Before you head out, make up a long list of various things your children are likely to see from the car (or bus or train) window. For example: a license plate beginning with the letter C, an old tire, a tow truck, an overpass, a city that is named after a woman, a McDonalds restaurant, a silo, and so on.

Give the children the long list to work on together or divide up the list so that each child is looking for different items. Or let them make up lists for each other.

For children who can’t yet read, make a picture list by cutting out magazine pictures of signs and other common roadside attractions, like cows and pay telephones. Glue the cutouts on a piece of paper.

The children cross items of their lists or circle the pictured objects as they find them. If they wish, they can call out when they see something so the other players can corroborate. Let the winner of the backseat scavenger hunt be the first one out of the car when you stop to stretch your legs, or the one who gets to ride in the front seat for a while.

From: Reading is Fundamental

Post from: Blisstree

Backseat Scavenger Hunt: Learn the Alphabet!

Words, Words, Words- Consonant Blends and Digraphs, Triple Consonant Blends, Short Vowels, Long Vowels

Consonant Cluster Word Lists and worksheets

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What is a blend?

1. Have your child read aloud every night.
2. When you are finished reading point out how to spell and sound out words and patterns.
3. Stop often while reading and ask your child to retell you what they read in their own words.
4. You can also ask your child to predict what will happen next.
5. Pause and ask questions to check for understanding.
6. If your child misses a word pause and help him or her through sounding it out.

Post from: Blisstree

Homework Reading Tips

In the human language, a phoneme is the smallest unit of sound and is one of the MOST important aspects of learning to read because without learning how to isolate individual sounds a child can not learn to connect units of sound or isolate units within larger groups of sounds.

For example, isolated sounds are connected to written letter forms and children can easily match the same beginning or ending sounds (unless there are some learning disabilities like auditory processing).

Cat, bat, mat,

Note that phonemic awareness is auditory and does not involve words in print (although the sounds are connected to the symbols).

Phonemic awareness worksheets

LeapDesk Workstation teaches phonemic awareness

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Phoneme Use in the English Language

Take for example the word marry (as in, to marry someone).

1. ma-rry

2. mar-ry

In the first example the pronunciation is May-re but in the second it is mar-ee, which is correct.

Now, to learn how to find the number of syllables and to count them please head to this site on Syllable Rules (because I can’t summarize the entire thing without copyright issues).

Post from: Blisstree

Reading Activity: Sound it Out, Counting Syllables

If children can’t decode words then they can’t work their way effectively through increasingly harder texts. What happens then is that their frustration level rises and teachers and parents start seeing them struggle and fall behind. Comments like “I hate this” or “I can’t do this” start to become common place.

Decoding is the ability to read a single word in isolation even if the meaning of the word is not there. A later grade student should have skills to decode a word, no matter the size of the word.

Word decoding goes back to phonics, phonemes, and syllables and those things were taught to kids in early elementary school. So, a child struggling with 7th or 8th grade text and is just now having trouble with decoding is not going to want to start all over again with learning to decode words using “phonics”.

Unfortunately, that is what is needed to help the student be a successful reader. When I was working as a reading specialist, just after I got my Master’s Degree, I worked with many students who had this exact problem. I explicitly taught them how to decode words, taught them sight words that they never learned, and showed them how to teach themselves how to be successful.

Post from: Blisstree

Is Word Decoding Important?

When I was teaching middle school I would incorporate predictions into every reading log and students would predict at the end of each chapter or reading session, even if it was as simple as “the girl will go into the house”.

Another activity you can do is make predictions on what will happen in the story based just upon the title. This best works with an entire class.

The final activity that I loved to use is to make predictions as we were reading as an entire class. I would make a t-chart on the board for the class with predictions on the left and evidence on the right. Before we began reading I would ask students what their predictions for the chapter were. As we were reading students would add evidence that proved their predictions came true or evidence their predictions were disproved.

In sum, predictions work well to make students think about what they are reading. Active thinking and active reading make active learners.

Post from: Blisstree

Prediction Activities

So, when you hear the infamous term “Hooked on Phonics” it means that someone is hooked onto learning the connection of sounds.

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What are Phonics?

The learner/reader must use context clues to help him find the missing word in the reading passage. The cloze works not only on reading comprehension but also sight words and language mastery.

Cloze activities are used as testing and as daily activities.

It is used:

• to identify students’ knowledge and understanding of the reading process
• to determine which cuing systems readers effectively employ to construct meaning from print
• to assess the extent of students’ vocabularies and knowledge of a subject
• to encourage students to monitor for meaning while reading
• to encourage students to think critically and analytically about text and content

To prepare the cloze:

• Select a length appropriate and grade level appropriate passage.
• Leave the first and last sentences of the piece in tact.
• Carefully select the words for omission using a word count formula (like every sixth word). To assess students’ knowledge of the topic or their abilities to use semantic cues, delete content words which carry meaning, such as nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs. To assess students’ use of syntactic cues, delete some conjunctions, prepositions and auxiliary words.
• Make all blanks equal length.
• Encourage students to fill in all blanks.
• There is no time limit but note the time.
• Ask students to reread the passage when they are done.

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What is a Cloze Worksheet?

A Word Wall, by definition is a wall of working words within the classroom and all of the words are related in some way (sight words, action words, animals, etc).They are used to teach a language concept. A teacher may choose to have one large word wall and several smaller word walls which concentrate on different concepts (ie: history, geography, math).

Example of word wall cards from ABC Teach

Word Wall Resource Page including Activities, guidelines, and several resources.

The Best Books for Parents and Teachers:

• Making Word Walls Work: A Complete, Systematic Guide With Routines, Grade-Perfect Word Lists, and Reproducible Word Cards to Help All Children Master High-Frequency Words
• Teaching Reading and Writing with Word Walls (Grades K-3)

Photo from http://www.kconnect.com/kc-wordwalls.html

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The Wonders of Word Walls