Teaching experience supports a multi-sensory instruction approach in the early grades to improve phonemic awareness, phonics, and reading comprehension skills. Multi-sensory instruction combines listening, speaking, reading, and a tactile or kinesthetic activity.
The goal of phonics instruction is to help children learn the alphabetic principle — the idea that letters represent the sounds of spoken language — and that there is an organized, logical, and predictable relationship between written letters and spoken sounds.
These six short video clips give you the chance to watch and learn effective phonics activities. The video clips are from Reading Rockets’ PBS television series Launching Young Readers.
An informal assessment phonological awareness, including what the assessment measures, when is should be assessed, examples of questions, and the age or grade at which the assessment should be mastered.
Research-based guidelines for teaching phonological awareness and phonemic awareness to all children are described. Additional instructional design guidelines are offered for teaching children with learning disabilities who are experiencing difficulties with early reading.
Additional and explicit instruction in phonological awareness is a critical component in helping fourth grade readers who struggle with phonological deficits. The exercises can be used as a warm-up prior to reading, spelling, or vocabulary instruction.
How can you help your baby or toddler to learn and to get ready for school? Here are some ways to make sure young children’s physical and social needs are met.
An organized classroom with defined areas and spaces can help students with autism in anticipating what is expected and to predict what will be happening during the instructional day. Get tips on how to create defined learning spaces and reduce distractions in your classroom.
One way to help a child comprehend what he is reading is to encourage him to visualize parts of the story in his mind. These “mind movies” help clarify information, increase understanding, and can include any of the five senses. Try these practices below when reading with your child.
One potential way of fostering empathy in young children is through picturebooks. Learn about empathy, theory of mind, the development of emotional intelligence, and the role of picturebooks in the classroom.
The curriculum framework offered here is a model for Common Core planning and implementation that can be adapted to K-12 in self-contained or departmental settings.
The transition from one grade to the next can be especially challenging for the student with an autism spectrum disorder. However, these students can more easily make this shift if careful planning and preparation occurs. Get tips for facilitating a smooth transition.
Riddles are an excellent way for kids to learn how to really listen to the sounds of words, understand that some words have more than one meaning, and how to manipulate words. And riddles are fun — a good incentive for thinking about words and reading.
Blending (combining sounds) and segmenting (separating sounds) are phonological awareness skills that are necessary for learning to read. Developing your child’s phonological awareness is an important part of developing your child as a reader. Learn how working on phonological awareness can be fun and easy below.
Sharing poetry with kids is a great way to highlight language. Poems offer humor, interesting words, tongue twisters, alliteration, and opportunities for choral reading (reading together). Find out how to plan a lively and fun family poetry jam!
Positive behavior strategies (PBS) are research-based approaches to changing challenging student behavior. In this overview, you’ll find out what PBS looks like in the classroom and how to put it into practice. You’ll also learn how families can support PBS at home.
In this statement, the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) identifies the characteristics of students more likely to be retained and the impact of retention at the secondary school level, late adolescence, and early adulthood. NASP also provides a long list of alternatives to retention and social promotion.
Pre-correcting and prompting remind students of behavior expectations before potential behavior problems occur. Learn how to use this behavior strategy in your classroom, using gestures, visual or verbal cues and supports, or modeling.
The state of pre-kindergarten varies across the country. This national snapshot is a good starting point for understanding what’s happening in pre-K right now.
Latino children make up the largest and most rapidly growing racial/ethnic minority population in the U.S. Find out how pre-K programs can play a key role in helping these children in school readiness and educational achievement.
Our interconnected and digital world demands a lot of our learners. Here are five simple ways to help build your child’s critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
This practice guide, developed in conjunction with an expert panel, distills contemporary early childhood and preschool education research into seven practical recommendations. The guidance will help to prepare young children to benefit from the learning opportunities they will encounter in school.
