“You Could Teach a Rock to Read”

It's summer tutoring time. And while I probably couldn't teach a rock to read, I had to smile when a parent said this to me. The reality is that all my struggling readers read fluently by the end of the summer. How is it that kids who have struggled with reading, often for years, do so well? I don't leave anything to chance. Everything that I have my students do has been carefully thought out.

Here is the beginning of a daily phonics worksheet:

the*      men      get       let       set

Notice that I teach “the” as part of my phonics practice, rather than

separating it to teach as a sight word. I do this because I want my students to gain confidence in the power of phonics to help them read new words. Also, I have found that it is my struggling readers who have the most difficulty in memorizing a list of sight words. By embedding sight words with my phonics lists, my students have much more success.

Now look at the next activity:

Unscramble the words.

1. het ________________________
2. lte ________________________
3. ste ________________________
4. nme ________________________
5. teg ______________________

Why is this so important? The student needs to focus on the actual letters of the word. I never use word shape boxes. Remember that “dog” and “hop” have the same shape.

Next, comes a series of fill in the blank sentences:

Fill in the blanks.

1. Dan can ___________________ a cat.
2. Dad __________________ Dan get a cat.
3. Dan ___________________ the cat on the mat.
4. The cat can get ___________________ rat.
5. Dad met ten _____________________.

Why is this so effective? As important as phonics is to reading, it is not enough. While phonics contributes 62% to reading fluency, attending to context adds another 22%. See the research here. In addition, these sentences let me slip in some review of the phonics that has been taught in previous lessons.

Finally, we end with a word search:

Circle 5 words.

T H E Q P T R A F  Z

B E X R M E N J E D

P Q B K M A L S E T

O L M I W L E T N  I

K G E T M R F Y R J

The kids really enjoy this. It's a little bit of reward for their hard work. Still, what I am having them do has been thought through very carefully. I want my student's eyes to to sweep left to right while focusing on the sounds each letter makes. None of the words are presented up, down, backwards or diagonally.

Now they're done. I want their independent phonics practice to be short and focused. This leaves them more time to spend reading fun and engaging stories.