Reading strategies- A Tip for Early Readers
Learning to read is an exciting milestone for preschoolers. So in my few years experience teaching literacy in preschool, I adopted a few techniques and strategies to teaching reading using phonics, I can categorically say that if you teach children between the ages 3-4 phonological awareness and show how letters are blended into words, you can eliminate 50% of struggling readers.
Reading has two basic components: word recognition (decoding) and language comprehension. In Early Years, we must teach them to decode explicitly as early as possible- when they do, their reading comprehension capabilities equals fluency. So, in grooming fluent readers, I have come up with a few ideas or what I called “Tips for early readers”
1. Build explicit phonics instruction/awareness:
Building strong reading foundation starts by providing explicit phonics instruction which is more than merely reciting the alphabets, -
- they learn the sounds that each letter makes
- Blending individual sounds
- Isolating beginning and ending sounds, recognizing words that starts and ends with the same sound
- Segmenting words into individual sounds
To be effective, the following sequence would be helpful-
- Start from vowel consonant to consonant vowel consonant.
- Double consonant ends , plural words and diagraphs ( letter blends such as ch, sh, bl, and th)
- They also work on recognizing high frequency words commonly known as sight words.
- Decode tricky words such as the, you.
2. Play games:
Constantly get the pupils involved in game activities, manipulating letters and making words- I spy games
3. Encourage visualization:
- Have strong picture support- Create opportunities where children get to sort object/ pictures by sound or according to the words.
- Quick draw- this helps them to retain and recognize the words having a pictorial of the word said, this also will impact on communication and comprehension.
- Read aloud session to provide a model for fluent reading, help them make connections by asking questions about the story and encouraging them to visualize it
- Build Vocabulary- For an example, ‘’ Look at that airplane! Those are the wings of the plane, why do you think they are called wings? Be interactive and engage in open-ended conversations. Give children confidence in their reading skill by defining unfamiliar words ahead of time so that they don’t lose the meaning of the story.
Envisioning the action of a story is a fun way to improve pupils reading comprehension.
Strong reading comprehension cannot occur unless both decoding skill and language comprehension is built.