The great leap from emergent reader to beginning reader occurs when the child catches onto concept of word: the idea that the sounds of spoken language can be represented by letters to create words. Beginning readers are often in kindergarten through 3rd and 4th grades. They understand that individual speech sounds are represented by letters and words. They have complete alphabet knowledge, identifying all 26 letters and their sounds, and are able to form the letters pretty accurately using a pencil or crayon. Beginning readers read deliberately, word by word, using letter-sound knowledge to decode words that are not yet in their sight vocabulary. Using textual supports (including photographs and illustrations) and finger pointing/tracking, beginning readers read books aloud at an average rate of 30-60 words per minute while building banks of sight words that they can read in isolation.
How you can help your beginning reader:
- Sight words: Sight words are words that appear often enough in texts to warrant memorizing them by sight rather than decoding them each time the student comes across the word. Often, these words may have irregular spelling patterns and may be difficult to sound out.I am a big fan of the sight word games on the Starfall website (a free website to assist parents and teachers in helping children learn to read using phonics), such as Starfall's Sight Word Match.
- Appropriately leveled books: The beginning reader's oral reading may sound strenuous and labored, but we don't want them to feel that way about reading! Giving beginning readers books that are too difficult for them to read is one of the biggest No-Nos in literacy development! I teach my students to use the 5-Finger rule: if they read a page of text and there are more than five words on the page that they cannot sound out or know by heart in their memorized sight word vocabulary, it is too hard for them!
- Practice! Practice! Practice! The best way to increase reading fluency (the speed, accuracy, and expression of reading) and reading comprehension (the ability to demonstrate understanding of what was read) is to read and reread familiar stories! Take your child to the bookstore, the library, Grandma's house- anywhere there are books- and let them go to town! And it is TOTALLY fine for your child to reread the same book over and over if he or she chooses- it will help to increase reading speed and accuracy!
Here's my little beginning reader!
