Kindergartners should know consonant digraphs by the end of the year, including: sh, th, ch, _tch, _ng, _ang, _ing, _ink, _ank, wh_. Since kindergartners should also know short vowel sounds, they can …
Teaching r-controlled sounds
Kids usually learn r-controlled sounds in first or second grade. These sounds can cause some confusion during spelling activities. For example, if you have your student spell "card," he might …
What are Long Vowels?
Kids typically learn long vowels in first grade. Long vowels are common vowel patterns and it's important to teach each one explicitly. Often, long vowel sounds are pronounced as the name of the …
What is Phonics?
Phonics is a method of teaching reading that focuses on sound/symbol correlations. Phonics advocates acknowledge that learning to read is not an “innate” skill that children acquire spontaneously. …
Holiday Long Vowel Worksheets
In our last post, there was an error in our holiday tree. The error has been corrected and in this post, Reading Elephant is offering a silent e, ee/ea and ai/ay worksheet. Holiday Silent e …
Reading During School Breaks
Students have many breaks throughout the year, including summer, a week off in November, 2 weeks off in December and 1 week off in spring. That's a lot of off time. Should kids read during school …
Chunking as a Sight Word Strategy
Kids need to learn to read and spell sight words. These are words that break the phonetic code in some way. For example, "there" is a sight word, because although the /th/ and /r/ sounds are regular, …
Halloween 1st Grade Phonics Story
In this FREE Halloween 1st grade phonics story, kids can practice reading short vowels, silent e, long vowel digraphs and some common sight words. [Scroll down for the free Halloween story pdf.] In …
Halloween Kindergarten Phonics Story
I've written a festive Halloween kindergarten phonics story called Pam's Pumpkin. It includes short vowel words and consonant digraph words. There are some sight words in the story including: have, …
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Fluency Reading Strategies
Do you have a student that can decode accurately, but reads slowly? If so, your student may need to read more leveled texts. This is the only proven tactic of all the reading fluency strategies. It is …