EIP Instructional Tips
Need some extra ideas to rev up your instruction?
Click below for foundational reading strategies...
If your kindergarten students haven't mastered concepts on the phonemic awareness assessment...
Did you know?
- Preschool-age children’s awareness of phonemes has been shown to hold singular predictive power, statistically accounting for as much as 50% of the variance in their reading proficiency at the end of first grade.
- Measures of preschool-age children’s level of phonemic awareness strongly predict future success in learning to read. Adams, et. al (1998)
Phonemic/Phonological Awareness activities
Are your kindergarten students still on AA or A Leveled books?
More work with letters and sounds... From Florida Center for Reading Research
Are your students making gains on the STAR Reading assessment?
1. Make sure the student is choosing something he or she wants to read. When students have background knowledge about a subject, they are able to more quickly decode unfamiliar words in the text and make sense of the text. Of course, eventually the student will be required to read something not self-chosen but will have developed more confidence in his reading skills by reading the choice text first.
2. Urge thinking before reading. Have students make predictions about what they think the text may be about. This prediction engages the student with the text.
3. Have students annotate the text. Underline words that are confusing. Write questions to the side of the text that they have while reading. Find phrases that are either a different way than they would say that phrase or a phrase that is how they would say it. This allows them to connect to the author's voice.
4. Encourage students as they read to see the text as a movie in their head.
5. When students encounter words they don't understand, have them use hints around that word to get an idea of what it might mean...
- break down the word into word parts (prefix, root and suffix) and find pieces that they understand (i.e. defenseless - de - fend - less - do I know what any of these parts mean)
- determine if there are words close to the unfamiliar word that might be a synonym (i.e. When animals are defenseless or helpless, they often run away.)
- determine if there are examples of the unknown word provided to give clues? (i.e. Defenseless animals like rabbits, chicks, and newborn puppies are often at risk.)
- determine if there are antonyms used (i.e. Defenseless animals, unlike fierce tigers and lions that fight for themselves, are often victims in the wild.)
- determine if an analogy is available for a clue (i.e. Defenseless animals can be like a newborn baby unable to help itself)
- check to see if the structure of the sentence gives a definition (i.e. Defenselessness, being helpless during an attack, is often found in young animals.)
- determine the structure of the sentence to figure out which part of speech the word is (i.e. does the word follow an article to say it is a noun (i.e. the defense); does the unfamiliar word appear before a noun to let you know it is a describing word (i.e. the defenseless animal)