Teaching Reading with Read with Sara

DOn’t know that program — how old are the kids and what are you trying to work on?

The program consists of small story books that the kids work on for a week. They learn new vocabulary for the story. I teach elemenary grades (3-5). I would like to emphasize to them how to read for meaning and finding the main idea of the story, than just reading the story.

First, make flashcards with the alphabet letters on it (you can make them from di-cuts then paste them on index cards). Make sure your students know the sounds of all the letters then have them create words with the sounds they know. Little by little start introducing high frequency words to them and practice saying and writing them. From there just let your imagination go and be creative. Good Luck!!

You have to teach decoding skills of both the letters and the dipthongs. The series that you are talking about is Whole Language based and doesn’t really teach reading, just memorization. You want your students to be able to decode the words in order for them to read them. Do a search on this website for Phono-Graphix and if you want more information, email me directly.

If you read the story aloud to them, can they understand it and discuss it? Vocabulary’s a critical skill (a *serious* deficit among my remedial college students) — one thing I do with it is not let it fade after a week. I kept an ongoing list on my cart (I was a traveling teacher) and used those words a *lot* and the kids got points if they used them or heard them or read them and told me about it (and more points if they wrote down the word, where they heard it and what it meant in that context — but htese were middle schoolers, that could be a lot of writing for your guys!). I”ve got lots of vocab. ideas on my site at www.resourceroom.net.
BUT BUT BUT… the brutal FACT is that Shay is right about the decoding factor. Another real deficit among my remedial college kiddos is old fashioned reading accuracy. For lots of them, they take so long to figure out what the words *are* that they can’t fluently read and “hear” what they are reading. If they don’t have fluent word attack skills, they will *forever* be struggling at the “just read the story” stage unless they get to have the story for a week and a teacher to help them along. I’m sure *some* kids get those skills with lively, enriched practice — I just don’t meet them. Okay, I’m not so sure…