Pedagogy Pages

We pride ourselves on helping your child grow as a reader. Parents are also an important part of our students reading life. The information on this newsletter will show you some of the areas of reading that are taught during reading time. It will also give you ideas on how you can help your child at home. Enjoy!!

• Using an Alphabet Chart or Vowel Chart
• Using Sight Word Cards
• Reading Blends and Digraphs
• word building
• sight words
• Understanding Your Child's Reading Level
• Using Letter Tiles
• understanding Lexile level

Reading with your child every day, even for just 15 minutes, can significantly impact their literacy development. Here are a few tips to make the most of your reading time:

1. Create a Cozy Reading Space: Set up a quiet, comfortable spot with your child’s favorite books and a soft blanket.
2. Be Expressive: Use different voices for characters and emphasize emotion to bring stories to life.
3. Ask Questions: Engage your child by asking about the story, “What do you think will happen next?” or “Why do you think the character is feeling sad?”

Try to set aside a specific time each day for reading—whether it’s before bedtime, after dinner, or during a cozy afternoon break.

Make reading fun with these simple and engaging activities:

1. Letter Hunt: Go on a scavenger hunt around your house to find objects that start with a specific letter. For example, if the letter is “B,” look for a book, a ball, or a banana.

2. Word Play: Play “I Spy” with beginning sounds or rhymes. For instance, “I spy something that starts with the sound /s/” or “I spy something that rhymes with ‘cat’.”

3. Create a Story Together: Use family photos or cut out pictures from magazines to create a fun story together. Let your child narrate what’s happening in the pictures!

Looking for more ways to support reading at home? Check out these digital resources:

1. myON: An online library with thousands of books for all reading levels. Ask your child’s teacher for the link and login information to access this amazing resource!

2. Starfall: A free app that offers engaging phonics activities, songs, and games.

3. Epic!: An excellent digital library for kids under 12, offering a vast selection of books, audiobooks, and educational videos.

These resources can be a great way to supplement your child’s reading journey and keep them engaged.

Is your child working on naming letters or identifying letters? If so, start with our alphabet chart or vowel chart. Take a look at the Alphabet Chart Activities or the Ideas for Letter Recognition for ideas on ways to help your child learn their letters.

If your child can name all the letters, but struggles with the sounds, use the alphabet chart to have them say the letter, picture, and the sound like, "a, apple, 'ah.'" Use the vowel chart to drag their finger from the letter to the picture saying the sound. For example, they would drag their finger from the a to the acorn saying "aaayyyy" or they would drag their finger from the a to the apple saying, "aaaah." It's important for students to understand that vowels make two different sounds. Below is a video that introduces short and long vowel sounds.

If your child knows the letters and sounds, you may want to start here with practicing blends and digraphs!

Blends are 2 consonants put together when you can hear each sound like, "sc, sp, br, bl, cr, gl, and, fl." Digraphs are 2 consonants put together that makes one new sound like, "ch, ph, sh, th, and wh."

The Blends and Digraphs chart is attached below!

If your child can identify their letters and know most letter sounds, it might be time to start working on word building. You can use letter tiles to encourage them to build words. Start with something simple like CVC (consonant, vowel consonant) words like "dog." Once they've built words, encourage them to change the beginning sound, such as change, "dog" to "log." They could also change the ending sound such as change "log" to "lot." If you are practicing one sound, encourage them to build as many words as they can with that sound. You can also practice blends and digraphs. For example, ask the child to build as many words as they can think of that start with "sp." If your child needs practice with writing, encourage them to write the words as the build them with their letter tiles.

Below there is a link to virtual letter tiles or a file that you can download to cut our your own letter tiles!

Family games are fun for all! Consider one of these fun games to help your child with word building skills!

Sight words are words that students see in books a lot, but they do not follow the traditional rules of spelling. We encourage students to memorize these words. Snap word lists for Pre-K through grades 2 are listed below! There's a so a resource below that provides fun activities kids can do to help learn their snap words.

Is your child already reading words, but needs some help with understanding the text? Feel free to use the following resources to ask your children questions about books when they're reading to increase their understanding. Make sure to talk with your child about the books that they are reading!

At Manara Academy we use a variety of assessments to determine your child's reading level. The attachments below explain what each reading level means, and what you can do to help your child's reading level grow.

If you are unaware of your child's reading level and would like more information, please reach out to your child's teacher and they can provide more information.

A research study was conducted to describe Lexile ranges for each grade. Data for these national student norms came from a sample of over 3 million students across the United States and the Virgin Islands who were administered tests that reported Lexile measures from 2010 to 2019.

We have plenty of books for students and families to borrow. If you are in need of "just right" books at home for your child, please use the find-a-book search tool or reach out to your student's ELA teacher and they can recommend resources. Additionally, if you'd like paper copies of any of these resources, let us know!