My 2nd grader has struggled with reading. He was fine with the normal sounds until the end of Kindergarden, and then he was at a complete standstill! We read with him and to him daily, put him in the summer program after K, he did a special intensive 3 week one-on-one reading program (half-days), spent an intensive summer with mom drilling sight words, and did another Jump Start back to school 3 week program that concentrated on Reading and Math. Needless to say, he was still reading below where he was supposed to be.
So, this post is meant to share what worked and didn’t. Just one journey on finding the balance with Spelling (tests) and Sight Words.
#1 Set a regular time to work with your child on Spelling and a separate time to do reading. For us, it works that every day, first thing after coming home and having a snack is Spelling practice time. I’ve found that this way, we get the difficult part out of the way. When we’ve pushed it back, it often doesn’t get done.
#2 If you child isn’t reading yet, but knows a few sight words, periodically have them read those words in the books you are reading to him. Tape flash cards near the area you read, so he can be reminded of the words currently being worked on.
#3 Keep track of spelling and sight words. It is a great feeling for him to be able to grab a huge stack of words and be able to read them all or look over past spelling tests to see the words he has gotten correct. (Little note here, if you are getting tests that don’t have a lot of correct answers on them, have the child keep a notebook with the correct words in it, they can copy the ones they got correct and leave out the ones they didn’t. Or better yet, keep a book of ones you are still practicing and move them to the correct book with a star when they do learn them)
#4, and most importantly, DON’T GIVE UP! Keep working, as much as you can, and as often as you can. But, if you need to take a break, don’t beat yourself up about it.
Here are some great sites that might help out:
http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/ – this site used to be free, or at least have a lot of free stuff, but it looks like you have to be a member now, will look into that further
http://www.bigiqkids.com/LogIn.shtml – spelling tests, games, and more
http://www.theschoolbell.com/Links/Dolch/Contents.html – a new site I found, gives a nice well rounded plan for covering the site words!
No comments:
Post a Comment