As a stay at home mom, I have the luxury of being with my children almost all the time. I enjoy reading books to them. But since my daughter is already in Kindergarten and is learning the basics of reading at school, I decided that it is time for her to REALLY learn how to read. I want her to discover the joys of reading. I want her to experience the book coming to life. I want her to spark her imagination and explore a new world that reading books offers. I want her to effortlessly do the reading on her own.
She knows her alphabet and the letter sounds. She can read 3 letter words such as CAT, DOG, etc. My challenge is teaching her how to read words with combination sounds. I noticed that whenever she encounters words with complicated letter combinations, she struggles and gets discouraged. She makes a lot of excuses so she won't read anymore- from being tired, sleepy to being hungry and thirsty. It can get very frustrating for me as her mom and for her as my "student". It requires patience and hard work for both of us. I don't have a formal teaching background. So I had to find a way of teaching her how to read "special words" so she can gain confidence and enjoy reading as much as I do.
Here's what I did:
1. I tried observing her as we read together and I took note of the words that she's having a hard time reading. For example, she had a hard time sounding off words with "EA" as in BEAN and LEAP.
2. I made a list of these words and classifed them as "EA" words. I made tiny flashcards featuring these words. I did the same thing with words having "OU", "IGH", "ING", "OI" and others- the list goes on. Claire was getting curious about what I am up to and I told her, I'm doing this to help her learn how to read. After I'm done, she wanted to try reading it out right away.
3. My goal was to let her read these cards everyday. I tried to make it fun for her so she will be motivated to read. So, we made it into a game. I asked her to stand at the end of the room and whenever she reads a word correctly, I would ask her to take a step forward until she reaches me. This developed her self-esteem and self-confidence. She began to realize that she's reading the words on her own. She felt so happy about it.
4. To practice on the new words that she has learned to read, I asked her to pick out a book and I let her read it to me- just a couple of pages per day. We did this everyday. Reading drill first (with the flash cards) then reading a book afterwards. Until I noticed that her reading skills are slowly improving.
5. I invest on easy to read books or books for beginning readers. These books have topics that kids like Claire, find interesting and amusing. The words are also not too hard to read.
Now, after all the reading excercises that we have been doing, Claire has greatly improved her reading skills. She even finished reading an entire book all by herself, in one sitting. I am one proud Mommy! :)
Note:
As I was searching the Internet for more resources on teaching your child how to read, I stumbled upon a website that classified the words that sound the same. Just like what I've been doing. They are called Phonograms. You might want to check it out: http://www.freereading.net/index.php?title=Word_families_(phonograms)
Also, my sister introduced me to Starfall.com. It is a great website for kids learning how to read. Claire absolutely loves this website.
Happy Reading!
