3 Supplementary Reading Tools I Use With My Kindergartener

Before teaching my 5 year old, I was a 7th and 8th grade reading teacher. I was hired to fill a position in a Title 1 school that did not have a curriculum and the school possessed limited resources. Needless to say, it was a tremendous learning experience.

Still, I have learned more as a teacher-mom than I ever did as a junior high teacher. Being a parent challenges and excites more than any other job. When she hits milestones or when I get to witness light bulb moments, I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to be apart of her reading journey! It's definitely had ups and downs, but compared to teaching a classroom of failing, struggling, angry-at-the-world, pre-teen readers I am enjoying this process immensely.

I'm sure I'll share more of this journey as the years progress, but for now these are the resources I use to supplement our reading curriculum:

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Mobymax.com is a free resource for teachers and homeschoolers. There are lessons for every subject area imaginable. It's easy to use, and while my daughter enjoys doing a 10 minute phonics lesson on the computer, she's also learning valuable computer skills. Win, win. There are many reasons to love this website, but I love this independent learning tool to gauge growth and offer practice, practice, practice in a different place/voice other than mom.

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The Pyramid Reading Game is a super simple activity that my emerging reader finds quite hilarious and fun. She ponders each sentence as it progresses and I enjoy hearing her think alouds - asking why, connecting, laughing. And as she practises CVC and sight words she's also working on fluency (voice inflection with punctuation, speed, accuracy) and comprehension. Every day she wants to do more than one. This is the general idea:

The

The dog

The dog ran

The dog ran to

The dog ran to me to 

The dog ran to me to hop

the dog ran to me to hop on

The dog ran to me to hop on my

The dog ran to me to hop on my lap
The dog ran to me to hop on my lap and

The dog ran to me to hop on my lap and lick

The dog ran to me to hop on my lap and lick my 

the dog ran to me to hop on my lap and lick my hand.

I added the -ck and -nd ending blends to this one and she does so well reading it that the next set of pyramids I create will have more 4 letter words.

Buy 25 of them (just CVC and sight words) for $2 at my Teachers Pay Teachers or Teachers Notebook shops.

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Bob Books are a series of simple readers that encourage and motivate emergent readers! My daughter was so thrilled when she read her first book on her own that she wanted to jump on the opportunity to learn the words in the next book in order to read it too! How could I say no to that?! I've heard the argument, "aren't they just memorizing the book?" Isn't that what reading is? Memorization? You memorize the sounds each letter makes, you memorize sight words like "of" (phonetically - uv), you memorize new word meanings, and commit to memory the alphabet, sight words, cvc words, & crazy rules like, i before e except after c (unless it's words like weird). Reading is the act of training your brain to remember the letter sounds to recognize words automatically (ahem, memorization). If my child can memorize a word in one of these Bob Book's and then turn around to recognize it in another book, well then the books are doing their job! Plus, it's motivating her to want to continue to read! Those are all things worth accomplishing! In fact, she is so excited about it that she shows off her reading skills to daddy as soon as he walks in the door and to anyone else willing to listen to these "enthralling" (wink, wink) reads.

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Sometimes we spend so much time arguing about where to start, what resource to use or not use, that we miss the big idea: what works with one student may not work with another. And there is no absolute right or wrong way to teach a child to read. Are you teaching them the letters and the sounds they make and how to apply that knowledge when they open a book? Are you introducing them to a variety of text? Reading to them? There are countless resources out there that I'm sure will be wonderful supplements to your reading curriculum (if used as they were intended to be used). These are the resources I use and see success with and they are great for parents and teachers alike. I hope, if you decide to use them, that they offer the same results we have experienced.

P.S. The first two sources I wish I would have known about when I was teaching struggling readers the art of reading. Both would've been extremely helpful and I would recommend either of them to teachers struggling to teach struggling readers to read.