Helping Your First Grader With Reading

1. Start with a "picture walk." Before reading, have your child go through each page and verbalize what is happening in the pictures. This builds his/her sense of the meaning of the story. Pictures are in these books for the purpose of helping developing readers focus on meaning, which is the goal of reading.

*NEVER prevent your child from looking at a picture while reading; the pictures are there for a good reason!

2. See that your child is attending to the printed words in Levels A-D by asking him/her to point to them while reading. Beyond Level D, pointing is discouraged because it inhibits fluency. At any level, you may ask your child to identify certain words on a page to demonstrate his/her knowledge of phonetic information.

3. If the first reading was "shaky," have your child reread the book more fluently.

How to help your child when he/she is stuck on a word:

1. Tell your child to look at the picture and think about what the story is about.

2. Ask your child, "What would make sense here?"

3. Tell your child to start the sentence over and try again (rereading).

4. Tell your child to make the beginning sound (or sounds for blends and digraphs) of the word and then continue reading the rest of the sentence(reading on); then see if he/she can go back and figure out the word within the added context.

5. If the above attempts do not help, prompt your child to "tap" the sounds of the word (if it is phonetically spelled). *Please note that sounding out is the last resort, not the first option!*