How To Teach Kids English Reading With Basic

Blending and Division Rule

March 16, 2021
 

How To Teach Kids

English Reading With
Basic Blending and
Division Rule
 

English Reading : Sound dividing strategies

When trying to read a new word in English which you are not familiar with, we try to divide
the word in chunks considering the vowel sounds .

International /in/ /ter/ /na/ /tion/ /al/

These individual Chunk sounds make reading any new word little easy as little chunks are
easy to remember in our short memory to later blend them.

Strong – /str/ /ong/

But do you know you cannot just divide the sounds in the word randomly. Though syllable
knowledge helps to greater extent in dividing the sounds in a word (to read) , most of us are
not fully aware of it.  And that is completely fine.  Even today I struggle to use those
syllable division rules.

When dividing the word sound in to pieces with/without syllable knowledge just based on
vowel sounds you should follow some rules

Rule 1 # Blends
Always consider the blends like cl , fl, sp, tr etc as one sound. In the word flower do not take
f , l as two sounds /f/ and /l/. /fl/ always stands as single sound.  Similar is the case with
other blends.

clock – /c//l//o//ck/ This is wrong.

clock – /cl//o//ck/ treat cl as one sound.

Rule 2 # Digraphs
Remember the digraphs ch, th, sh, wh. Never split them in individual sound
Ship – /s//h/ /i//p/  This is wrong

It should be [sh] [i] [p]. Sh is one sound.

Rule 3 # Vowel Teams
When you see two vowels next to each other consider them as one single sound. Vowel pair
can have

long and silent sound – ai, ay, ee, ea , ie, oa, oe,

short or special sound (vowel digraphs) – oo, ei, au, ea, aw

gliding sound (dipthongs) – oy, ow, ew, oi, ou

when reading the word Wheat – never divide it as /wh/ /e//a//t/ but divide it as /wh//ea//t/
Rule 4 # R – Controlled vowels
Any vowel with consonant r have different sound and we should always know how to sound
them.

ar, er, ir, or, ur are r controlled vowels and r changes the sound of the vowel.  So never
isolate sounds in  /ar/ to /a//r/ and same with other r controlled vowels.

Farm – /f/ /ar/ /m/

Term – /t/ /er/ /m/
Shirt – /sh/ /ir/ /t/
Torch – /t/ /or/ /ch/
Turn – /t/ /ur//n/
Rule 5 # Silent E  ( C + le)
Consonant + le is when you have a consonant followed by le in the word .

Eg : turtle

Always consider c+le as single sound

Turtle – /t/ /u/ /r/ /t/ /l/ /e/ this is not the correct way.

Consider dividing the ounds as /t/ /ur/ /tle/ so that you can read it eaily.
Rule 6 # glued sounds
Glued sounds or welded sounds are sounds that make slightly different sound when they are
together.

Glued sounds are all ,am,an, ang , ank, ing , ong, ung, unk, ink, onk.

Bank – /b/ /a/ /n/ /k/ never do this.

Instead do /b/ /ank/.

You need not be an expert in syllables to read a word. Just remember these basic rules and
apply them when dividing sounds in a word so that you can read it easily.

Improve English Reading Skill In Kids

January 26, 2021

Improve English Reading Skill In Kids –

At Home Reading Activity
Most of our kids struggle to read and write English lessons once they are in grade 1. English
reading skills in kids are very important and need to be improved in early stages. Many
parents comment me saying how to improve English reading skill in kids.

Before telling what you can do or how can you help you kid or student I want you to
understand that it is a very common problem.
Common because kids in UKG or PP2 learn blending and small sentences and as they reach
grade 1 you see English  in almost all subjects be it EVS, Computers, GK, even in Maths
they have to read questions.  Since there is drastic change in their curriculum and huge
English reading is involved you will find almost all kids struggling to read.

Now lets see what as a parent or teacher you can do.

 Have the phonics list to quickly revise all the blending and sounds in
English that would help in reading.
What you have to do is to revise and make the kids understand these sounds and ask them to
apply them while reading.  Reading any English word would need understanding of
blendings that kids learn in their PP2.

So to start from make sure kids have proper knowledge of blendings bl, cl, fl, gl,pl, br, cr,
dr, fr, gr, pr, ss, ll. Apart from this digraphs , r controlled vowels, long vowel sounds, vowel
pairs are also important. If you have no idea what I am talking about you can anytime visit
my YouTube channel and see videos explaining different blending sounds.
Click here to download the At Home Reading Activity Phonics List.pdf
 Teaching Sight Words 
Next very important thing that you cannot ignore are the sight words. Sight words help
tremendously in improving english reading skills. Sight words are small words that appear
many times and most of them cannot be read using phonics. So memorizing them will help.
Sight words : and, it, he , she, to, all, many,the etc.

So imagine your kid is reading English lesson from his text book and he already know all
these sight words. It will definitely increase his confidence. The other bigger words he
should try using all the phonic strategies that he knows.

In “At Home Reading Activity ”  make your kids or student read 2 -3 paragraphs daily .
Each paragraph should be read 3 time.  each time when they are reading you will notice the
change in fluency.

In First turn,  they can read sight words and  for bigger words try blending of phonics or take
your help. What is not allowed is to spell the word and then pronouncing it. Any word
should be read only using phonic sounds but not the letter names.
Doing this activity daily will help kids learn to read English confidently even if they don’t
know any new word which they are reading for the first time.

How To Teach Spellings To Kids Easily

January 23, 2021

How To Teach Spellings

To Kids Easily
Spelling Homework was really a nightmare for me!
Do you also feel so?
But I slowly understood what is best in teaching spellings to primary kids and get them
ready for dictation at school. Now let me share what I do when teaching spellings to my son
Zayan after finishing each lesson. In a traditional method here in India soon after finishing
the lesson teacher gives hard words from the lessons as weekend homework only to conduct
dictation on Monday. These hard words are difficult words from the lesson that kids need to
memorize. As the name suggest the difficult words are really difficult at this tender age
where they have to memorize the spellings. This is called spelling homework.
I follow
Read Loud – Spell Out – Write It Down
approach when teaching spellings. I find this best for my kid and I am sure you will also.
 Read Loud 
First, read the word with the correct pronunciation. Without knowing the word there are
more chances that kids might miss pronounce it. Take this word as an example. Ex:
Medicine. Without knowing the correct pronunciation kids might read it as med-aik-ine. So
before teaching the spellings first read aloud all the words and ask them to repeat. This will
help them in relating the words they are hearing and letters they are seeing on paper.
 Spell Out
Now that kids have pronounced the words let’s relate the sound with the letters in the word.
let us take the same example word Medicine. Here in this word, we can break the sounds as
we hear Med/i/cine. In these three syllables, med is like a cvc 3 letter word that is easy to
read and understand. Then we have vowel i sound.
In the end, we have cine which is a little difficult to explain.
We have the soft sound of letter c( letter c takes soft sound as /s/ if it has a vowel next to it).
Then long vowel i sound, letter n sound and in the end vowel e.
Do this for few words and as they progress kids themselves will be able to break the sound
with the syllable in the word. You need not explain rules for all words just breaking of
sounds is enough which will help them to relate the sound in the spellings.
 Write It Down
Now finally it’s time to practice. After doing the above two steps make them practice by
writing few times. Though I call it a traditional method writing is necessary as I believe
“Writing one time is equal to reading ten times”. It is indeed. Even while writing reading is
important. So give them 5 words to practice writing at a time. After writing each word ask
them to recall what they have written by covering it with their palm. This will boost their
confidence and help them to remember.
Every kid is different some might learn fast, some learn and forget and some might take
more time. There is no shortcut. Practice and revision is the key.
Though the method looks tedious, I would tell as a parent you should invest time teaching
your kid. There is no other option. Without giving time you cannot expect a primary student
to read and learn himself. So all the best in teaching spellings!!