Helping 6 year old to read

Resources for Struggling Learners Ages 6-7

The time between ages 6 and 8 is a crucial one in the development of literacy skills, including decoding. If your child is struggling with learning to read, now is the time to find the tools and strategies to bridge that transition. If you continue to have questions and concerns, set up time with your child’s teacher to ask questions and find out more. The newest research on literacy development in children emphasizes the importance of providing reading interventions as soon as possible.

For more information, find out early signs of a reading difficulty, 8 ways parents can seeking help if their reader is struggling, and why it's important not to wait.  It is much easier to support children at this age than to have to play catch-up later! 

Try these strategies to help build your child's literacy: 

• Keep Reading Aloud!: Although a main goal of this age group is to learn to be independent readers, the books they can read on their own are often stilted with controlled text. Keep reading interesting picture books and chapter books to expand your child’s comprehension abilities, vocabulary, and sense of wonder about stories! Ask questions along the way to allow your child to continue to develop comprehension skills while her decoding abilities are coming online.  
• Character Magnets: Find a character or series they like: Clifford, Henry and Mudge, Fancy Nancy, etc. Color copy onto card stock some of the main characters (or have your child draw them!), cut them out, and put magnets on the back. Get magnetic poetry types of words for the fridge or washer (or cookie sheet). Let your child “write” and act out stories! You can also cut out words from magazines or the computer and put magnets on the back. 
• Magnetic Words: Add magnets to Scrabble letters and help your child sound out and create 3- and 4-letter phonetic words or sight words. 
• Word Wizard App is a terrific app that allows your child to build and sound out words independently. You can use the app’s word lists or add your own. Its advanced text-to-speech capabilities and fun visual rewards will have your child asking for “more spelling practice please!” Choose the phonetic sounds of letters in the settings menu. The app is $2.99 but worth it.
• BOB Books Reading Magic Lite app has simple text, fun activities, and is all phonics based. This is a great starting place for struggling readers.
• Write a letter: What better way to encourage reluctant writers than to motivate them! Invite your child to write to their favorite Disney character. In about 6 weeks, they will get a signed postcard! Save this address:

Walt Disney Company
Attn: Fan Mail Department
500 South Buena Vista Street
Burbank, CA 91521

• Play board games: There are many skills children use when playing board games -- from reading the directions to building vocabulary through games like Boggle or even Hangman. Developing literacy skills can be loads of fun!
• Choose-your-own-adventure (CYOA) stories: Helping kids discover the joy in reading can be a challenge, especially when they find decoding the words or understanding the text difficult. One fun way to excite reading is through CYOA books. There are books with many levels (e.g., The Haunted House vs The Abominable Snowman, both by RA Montgomery). Or try out a graphic novel CYOA like Meanwhile by Jason Shina for more visual learners (and those wanting less text). Some fun online variations: 
  • Seussville Storymaker is a different kind of CYOA where your child selects scenes, music, dialog, etc. For a 3-scene Horton the Elephant story; the computer will “sew” together the animation for you.
  • Choice of the Dragon, again, has no audio, but it does have an exciting topic.
  • Addy’s Escape to Freedom: Read American Girl Addy’s CYOA story.
• Niki’s Adventures is about the adventures of a hummingbird in Canada. It has no audio, but text is relatively simple.
• Spin the Wheel: There is nothing better for struggling learners than a sense of choice about their work. Let your child spin the Scholastic Computer lab wheel and have fun clicking around and learning.
• Storybuddy Lite app: Your child can draw directly on the screen, type text, and make fun storybooks that you can share.
• ABC Spelling Magic 1, 2 & 3 apps help your child build short, phonetic words, consonant blends, and then 5-7 letter words with consonant blends and syllables.
• Aesop’s Quest app is a wonderful app that emphasizes comprehension in a fun way. Children use what they remember of the story to advance levels. For grades 2-6. 
• Pic Lits is a fun and simple site for kids who dislike writing. They choose an image and drag “magnets” to create a simple saying or story. While doing so, they will unknowingly be learning how to search alphabetically, and be exploring how to use parts of speech.

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Literacy

Early Reading

Help! My 6 Year Old is Struggling with Reading

The typical six-year-old is usually either in kindergarten or first grade (depending on their birthday and district mandates). Reading skills at age six can vary wildly—some children are proficient readers, others are working on sight words and early literacy skills. For this reason, some parents wonder if their 6 year old is struggling with reading.

If you are lying in bed at night fretting that “my 6 year old is struggling with reading!” try not to stress too much. Here’s how parents may be able to better determine if a child really is struggling:

Grade-Level Benchmarks

Schools should have grading rubrics in place to help parents understand grade-level expectations. In elementary school, grades could be letters or numbers. With the number system, children are usually graded as ‘above grade level” (4), proficient/at-grade level (3), partial mastery (2) and area of concern (1). These explanations could differ per district, however. The letter system is a bit easier for parents to understand; A through F provides a bit more definition and less ambiguity for parents. A child with a C, for example, is still scoring average.

These rubrics and how a child measures provides a glimpse into subject mastery. Typically, schools will provide a progress report in the middle of a quarter to help parents better understand their child’s progress and their struggles. Scores and reports are one way that a parent can understand a child’s reading ability.

Standardized Tests

Many districts implement standardized tests in reading and math to better understand students’ progress and mastery in these subjects. These tests may be administered throughout the school year to ensure that children are progressing appropriately and meeting grade-level standards.

Parents should receive scores from these tests; typically, scores will show a percentile rank and how a child compares to peers in the same grade. These tests can vary, however, and if a child is ill, tired or simply just having a bad day, their scores could be affected.

If a child is consistently scoring low or seems to be struggling to read at home, too, parents may want to request a meeting with the teacher and discuss options or possible interventions. While a single low score may be a blip, consistently struggling on reading tests could warrant more attention.

Struggles at Home

Parents may notice struggles at home before a teacher picks up on an issue. Maybe a child fails to grasp what is read to them or has issues sounding out words. When reading with a child, any struggles should be noted.

That being said, parents should not expect children to read perfectly and without error. Reading—like all skills—takes time and practice. Yes, for some children reading comes naturally…and easily. For other children, though, reading requires nightly practice and some parent involvement.

How to Work on Reading Skills at Home

All kids should read for fun. Whether a parent reads to a child or if a child reads independently, books and stories should be encouraged for entertainment. Yet, reading also has to be a skill that is mastered so that children can read to learn.

Play Reading Games

Six-year-olds are still at the age where memorizing sight words may be part of the curriculum. Make flashcards to help children quickly identify these words. Or play sight word reading games. When reading a book or story, have children spot all the sight words for a scavenger hunt activity. Parents also can make Bingo cards and play Sight Word Bingo. Get creative to help children embrace a reading adventure!

Listen to a Book

Children can listen to an audiobook while reading or following along in a book or story. Hearing the story may help them better understand what is being read or learn to decipher difficult words. Some children are auditory learners, and listening may be a better way to absorb information.

Talk about the Story

Encourage children to read a level-appropriate book aloud. Help correct any errors they make while reading, and ask questions about the plot and characters, too. Focus on the ‘w/h’ questions of comprehension: who, what, when, where, why…and how.

Let Children Choose Their Books

Sometimes kids don’t like to read, because they simply don’t like the book or story. To encourage children to read, allow them to choose their own book. If you want to encourage independent reading, be sure to choose books on their level.

Use a Reading App

For parents who want instructional help for the child, a reading app like Readability may provide the support they need to increase their reading skills. Readability provides leveled content that advances in difficulty as a child masters each level; lessons are never too easy or too difficult. Stories offer interactive features and colorful illustrations to keep children immersed in the reading experience. Parents can track their child’s progress via the Parent Dashboard, which allows parents to view time spent on the app as well as the child’s reading level.

Parents should feel confident that an app is the right fit for their child’s individual needs, and Readability offers a seven-day free trial that allows parents and their child to explore the app’s content and features. Ready to try Readability? Sign up for a free trial today.

methods of teaching reading to the first grade

When to teach a child to read

There are early development studios where children are taught to read from the first years of life. However, pediatricians do not recommend rushing and advise starting learning to read no earlier than 4 years old, best of all - at 5–6. By this age, most children already distinguish sounds well, can correctly compose sentences and pronounce words. Therefore, most often parents think about how to teach their child to read, already on the eve of school.

How to know if your child is ready to learn to read

Before you start teaching your child to read, you need to make sure that the child is ready and wants to learn. To do this, try to answer the following questions:

• Does the child know the concepts of “right-left”, “big-small”, “inside-outside”?
• Can he generalize objects according to these characteristics?
• Can he distinguish between similar and dissimilar forms?
• Is he able to remember and execute at least three instructions?
• Does he form phrases correctly?
• Does he pronounce words clearly?
• Can he retell a story he heard or experienced?
• Can he formulate his feelings and impressions?
• Can you predict the ending of a simple story?
• Does he manage to participate in the dialogue?
• Can he listen without interrupting?
• Can he rhyme words?
• Do the letters attract his attention?
• Does the child have a desire to independently look at the book?
• Does he like being read aloud to him?
  

If you answered “yes” to these questions, your child is ready and will soon learn to read correctly.

Methods for teaching reading

Most of the methods involve learning while playing, so that the child is not bored and learns knowledge better.

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Zaitsev's Cubes

For more than twenty years, these cubes have been introducing children to letters and teaching how to form words and syllables. They allow you to understand how vowels and consonants, deaf and voiced sounds differ. There are 52 cubes in total, each of which depicts warehouses (combinations of a consonant and a vowel). The cubes vary in color and size, the large ones depict hard warehouses, while the small ones are soft. During classes, parents are encouraged to pronounce or sing warehouses so that the child remembers them better.

Vyacheslav Voskobovich's "towers" and "folds"

windows. You can put cubes in them to make syllables. And from several towers you can make a word.

catalog-chess. ru

Skladushki is a book with pictures, educational rhymes and songs. Parents sing them and in parallel show the warehouses in the pictures. The author of the methodology claims that a child of six years old can be taught to read in a month using "folds".

Doman's cards

This method of teaching a child to read is based on memorizing whole words, from simple to more complex. First, the child masters the first 15 cards, which the parent shows him for 1-2 seconds and pronounces the words on them. Then the child tries to memorize phrases. This technique helps not only to learn more words, but also develops memory well in general.

Maria Montessori's method of teaching reading

The essence of the Montessori method is that the child is first asked to feel the writing of a letter, and then pronounce it. For this, didactic materials are used - cardboard plates with pasted letters, the outline of which the child traces with his finger, naming the sound. After studying consonants and vowels, you can move on to words and phrases. The Montessori method not only helps to learn to read, but also develops fine motor skills, logic, and the ability to analyze.

Olga Soboleva's technique

The author of this technique believes that you need to start learning not from the abstract alphabet, but immediately in practice - by analyzing simple texts. The Soboleva program allows you to teach a child to read from the age of five - at this age, children are already able to keep their attention on a line of text. Different approaches are offered depending on how it is easier for a child to perceive the world - by eye, by ear or by touch. In addition to reading skills, the technique develops interest in creativity, imagination, attention and memory.

How to teach a child to read by syllables

Teaching a child to read by syllables should be done in stages. First, explain to him that sounds are vowels and consonants, deaf and voiced. Say them with the child - he must understand how they differ. Letters and sounds can be learned while walking: draw your child's attention to the letters on signs and announcements, and soon he will learn to recognize them.

When the child has mastered the letters and sounds, start teaching him to read simple words - "mom", "dad". Then move on to more complex ones - “grandmother”, “dog”, “apartment”. Show your child that syllables can be sung.

Next, move on to word formation. You can cut cards with syllables and invite the child to make words out of them. When he gets comfortable, move on to reading short texts. It is better to start with two or three phrases, and a little later switch to texts of five to ten sentences.

To enroll in Foxford Online Elementary School, a child must have at least basic reading, numeracy and writing skills. To check the readiness of the child for school, we offer to pass a small test that does not require special preparation.

Exercises for learning to read

There are many exercises on the Internet that help children learn to read, you can print them out and start learning right away. Start with exercises that teach you to recognize letters and tell correct spellings from incorrect spellings.

When the child gets used to the letters, move on to the exercises for syllables. For example, like this:

Such exercises not only teach reading, but also develop logical thinking well:

Gradually move on to exercises where you need not only to read correctly, but also write words:

One of the most difficult and entertaining exercises is fillords: you need to find and cross out the words on the field of letters.

Games for learning to read

With the help of cubes or cards with letters and syllables, you can play different educational games with your child. Let's take a few examples.

Garages

Take a word of 3-4 syllables and place the cards in random order on the floor. Explain to the child how these syllables are read. These will be garages. Give the child different toys and offer to send them to the garage as you wish: for example, the car goes to the TA garage, the bear goes to the RA garage, the ball rolls to the KE garage, and so on. Make sure your child is positioning the toys correctly. At the end of the game, invite the child to make a word from garage syllables. Perhaps not the first time, but he will get a "ROCKET". Gradually introduce new syllables into the game.

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Store

Lay out images of various goods on the table - this is a store, and you are a seller. Give your child a stack of cards with syllables - they will function as money. The child needs to buy all the items in the store, but each item is only sold for the syllable it starts with. For example, fish can only be bought for the syllable "RY", milk - for the syllable "MO", and so on. Give your child a few extra cards to make the task more difficult. When he gets used to it, change the conditions of the game: for example, sell goods not for the first, but for the last syllables. The game is both simple and complex: it will allow the child to understand that words are not always spelled the way they are pronounced. After all, a cow cannot be bought for the syllable "KA", for example.

Lotto

Game for several people. Give the children several cards with syllables. Take out the cubes with syllables one by one from the box and announce them. Whoever has a card with such a syllable - he takes it. The first person to complete all the cards wins. During the game, children will accurately remember the syllables that they had on their hands.

Summary

Finally, a few more tips on how to teach a child to read:

• It is better to start teaching children to read by memorizing letters. It is important that the child can recognize and name them without hesitation.
• In the early stages, pronounce the consonants as they are read in words: not [em], [el], [de], but [m], [l], [d] - this way it will be easier for the child to find his bearings.
• Sculpt letters from plasticine, draw and color, buy an alphabet with voice acting - use all the channels of the child's perception.
• Gradually build letters into syllables and then into words. Play rearranging letters and syllables, let the child experiment.
• Teach your child rhymes about the letters of the alphabet, look at the primer, use cards with letters and pictures. Thanks to the illustrations, the child will be able to memorize the symbols faster.
• Distribute the load: fifteen minutes a day is better than an hour twice a week. Alternate entertaining and serious tasks.
• You can hang signs with their names on objects in the child's room - the child will quickly learn to recognize them in texts.
• Read aloud regularly to your child and gradually introduce them to independent reading. Every evening, offer to read at least a few lines from a well-known book on your own.
• Lead by example. For a child to want to learn to read, he must regularly see you with a book.

We hope that our recommendations will help you teach your preschooler to read. Even if your child is just learning to read, at Foxford Elementary School he will be able to improve his skills.

How to teach a child to read: important rules and effective methods

October 26LikbezEducation

Teaching a preschooler to read without losing interest in books is real. Lifehacker has selected the best ways for responsible parents.

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How to understand that it is time to teach a child to read

There are several signs of psychological readiness.

1. The child speaks fluently in sentences and understands the meaning of what is said.
2. The child understands directions: left-right, up-down. For learning to read, it is important that the baby can follow the text from left to right and from top to bottom.
3. The child distinguishes sounds (what speech therapists call developed phonemic hearing). Simply put, the baby will easily understand by ear where the house and the bow are, and where the tom and the hatch are.
4. Your child pronounces all sounds and has no speech problems.

Natalya Zharikova

Speech therapist teacher with 33 years of experience

A child with speech therapy problems does not hear and does not distinguish similar sounds. From here come errors with speech, and subsequently with reading, and even more often with writing. It is very difficult for a parent to identify violations on their own, so usually a teacher or a speech therapist can point this out to them.

How to teach a child to read

Be patient and follow these simple guidelines.

Set an example

In a family where there is a culture and tradition of reading, children themselves will reach for books. Read not because it is necessary and useful, but because it is a pleasure for you.

Read together and discuss

Read aloud to the child and then look at the pictures together, encouraging them to interact with the book: “Who is that drawn? Can you show me the cat's ears? And who is that standing next to her?” Older children can be asked more difficult questions: “Why did he do this? What do you think will happen next?"

Don't learn the letters as they are called in the alphabet

Instead, help your child remember the sound the letter makes. For example, you show the letter "m" and say: "This is the letter m (not em )". If a child memorizes the alphabetic names of letters ( em , es, ef and so on), it will be quite difficult for him to learn to read. Then, when he sees the word ra-ma in the book, he will try to pronounce er-a-um-ah .

Go from easy to hard

Once the child has memorized a few letters (from 2 to 5) and the sounds they represent, move on to syllables. Let the words consisting of repeating syllables be the first: ma-ma, pa-pa, uncle, nanny . In this case, it is not necessary to break the syllable into separate sounds. Do not say: "These are the letters m and a , and together they read ma ". Immediately learn that the syllable is pronounced like ma , otherwise the baby may start to read letter by letter. After mastering simple combinations, move on to more complex ones: ko‑t, zhu‑k, house .

Help to understand the meaning of what they read

Do this when the child begins to slowly but surely reproduce words and whole sentences in syllables. For example, the kid read: "Mom washed the frame." Stop and ask: “What did you just read about?”. If he finds it difficult to answer, let him read the sentence again. And you ask more specific questions: “Who washed the frame? What did mom wash?

Show that letters are everywhere

Play a game. Let the child find the letters that surround him on the street and at home. These are the names of stores, and memos on information stands, and advertising on billboards, and even traffic light messages: it happens that the inscription “Go” lights up on green, and “Wait so many seconds” on red.

Play

And play again. Stack blocks with letters and syllables, make up words, ask your child to read you some kind of sign or inscription on the packaging in the store.

Natalya Zharikova

There are many exercises for memorizing letters. For example, circle the desired letter among a number of others, circle the correctly written among the incorrect ones, color or shade. You can also ask the child to tell what the letter looks like.

Use every opportunity to train

Whether you are waiting in line at the clinic or driving somewhere, take out a book with pictures and short stories to them and invite your child to read together.

Build on your success

Repeat familiar texts, look for familiar characters in new stories. Runaway Bunny is found both in "Teremka" and "Kolobok".

Do not force

This is perhaps the most important thing. Don't take away a child's childhood. Learning should not go through violence and tears.

What techniques to use to teach your child to read

Here are six popular, affordable and effective techniques. Choose one or try several and choose the one that interests your child the most.

1. ABCs and primers

Traditional, but the longest way. The difference between these books is that the alphabet fixes each letter with a mnemonic picture: on the page with B a drum will be drawn, and next to Yu - Yula. The alphabet helps to remember letters and often interesting rhymes, but will not teach you how to read.

The primer consistently teaches the child to combine sounds into syllables, and syllables into words. This process is not easy and requires perseverance.

There are quite a lot of author's primers now. According to the books of Nadezhda Betenkova, Vseslav Goretsky, Dmitry Fonin, Natalya Pavlova, children can study both with their parents before school and in the first grade.

Parents agree that one of the most understandable methods for teaching preschoolers is Nadezhda Zhukova's primer. The author simply explains the most difficult thing for a child: how to turn letters into syllables, how to read ma-ma rather than start calling individual letters me-a-me-a .

2. Zaitsev's Cubes

If a child consistently masters letters and syllables while learning the ABC book, then in 52 Zaitsev's Cubes he is given access to everything at once: a single letter or combinations of consonant and vowel, consonant and hard or soft sign.

The child effortlessly learns the differences between voiceless and voiced sounds, because the cubes with voiceless consonants are filled with wood, and the cubes with voiced consonants are filled with metal.

The cubes also differ in size. The large ones depict hard warehouses, the small ones - soft ones. The author of the technique explains this by the fact that when we pronounce to (hard warehouse), the mouth opens wide, or (soft warehouse) - lips in a half smile.

The set includes tables with warehouses that the parent sings (yes, he doesn’t speak, but sings).

The child quickly masters warehouse reading with the help of cubes. But there are also disadvantages: he may begin to swallow endings and face difficulties already at school when parsing a word by composition.

3. "Skladushki" and "Teremki" by Vyacheslav Voskobovich

In "Skladushki" Vyacheslav Voskobovich reworked Zaitsev's idea: 21 cards show all the warehouses of the Russian language with nice thematic pictures. Included is a CD with songs, the texts of which go under each picture.

Folders are great for kids who like looking at pictures. Each of them is an occasion to discuss with the child where the kitten is, what the puppy is doing, where the beetle flew.

It is possible to teach a child with these cards from the age of three. At the same time, it should be noted that the author of the methodology himself does not consider it necessary to force early development.

Voskobovich's "Teremki" consist of 12 wooden cubes with consonants and 12 cardboard cubes with vowels. First, the child gets acquainted with the alphabet and tries with the help of parents to come up with words that begin with each of the letters.

Then it's time to study the syllables. In the tower with the letter M is embedded A - and the first syllable is ma . From several towers you can lay out words. Learning is based on play. So, when replacing the vowel , the house will turn into smoke .

You can start playing tower blocks from the age of two. At the same time, parents will not be left alone with the cubes: the kit includes a manual with a detailed description of the methodology and game options.

4. Chaplygin's dynamic cubes

Evgeny Chaplygin's manual includes 10 cubes and 10 moving blocks. Each dynamic block consists of a pair - a consonant and a vowel. The task of the child is to twist the cubes and find a pair.

At the initial stage, as with any other method of learning to read in warehouses, the child makes the simplest words from repeating syllables: ma-ma, pa-pa, ba-ba . The involved motor skills help to quickly remember the shape of the letters, and the search for already familiar syllables turns into an exciting game. The cubes are accompanied by a manual describing the methodology and words that can be composed.

The optimal age for classes is 4-5 years. You can start earlier, but only in the game format.

5. Doman's cards

American doctor Glenn Doman suggests teaching children not individual letters or even syllables, but whole words. Parents name and show the child the words on the cards for 1-2 seconds. In this case, the baby is not required to repeat what he heard.

Classes start with 15 cards with the simplest concepts like female and male . Gradually, the number of words increases, those already learned leave the set, and the child begins to study phrases: for example, color + object, size + object.

How can one understand that a child has understood and memorized the visual image of a word, if the author of the methodology recommends starting classes from birth? Glenn Doman in "The Harmonious Development of the Child" strongly emphasizes that it is not necessary to arrange tests and checks for the child: kids do not like this and lose interest in classes.

It's better to remember 50 cards out of 100 than 10 out of 10.

Glenn Doman

But given that parents can't help but check, he advises the child to play the game if they are willing and ready. For example, you can put a few cards and ask to bring one or point to it.

Today, psychologists, neurophysiologists and pediatricians agree that the Doman method is aimed not at teaching reading, but at mechanical memorization of visual images of words. The child turns out to be an object of learning and is almost deprived of the opportunity to learn something on his own.

It is also worth adding: in order to proceed to the stage of reading according to Doman, parents need to prepare cards with all (!) words that are found in a particular book.

6. Montessori method

Montessori reading comes from the opposite: first we write and only then we read. Letters are the same pictures, so you first need to learn how to draw them and only then engage in pronunciation and reading. Children begin by tracing and shading the letters, and through this, they memorize their outline. When several vowels and consonants have been studied, they move on to the first simple words.

Much attention is paid to the tactile component, so children can literally touch the alphabet cut out of rough or velvety paper.

The value of the method lies in learning through play. So, you can put a rough letter and a plate of semolina in front of the child and offer to first circle the sign with your finger, and then repeat this on the semolina.

The challenge for parents is purchasing or stocking up a significant amount of handouts. But you can try to make cards with your own hands from cardboard and sandpaper.

What's the result

On the Internet and on posters advertising "developers", you will be offered ultra-modern methods of teaching your child to read at three, two years old or even from birth.

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