Beginning Reading Help

I asked my daughter this morning if she remembers how she learned to read. Her response was, "My teacher read the words with me first. I figure out the tricky words by myself now." Then I asked if she remembered me helping her. Her response was, "Your way was good too. You taught me how to sound out words. I can stretch them." Stretching words is the term her teacher uses. It was a combined effort from my daughter, her teacher, and myself. My daughter is a confident reader now, but that wasn't the story at the beginning of first grade.

My daughter had books read to her since she was a baby. Anytime during the day was storytime. Books were always around, and I read whenever my children asked. If things got crazy or my kids were fighting, I'd grab a book and read for calming down time. At night each of my three children would choose a book. The book chooser would sit on my lap. Their dad would read sometimes too.

My oldest son was reading before Kindergarten. He's eight now. My daughter has a twin brother. They are six now. My daughter was given the same attention as my boys. Reading for my oldest son was easy. He pretended to read stories at an early age. When my son started reading he made up words with the same beginning sound that would make sense. He gave up trying to read words when the sounds he tried didn't make a word. I showed him a few letter combinations like ou, oo, and ay. That's all I did. He mostly taught himself to read. My younger son got instruction at school and I taught him to look for letter combinations and read a word from beginning to end. Both my boys became strong readers without a lot of help.

Even though I'm a teacher I didn't want to put pressure on my children, so I followed their lead when it came to reading. I wanted to see how each child put the pieces of reading together in their own heads. I think my first son tricked me into thinking that children will teach themselves to read if they are read to enough.

I noticed my daughter wasn't as far along as her twin brother the summer before first grade, but I didn't worry. I figured with more instruction at school she would catch up. She knew her letter sounds and a number of sight words. (Plus it is hard for me to teach or tell my daughter anything.)

While watching my daughter read to me in the beginning of first grade a light went on. She was missing a piece to the reading puzzle, and I had to help her find it. It wasn't easy. My daughter thought she had it figured out and any help from me would just slow her down. I tried to show her to read words from beginning to end and match letter sounds to letters in words. She would grab the book away, roll on the floor, and say she knew how to read.

My daughter expected to know a whole word by sight, guess at a word based on pictures, or see if the word made sense in the sentence. These are all good reading behaviors, but she didn't know how to combine the phonics part and read a word from beginning to end. I knew this, because everytime she tried to figure out a word she looked in the air instead of at the word.

Showing my daughter this skill while she read a book was impossible, so I taught her with Phonics Pathways.
We started with simple words matching her eyes to the letter sound she produced. It helped that my daughter knew her short and long vowel sounds. I also taught her the most common phonic patterns. (CV, CVC, VC) We later moved into more difficult phonic patterns. (silent e rule, two vowels, common letter combinations)

Slowly we began reading books at her level together and transfered the skill of reading a word from beginning to end matching letters to sounds. She uses all her reading skills in combination now and is becoming a fluent reader. My daughter has become a reading machine. She reads on the floor with her dog everyday. Sometimes she challenges herself to read every book in her book box.

My Daughter's Path to Reading

The five most important skill areas are: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary and Comprehension.

Phonological Awareness-
A reader knows speech is made of individual sounds and can manipulate those sounds.
Knowledge of Phonics and Word Recognition-
A reader uses rules for letter-sound relationships, adjusts the rules when necessary and knows many words by sight.
Fluent Reading-
A reader quickly recognizes words, reads like a person speaks, and focuses on meaning.
Reading Comprehension-
A reader has a purpose for reading, monitors for understanding while reading, and checks for understanding after reading.
Vocabulary Knowledge-
Vocabulary knowledge is built through experiences, conversations, and reading. A reader can learn new vocabulary words while reading by using word parts, attending to context clues, or using a dictionary.

If you find you have a reader struggling with any of these areas you may want to check out this resource from Reading Rockets.



Read poetry and stories with rhyme or alliteration (same beginning sound).

Say a list of rhyming words. Have your child try some.

Clap syllables in names or words.

Read Alphabet books. Most libraries have a good selection.

Ask your child to say the beginning or ending sound of a word.

Surprise your child and say the wrong beginning or ending sound of a word when talking. Examples: “Please feed the sog.” “Let’s take the dot for a walk.”

Say some words in everyday conversations with a pause between each sound. Examples: “Can you get a (t)…(ow)…(el)?” “Did you remember your (l)…(u)…(n)…(ch)?”

Play with magnetic letters. Use letter name and letter sound. Match uppercase and lowercase letters. Make words, mix up, and put back together like a puzzle. Try starting with two and three letter words. This will teach your child to segment and blend sounds in words. (cat, dog, mom, dad, go, no, so, he, me, we, she) Sometimes let your child choose the words to make. Try to take away letters (star-tar, cart-car), add letters (star-start, park-spark), substitute beginning, middle, or ending letters (car-far, hit-hat, hit-him). Changing the beginning sounds and making a group of rhymes will teach your child to read chunks. (ten, hen, when, then) (hat, cat, rat, sat, that) (pig, big, wig) (got, hot, not)

Work with the alphabet until your child can recognize all letters by name. Practice making letters and learning the most common sound. Try to make letters the same way your child’s school forms them. Smearing finger paint on the slick side of freezer paper taped to a table, making the letter with pointer finger, and erasing by smearing again is a fun way to practice. Your child can follow your finger, trace your letter, or do it alone.

Help your child learn common words by sight. Start with about five words at a time. Make and mix up with magnetic letters. Use flashcards. Show words in stories you read to your child. Choose books at your child’s level with words your child is learning or knows. A list of known words can help you choose books for a beginning reader.

Make sure your child is taught common letter-sound relationships and has opportunities to practice. Your school should be teaching phonics. Learn common letter-sound relationships and teach your child while writing, reading, and working with magnetic letters. Keep track of which letter-sound relationships your child knows or almost knows. Teach the ones your child doesn’t know and encourage your child to use the ones known while reading and writing.

While reading, teach your child to look for common letter-sound relationships when trying to read a difficult word. Use your index fingers to frame the letters or a word part your child may know.* When framing with your fingers, your fingers cover up the letters around the ones you want your child to see. Then teach your child to do this. Breaking a word into smaller parts and then sounding it out helps. Even if the result is a nonsense word, at least it will be close to the correct word. Have your child read a few words past the difficult word. Then have your child read from the beginning of the sentence and give the word a try again thinking about the story and what would sound right in that sentence using some of the sounds from the nonsense word. If your child doesn’t get the word, say the word and let your child keep reading.

*It is very important a beginning reader looks at every part of a word from beginning to end while attempting to read. Encourage beginning readers not to look in the air and guess at a word. Have the reader point under the word, so the reader can combine letters with a word attempt that makes sense.


Read to your child with expression. Go back and reread if your reading didn’t sound right. Your child will learn fluent reading is important, and fluent reading makes sense.

Talk about punctuation marks. Point to quotation marks and talk about which character said the words inside the marks. What clues let us know? Do you hear how my voice changes with an exclamation mark or question mark? Show how reading sounds different if commas or periods are ignored. Compliment your child when he or she reads with expression and follows punctuation rules.

Have your child point under words when he or she reads. Make sure your child points only once on words with more than one syllable. Beginning readers match print to their voices and train their eyes to see words, spaces, and letters by pointing. Readers can stop pointing on easy text, or when their eyes take over the job of pointing.

You can try reading together. This can be done a number of ways. Read at the same time. Take turns. Pause and let your child read a word, group of words, or sentence. You and your child decide what works best. A child should be told difficult words or be given help with words if more than one word in ten is difficult.

Choose the right books to help your child read fluently on his or her own. Books should be at or below their ability with only about one in twenty difficult words. Books can be ones that have been read more than once. Get your child to read books many times. Reading familiar books will allow your child to practice fluent reading and be successful. Have your child read to you, a friend, a grandparent, a sister, or a brother.

If two or more words in a sentence are difficult encourage your child to go back and reread from the beginning of the sentence. Choppy broken up reading is hard to understand. Smooth and fluent reading lets the reader think about what is being read. When your child comes to a tricky word allow time to figure it out, but give the word if your child asks. It’s important to keep the flow of reading going.

Practice fluent reading in a quiet place without distractions.


Give your child experiences and conversations that increase vocabulary. Go places and do new things. Tell and ask about sights, information, and feelings. Be a good listener, and teach your child to be a good listener.

Read to your child. Read magazines, newspapers, nonfiction books, and stories above your child’s reading ability. Talk about the meanings of some new words before, during, and after reading. Choose words necessary for understanding or words your child will encounter often to discuss and teach. Decide together why an author might choose one word instead of another. Get your child to appreciate words and want to find out the meanings of new ones.

Help your child explore the meanings of words while reading or talking. Words can have more than one meaning. Words can be spelled the same but pronounced differently. Words can be pronounced the same but spelled the differently. Knowing a synonym (word that means the same) or an antonym (word that means the opposite) can help a person know more about the meaning of a word. Knowing the meaning of a suffix, a root word, or a prefix can help a person figure out a new word. Explain sayings that don’t mean what they really say. (It’s raining cats and dogs. Do you have a frog in your throat? Cat got your tongue? He has a big heart. He’s hard hearted. She wore her heart on her sleeve.)

Teach your child how to find meanings of words while reading. New words can be learned while reading by looking at word parts, context clues, or using a dictionary. Teach and show common prefixes and suffixes like un- , re-, -ful, and -less. Look for context clues around a new word while reading. Authors many times hint at the opposite meaning or same meaning of a difficult word. An author may explain or give an example to help a reader figure out a difficult word. If word parts or context clues don’t help, use a dictionary or try to think of another word that could fit in the sentence. All word meanings don’t have to be known to understand what is read.


When you read to your child or listen to your child read make sure your child has a purpose for reading, monitors for understanding while reading, and understands what was read.

Talk about the book. Name the author and illustrator. Read the title. Look through pictures, but don’t show the last page if it gives away a surprise ending. Who are the characters? Where does this story take place? Discuss any difficult vocabulary. Will the story be funny? What might we learn? Make some predictions. Read to find out if your predictions are right.

While reading your child should look at pictures, ask questions, try to answer questions by rereading or reading on, make guesses, reread parts that weren’t fluent, talk about how a part is similar to a different story or experience he or she had, and have emotions or opinions about the reading. You can show your child how to monitor for understanding by doing it yourself or ask monitoring questions while reading.

There are a number of ways to check understanding after reading. Your child can answer who, what, when, where, and how questions; knows main idea and most important facts; can retell a story including, characters, setting, and important events in order; knows character traits; confirms predictions or guesses; and makes connections.

Teach your child to think about thinking in everyday life and your child will do it while reading. Ask your child questions and have your child to ask you questions outside of books. For example: What do you think we’ll see at the zoo today? Why are we going to the zoo? What if it rains today? Help your child determine cause or effect and fact or opinion. Ask your child for his or her opinion and to give reasons for his or her opinion. Ask your child the most important part or reason for something to get your child thinking about main ideas. Have your child tell you stories. Tell stories about yourself. Talk about character traits of family, friends, or pets. Make predictions and connections daily.

Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension

Ideas for Journal Entries

Help a child think of something that would be nice to remember years from now, something exciting coming up, or something from a story. Ask questions and encourage details or feelings. Then have the child say it in one complete sentence. Make sure it’s the exact words. Write it down in a hidden place if needed, so you don’t change what was said.

Journal page

The child is expected to write as much as possible. A mental or written list of known words and known letters will help guide you. You write words that are too difficult, or use a separate working page writing it on the journal page. Include proper spacing and punctuation.

Working page

Phonemic awareness, knowledge of phonics, and word recognition can be improved through writing.

Learning letters and sounds: Have a beginning writer write an almost known letter three times, making the sound as he or she writes on a dry erase board or separate working page. Make it fun. Say, “Write it big. Write it small.” Then ask the writer to write it on the journal page.

Learning high frequency words: Have a child practice a high frequency word three times on the working page. Have the child say the sounds for the letters as letters are written if there is a letter-sound match. Teach phonic rules and show tricky rule breakers. At first a beginning writer may need to copy the word. Encourage writing without looking once the word is almost known. You can even make the word with magnetic letters, mix it up, and put it back together before writing a word on the journal page.

Learning to hear and record sounds in words: Separate sounds for at least one word from a journal entry. Make lines for each sound in the word, not each letter, on the working page. For a child just developing phonemic awareness say the word slowly, and then break it into separate sounds touching each line as you say the sound. Encourage a beginning writer to do this with you a number of times before writing correct letters for sounds. Only use lines when a word follows phonetic rules. Ask the writer to tell a sound or letter he or she hears. Record that sound above the correct line. A beginning reader and writer may not give you the sounds in order or give all the sounds. Touch and say each sound in order, stretching the sounds without pausing between. Then blend the sounds together to sound like the word. As a child’s phonemic awareness improves he or she will take over more of the task. Your modeling will help.

Learning features of printed English: Draw attention to tricky parts and patterns.
Examples: ed endings make different sounds; silent letters, ‘e’ at the end, ‘b’ next to an ‘m’, or ‘k’ at beginning; doubling final consonants in some words when adding ‘ing’ ‘ed’ ‘est’; dropping ‘e’ in some words when adding an ending; common combinations (like oa, oo, ai, ow, ur, ar, ight, tion); a ‘c’ or a ‘g’ next to an ‘e’ will make the soft sound; and unusual spellings. The list goes on. If you don’t know a rule or the learner tries to make a connection that isn’t usually true, just say not all words have rules. This is the way we write this word.

Generalizing and grouping: If you know a pattern or a child is trying to make a connection, write a list of similar words on the working page. (Walk, talk, chalk) (Night, right, light)

Encourage Independence: Once a beginning writer understands the task, let the child do every other entry alone. Tell the beginning writer to write words the best he or she can. Praise correct or almost correct writing. Ask what the sentence says if needed and write it correctly in smaller writing somewhere on the page.

Reading Fluency: Have the journal writer read previous entries.

Together Time 4 Families has a post worth checking out to teach and support a beginning writer. http://www.togethertime4families.com/2010/07/scaffolded-writing-method.html

Michelle's Charm World shows ways to make writing areas inviting and fun.
http://michellescharmworld.blogspot.com/2011/05/write-some-more.html

Journal Writing for Beginning Readers and Writers