Great Tools for Teaching Reading

Now, I don't want to make anyone think we've got it together with reading here. After all, my older daughter's struggles with reading are what ultimately led us to homeschool. She was already reading a little bit when we brought her home, so we used Sing, Spell, Read and Write to get her up to speed. While SSRW worked wonders for Brianna, it wasn't a good fit for teaching the younger kids to read "from scratch."

Right now, I have one struggling-but-getting-there reader and one who is right on the cusp of reading independently (already reading many picture books independently). So, none of this is coming from a person who has kids who were voracious readers from an early age. It does come from a bibliophile who hopes her children will all grow to share her love of reading.

So, what do we have in our bag of tricks?

Penny Gardner's ABC's of Reading. This, to me, is one of the most practical, sensible approaches to teaching reading that I've ever read. It's our modified version of Penny's explanation of echo reading that I credit with the progress that my kids made in reading this year.

Scaredy Cat Reading System. This reading system was developed by Joyce Herzog after 25+ years of work in the public school system with readers of all ages and abilities, including those with learning disabilities. I credit SCRS Level 2 for the progress that my struggling reader made last year. I don't think we would have seen the progress that we did without Level 2. It's a reasonably-priced, mastery-style program for teaching reading. Think Math-U-See for reading.

I confess that I did not care for Level 3 and we only used it a for a little while before moving on to other things for this year. The main thing I've been doing this year is have the kids choose regular books and just read. I supply any unknown words and let them sound out those for which we've learned the rules.

Although my kids were beyond the need for Level 1 by the time I discovered SCRS, it looks like it would be a good and solid foundation for Level 2.

Mrs. Perkin's Dolch Sight Words List. I love these lists! I believe that it's important to teach kids a combination of sight words and phonics. It's my opinion that the sight words base gives kids confidence in having some words that they just know when they see them. We print these words off as flash cards and game cards. We may play fish with them by attaching a paper clip to the word cards and fishing with a magnet tied to a dowel rod, or we may play bingo, using the words as our call cards, or we may print off two sets of cards and play Go Fish or concentration.

Games to Make. This is another favorite site of mine. It offers printable games to learn both sight words and CVC words in varying degrees of difficulty. Make sure you've got plenty of ink in the printer before you visit this site!

PPS Leveled List. This is a great list of books that you can sort by author or reading level. The instructions say to find a book that your child can read easily and look it up on the list to get a general idea of the level at which they're reading. Once you know that, you can sort the list by reading level and find new books that your child might like to try.

Starfall. We don't do Starfall very often because, honestly, I forget about it (and I'm a little stingy with my computer). However, when we do play the kids have fun. There are books to read online and they teach the phonics rules in a logical order, starting with short vowels. If the reader clicks on an unknown word, the program will supply or sound out the word. There are games and "movies," as well.

Explode the Code books. We used the primer series, but switched to SCRS for a better foundation after that, since the ETC books were designed as a supplement to a reading program, not as a stand-alone program. However, I'm thinking seriously about picking them back up next year as reinforcement for what the kids have been learning.

Those are some of the things we've found successful. What are some of your favorite resources for teaching reading, online or off?

photo by ckaroli