Building a good foundation for vocabulary growth is essential. If your students are able to read well from the beginning, it will benefit them in all areas of academics.
Teaching Resources has heaps of resources to help you tap into your learners’ reading skills. Here are a few of our favourites:
Short Comprehensions
These short comprehensions are ideal for making quick reading-exercise cards.
The resource comes with 8 simple but sweet comprehensions, with 3 questions each.
Sight Word Race
Children learn best when they are interested, so why not turn your reading lesson into a game?
Instructions: get 2 of your students to play this reading game against each other. They will roll the dice one at a time, and must read the word they land on. The person who reaches the end first wins.
The resource comes with 2 sight word mats, and will be sure to get your learners excited about practicing their reading.
Sight Words Snakes and Ladders
This fun reading game will give your learners something to look forward to during class.
Instructions: get your students to roll the dice and move according to the number they roll. The learner will have to read each word they land on. If they land on a snake they have to move down with it, and if they land on a ladder they move up. The person who gets to the top word first wins.
Reading Circle Cards
If you teach children in the older end of the foundation phase, this is the perfect consolidation exercise to get them practicing their critical thinking.
Instructions: read your class a story of your choice, or have them take turns to read it. Hand out these cards to each student in groups of 6. In their groups they will each have one of these 6 instructional cards (design, character, plot, opinion, setting, vocabulary).Encourage them to discuss in their groups.
Introducing the Phonic Sounds: AR, OR, IR, UR and ER.
This phonics pack is a simple way to teach learners who are just beginning to read. It is ideal for one-to-one or small group teaching, and includes a course that covers 44 phonic sounds within the charming stories. The objective is to get your learners to search for all the sounds.
Use the pack by firstly introducing a sound, then encourage them to talk about the pictures they see as you’re reading. When you’ve read over them a few times, give your learners a list of words and phrases for them to match to the pictures.
This has proven to be an extremely effective method to teach children to read.
Reading will be one of the most valuable things a child learns how to do before the age of 10. If you go about teaching your students to read the right way, you won’t struggle to spark their motivation. No matter the age – motivated learners are successful learners!
