Many kids need step-by-step phonics instruction. The ai phonics book offered in this post, fits in with Reading Elephant systematic books. Kids learn ai words phonics typically in first grade. Usually, kids learn ai words phonics after they’ve learned short vowels, constant digraphs, silent e, and ee and ea phonics sounds. The book in this post is at the first grade reading level.
“In the Air” story is for learning ai words phonics
The ai words phonics story “In the Air” is about the flight experience of the pilot Gail. She get is her plane, soars down the runway, and observes a field below.
Before your student reads the story, you can ask:
-Would you want to be a pilot? Why or why not?
-How do you think Gail feels when she’s in the air?
-What do you think she’ll see below?
-What would you want to see if you were way up high?
These questions will help your struggling reader relate to the protagonist Gail. They’ll also help your student look for answers in the story (like: what does she see?) which may improve reading comprehension. Some discussion beforehand can also improve interest in the story. Here is the free ai words phonics story “In the Air” (Click the following link):
If you’re using Reading Elephant systematic books, this book fits in with Set 10, which will be the newest release. For other FREE phonics books check out our sh book A Wish, ck book The Stuck Truck, th book Math in the Bath, silent e book The Red Rose, ee/ea book The Eel, oa/ow book I Can Roar, and our ai book The Train Ride.
Learning to read English
Learning to read English is particularly challenging. When you see your student struggle, have patience. Walk him through the learning to read process gradually. Don’t give up on teaching him. Also, don’t expect him to “catch on.” The students who struggle early are also the ones who struggle in later years. This is due to the Matthew Effect in Reading.
If you haven’t heard about the Matthew Effect in Reading, I highly recommend learning about it. This effect is well researched and documented. Yet, it’s failed to reach teacher training programs or mainstream knowledge. Basically, kids who struggle with phonemic awareness and phonics are set up for later struggles in fluency and automaticity. They read slowly. They’re exposed to less text. As a result, the gap between them and their peers widens. They begin to loathe reading. How can we blame kids for hating reading, when we’ve failed to teach them the fundamentals in those early years?
The Matthew Effect shows that the kids who struggle early are on a negative feedback loop. They’re skills worsen as they miss new content, avoid books, and read slowly. In the end, many of these kids remain below proficient in spelling and reading.
Learning to read English takes a long time
The speed of reading acquisition varies from country to country; this is largely due to differences in written codes. If a written code is highly regular, like Italian, we call that spelling system transparent. If the code has lots of deviations and irregularities, the spelling system is opaque.
The English spelling system is one of the most opaque European written codes. In other words, learning to read English is hard. In Italy and Germany, for example, children acquire reading in a few months. This is because their codes are transparent.
English is opaque. If a child falls behind, he misses a lot of content. English-speaking children require four years of decoding instruction. Compare that with the few months of instruction that German and Italian kids need (as stated above).
The Matthew Effect in reading
If an English-speaking child falls behind, the gap between him and his peers widens rather rapidly. This is why we have the phenomenon of third, fourth, fifth (and beyond) graders who can’t read. These kids did not receive a research-based intervention. 60% of fourth-graders in the US are below basic in reading. This means, many fourth graders still can’t decode!
In English, kids must learn so many phonics sounds. If a child doesn’t learn ai words phonics, for example, he’ll sit at the first grade reading level for quite some time. He needs ai words phonics to break into more sophisticated texts. He also needs ai words phonics to spell.
I hope we all can spread the word about the importance of systematic phonics instruction. Let’s catch struggling readers early. This can prevent them from falling further and further behind.
Reading Elephant offer a systematic phonics books that gradually introduce phonics sounds.
References:
Dehaene, Stanislaus (2011). The massive impact of literacy on the brain and its consequences.
Thank you for sharing these. A useful feature to include in these more advanced readers are comprehension questions . . .we want to be able to introduce paying attention to these kinds of things early on as we mix it with phonics and decoding.
Have a great day!
Thank you Keith! I’ll look into adding comprehension questions to future phonics books. This will help kids engage with the text, learn how to spell, and look for meaning. I have a few more decodables to get through (that don’t have questions). After these, I’ll try to offer some with comprehension questions.