Ideas to Help Strengthen Reading Skills



Ideas to Help Strengthen Specific Reading Skills

The DIBELS test is a timed test. Therefore, the response time for each section is very important. The goal is to help your child become more fluent and respond within an appropriate amount of time. Some children were accurate and needed a few more seconds to respond. Some children were inaccurate and needed more time.

First Sound Fluency-

Go through books and point to pictures and have your child say the name of the picture and the beginning sound. Ask your child to name things he/she sees on a car ride. For example: “When I count to 3, I want you to name 3 things you see.” Without hesitation, your child should say, “Stop sign, tree, car.” We are trying to shorten the “think time” for responses.

Letter Naming Fluency-

Simply practice identifying letters with different types of fonts. Look in books, magazines and newspapers. Give your child a page from the newspaper and have them find and circle with a marker 10 capital “F”, then 5 lower case “p”…….etc. You can also have them say the sound of the letter or a word that begins with the letter when they circle it. I notice the most common mistakes are b/d, p/q, t/f, w/m.

Phoneme Segmentation Fluency-

This is simply S-T-R-E-T-C-H-I-N-G the sounds of a word. We do this daily in class using white boards. The vowel sounds are the hardest for the children. In Kindergarten, we learn the short vowel sounds before the long vowel sounds. Most of our children have mastered “a”, “i” and “o”. Use the list of Kindergarten Words on the second page of the homework calendar to practice stretching and writing sounds and letters. The word list is designed to cover only the letters and sounds I have already taught in school. You may certainly add more sounds and letters if your child is ready. New word lists will come home monthly.

Nonsense Word Fluency-

This is reading what we call “Dr. Seuss” words; words that aren’t real. It helps the children strengthen their skills and become more confident readers. You can make up consonant-vowel-consonant words and just have them stretch the sounds. It’s clean reading without all of the tricks like “silent e” and double vowels.

With all of these activities, please don’t drown your child. Keep it short, keep it simple and keep it fun!!!

The bottom line is this…….the expectations of Kindergarten are much higher than they were a few years ago. We need to interact with and support our babies as much as possible. The more we put in this year, the easier the transition will be for “our children” next year.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT!!!

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