Topic: Beginning Reading
This toolkit helps teachers and families understand what the alphabetic principle and phonics are and how to support a child's development of these important reading skills.
This toolkit helps teachers and families understand what fluency is and how to support a child’s development of fluency with text.
This toolkit helps parents and families understand the many different skills involved with teaching your child to learn to read and how to support your child's reading development at school and home.
This toolkit helps teachers and families understand the difference between phonemic and phonological awareness and how to support a child's development of these important reading skills.
This toolkit, developed in collaboration with the Idaho State Department of Education, helps parents and families use everyday time together as an opportunity for learning and building reading skills.
This toolkit helps parents and families take part in literacy experiences at home to develop children’s reading and language skills.
Fluency is the ability to read words, phrases, sentences, and stories accurately, with enough speed, and expression. It is important to remember that fluency is not an end in itself but a critical gateway to comprehension.
Repeated readings, goal setting, corrective feedback, and graphing performance can help build Fluency with Text.
Phonological awareness involves being able to recognize and manipulate the sounds within words. This skill is a foundation for understanding the alphabetic principle and reading success. There are several ways to effectively teach phonological awareness to prepare early readers, including: 1) teaching students to recognize and manipulate the sounds of speech, 2) teaching students letter-sound relations, and 3) teaching students to manipulate letter-sounds in print using word-building activities.
Learning to read is difficult and does not happen naturally. It requires explicit and systematic instruction, which is especially important for struggling readers. Learning to read involves many different skills that must be taught to your child. Instruction in phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension will help your child learn to read.
Learning to read consists of developing skills in two areas: accurate, fluent reading and comprehending the meaning of texts. Learning these skills does not come naturally. Both accurate word reading and text comprehension require careful, systematic instruction.
Four tips to use when reading with your child.
Questions to ask about your child's reading instruction at school.
Questions to ask about your child's assessments and instruction at school.
Helping your child with speech sounds supports early reading success.
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Beginning Reading Resources
This video shows a kindergartener demonstrating how to find a word's meaning. Watch as she defines a word using context and then uses the glossary to check her guess.
Topic: Vocabulary, Language Development, Beginning Reading
Informational texts play an important role in children's school success and our everyday lives. Find out how to engage children in informational text at home.
Topic: Remote Learning, Beginning Reading
This visual diagram can be used to engage preschool teachers in discussion about their early literacy instruction.
Topic: Beginning Reading
The research reported here is funded by awards to the National Center on Improving Literacy from the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, in partnership with the Office of Special Education Programs (Award #: S283D160003). The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of OESE, OSEP, or the U.S. Department of Education. Copyright © 2021 National Center on Improving Literacy. https://improvingliterarcy.org
