Are you looking for long vowel stories? After kids read short vowel stories they shift over to long vowel stories that include sounds like ea as in “beach” and ow as in “snow.” Long vowel stories allow kids to develop more word analysis skills, since they have to discern whether the vowel is long or […]
Archives for January 2018
Short Vowel Story FREE Printable
What does it take for a struggling reader to finally read a short vowel story? In the attached short vowel story free printable (below), a beginning reader must know letter sounds, short vowels and a handful of sight words. While this seems simple enough, some kids will still need guided reading tactics to read the […]
Th Words Phonics (with FREE Printable)
Reading Elephant is a very strong proponent of explicit, systematic phonics instruction. Young readers need teachers to clearly introduce new letter-sound correspondences, including th words phonics. In addition, students need to build phonics knowledge incrementally. For example, students learn th words phonics only after they’ve mastered short vowels and th sh digraph. With explicit, systematic […]
How to Teach Reading Effectively
Brandon, a first grader, read laboriously and often made mistakes. He added words that weren’t in the story and guessed based on the first letter. At the end of the book, he didn’t understand the story. How do you avoid these problems? Guided reading strategies are a part of how to teach reading effectively. With […]
Sh Digraph Game (FREE printable)
When kids learn the sh digraph, they learn that chunks of letters can make one sound. This is a big step. Beginning readers focus on letter sounds, with an emphasis on short vowels. They read words like dog, cat, red, mom…etc. After learning the sh digraph kids begin to see that one letter does not […]