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Learning to read is hard work. Today, beginning readers and their teachers have an additional challenge when it comes to reading instruction: doing it all remotely.

What You’ll Need: 
In person: a pencil and piece of paper
Remote: video conferencing with screen sharing and audio

Why We Love It: This activity is remote-friendly and helps beginning readers build confidence before encountering a new sound in their reading.

So, you’re looking to stock your shelves with decodable texts. A simple internet search for decodable texts will yield a handful of materials. But before you shop around...

What You’ll Need: a pencil and a piece of paper.

Why We Love It: The activity is fun, fast, and will help you determine the decodable texts your child needs!

“The United States’ National Reading Panel carried out a series of studies that provided a very persuasive case for oral reading. The findings showed that when kids read out loud multiple times (while receiving guidance and feedback from their teacher), their reading achievement skyrockets.” (Reading Simplified)

The Phonemic Awareness Placemat below, from the Whole Phonics series, can be used with the “Switch It” game from Reading Simplified.

Helping a child learn to read is one of the greatest joys in which a parent or teacher can participate. The delight a child experiences when sounding out a word for the first time is unmatched. 

There is a common problem in reading instruction: some people assume that phonetically-controlled texts for young readers are designed only to practice decoding, which is the application of letter-sound knowledge to pronounce written words. But solely focusing on decoding instruction does not ensure that children are learning to think about texts’ meaning.