for some learners. Suppose learners identify that they lack in vocabulary, comprehension, or other reading skills. In that case, a developmental reading program can prepare the learners for the demands of college classwork or for advancing in a chosen trade industry or career field. A developmental reading program helps learners catch up if they lack the basics of reading-based skills.

A developmental reading program is a remedial instruction in reading skills and strategies. It can take an average reader and extend their skills and respect for reading and extend the knowledge about subjects to which they are drawn. A good developmental reading program teaches pupils strategies they can utilize when reading resource books, articles, textbooks, and other sources to expand their education. It will prepare the learner for college coursework or other higher education pursuits.

Unfortunately, several high school learners graduate without the good reading, comprehension, and vocabulary skills they need to matriculate to college or excel in the workforce. Additional reading skills can be obtained through a college class or a community-based supplemental reading program.

A good developmental reading program’s foundation is to help learners identify and learn to utilize text features. It will help prepare a learner to approach a text by scanning, questioning, reading, reciting, and reviewing a passage or chapter. The educator will educate learners on how to first scan a text and then read titles, subtitles, and accompanying photo captions to learn the text’s basic knowledge. The learner should be better able to understand and remember particular points of the text. Rudimentary reading capabilities are necessary before a learner begins a developmental reading program, such as basic vocabulary, decoding, and phonemic skills.

The training and experience that a developmental reading program provides can propel a learner into future success in college and their chosen career field. The program should be utilized if a learner is slightly behind in reading comprehension or has low college entrance exam scores. College classes can require substantial amounts of time digesting info in piles of textbooks. By addressing the issue early, a learner can navigate their college career with greater ease.

A college usually requires that a learner complete a developmental reading course within the first semester or by the end of the first educational year. They may not count toward the classes needed to graduate in your specified major. Discuss compensation or learner aid with the admissions office or an academic advisor if you need to take remedial reading outside of the classwork you need to complete your degree. There may be developmental reading programs provided at no cost via a church, community-based charity, or another local outlet.

Posted on

An Overview of Leveled Reading Systems

Looking for information about leveled reading systems? Well, we have you covered. In this article, we will provide you will a brief overview of leveled reading systems.

Grade Level Equivalent

The Grade Level Equivalent denotes the readability of the text by grade. It is a manifestation of the grade level at which a learner reading on-grade could read the book independently. For instance, a learner who is in the first month of 4th grade and reading on-grade would be matched to a book with a Reading Level of 4.1. Each grade level has a .1 to .9 range.

Guided Reading Level

The guided reading level system gives a  precise literacy level for books. This alphabetic system has many levels within each grade level. For example, grade 2 is equivalent to guided literacy levels J through M. This allows you to tailor your reading program accurately to a wide range of reading capabilities. Each book is carefully assessed before being leveled, and educator input is considered in the leveling process.

The Lexile Framework® for Reading

The Lexile Framework, a better numerical filter, assesses a book’s difficulty and matches reader ability and content difficulty based on the numeric Lexile scale. This system from education assessment company MetaMetrics targets books on the right literacy level for the kid’s ability. It is predicated on an algorithm that measures vocabulary and sentence length.

DRA

Developmental Reading Assessment is a reading assessment tool that identifies students’ independent literacy levels in grades K–8. Using the DRA numerical scale, you can assess reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. Learners are near, at, or above grade level, below grade level, or significantly below grade level. Once you know the learner’s DRA score, you can match that score with books appropriately.

Grade Level

Filtering books by grade level is a coherent system. If you utilize a basal series to teach reading, you probably utilize this system. If you’re looking for science books for a unit of study, a grade level search is precise enough.

Reading Recovery

Reading Recovery is a one-on-one remediation program designed to supplement reading instruction for learners in grades K–2 who are slow to read. You can compare Reading Recovery and guided literacy levels; Reading Recovery levels have limited usefulness when used by themselves.

Unleveled books

If you can’t identify a level for a book, compare it to similar leveled books. Remember, you will need to assess whether a book is developmentally appropriate for a given learner or group. For example, just because a young learner can read a book about the Holocaust does not mean the subject is appropriate for that learner. Another example is a book written in slang may be difficult for learners to comprehend.

Concluding thoughts

Observe your unique learners, the subject matter, your colleagues, and your learners’ parents. Be flexible and trust your judgment. A well-informed educator who understands leveling systems and knows their learners will make wise choices about books.

Posted on

Teaching Children To Learn the Theme of a Book

To become a competent reader, being able to read and comprehend the words on the page can only take you so far. Although getting your child to establish the story’s theme may seem a bit advanced, it is an essential component to encourage them to read more, as it increases their appreciation of the story. 

How do you get children to understand the theme, though? 

Teach It As an Element Of Other Reading Skills 

You should include the theme as a component of comprehension after reading. Get your child to write out a short description of what they just read, highlighting characters, the basic plot, and what they think the ‘idea’ of the story is.

At first, your child will most likely stick to rewriting some of the critical parts of the story that they just read, which will result in them producing lengthy paragraphs of description. 

The aim is to develop these paragraphs into more comprehensive summaries and narrow them down into a few sentences. The shorter the description, the closer they are to understanding how to identify the theme. 

You can go through this process with the child a few times before leaving them alone to do it themselves. You can encourage them to stop at a few points throughout the book to write a few brief sentences of summary for slightly longer books. 

Challenge Them 

To illicit briefer descriptions from your child, try limiting the number of words they can use in their summary. Start at maybe 15 words max, and narrow it down from there. 

You should also try to get your child to read various books with varying key themes and plot lines. This gives your child the chance to establish what makes the idea of the book stand out. 

It could also be good to ask your child what the key themes are verbally instead of writing them down all the time. 

If They Are Struggling

If they are struggling, try writing out the key themes on index cards, such as main ideas, plots, characters, etc. Then, get the child to reorganize these cards into a comprehensive order. 

Step Back 

At the start of this process, make sure you are heavily involved to supply the questions and point them in the right direction. Gradually take a step back and encourage them to take on the analysis responsibility themselves. Once they know and understand the key questions, they will know what they are required to look for. 

Concluding Thoughts

The theme should not be something that children are considering individually. They should also consider character, plot, etc. This will allow them to develop an idea of the theme organically.

Posted on

Essential Comprehension Strategies For Children

Children need to be able to learn comprehension when they are in their early stages. This has more to do with the fact that many students struggle with comprehension. 

The instructors must be able to come up with a way to ensure that children can comprehend reading comprehensions much better. Here, we take a look at some strategies that can be implemented for this. 

Making Use of Background Knowledge

One of the best reading comprehension strategies is making use of background knowledge. This means that children can learn through associations they make about things they already know about. 

There is a process for activating the background knowledge of a child. For instance, they could have experienced something similar to the word they are reading about and the situation in the comprehension. This way, the children can read comprehensions while relating them to the experiences that they have had earlier on.  

Enabling Children to Ask Questions

It is vital to make sure that children understand what they are reading. You can lead with questions from the comprehension so that you can figure out how much they can comprehend. It is essential to understand that issues for reading interventions exist for children of all ages. 

You need to make sure that you target the right problem areas and then help children develop from there. Enable the children to ask themselves questions as they go about reading comprehension. Doing so will help them better understand the context of the situation. 

Helping Children Make Inferences And Predictions

Another important strategy to consider when helping children understand reading comprehensions is their ability to make inferences and predictions. While most comprehensions are pretty vague, you need to help the child make assumptions from it.

They must learn to understand how to pick out some conclusions from what they have read and understand properly. The conclusions will help ensure that they can understand the meaning and make predictions based on the meanings. 

Learning How To Summarize

Lastly, they must learn how to summarize what they have read. It is crucial to help them focus on the reading process for them to figure out what they are reading. By asking for the right information and making the proper inferences, they will summarize all that was told to them in the reading comprehension. 

Concluding Thoughts

All in all, there are many methods through which you can enable children to work on their reading comprehension skills. By implementing various reading apps and tools, you can ensure that your child learns how to read and summarize comprehensions properly.