“How can I help my student with reading practice at home?”
Goodness, gracious! If I have heard that question once, I have heard it a thousand times. And you know what? I love it! I love everything behind it. Parents who care that their kiddo does well, parents who want to spend quality time with their kids, parents who invest their time in their kids’ education. It’s amazing! So when someone asks me if I give homework, the answer is yes! I sure do, but not reading practice at home is “homework” in the traditional sense. Let me explain!
This is my tenth year in education. And every year I have had parents who wanted to support their students reading at home, but they did not know how. Or, while they meant well, the time that they spent with their kiddo on reading really wasn’t that helpful. So, as a teacher, I felt like it was my job to support them and help them to be successful.
First, I created this handout to send home, just as some general things parents can do to help their kiddos reading progress.
Click here to download the PDF Tips for Parent
Now, I send a passage home with my students each week so they can have the right kind of reading practice at home. This passage is coordinated with the book we are reading in our small group, so it is targeted to my students’ needs. These passages are 100% optional and students are in no way penalized if they do not read at home
If you are interested in the passages that I send to practice reading at home, you can check them out here.
But, before I send the passage home, I read it with my kiddos in our small group. (Ideally, this is on Monday of each week). We preview the passage and review the phonics patterns as well as the heart words in the passage. Students read the passage to me in a small group and I teach any points needed based on observations on those small groups. This way, when students take the passage home, they have seen it and had instruction on all the “tricky” stuff.
After students read the passage with me, they place it in their mailbox to go home. There is a place on the passage for students to time themselves and record that time each day.
In the years that I have been using these passages, I have never had a student whose time was not higher on Friday than it was on Monday. It might not be much, but it was a better time, and in a kindergartener’s mind, that faster time is golden. It was the bees’ knees, the golden ticket, pure magic!~! And, for a struggling reader, or even just a new reader, anything that builds confidence is something.
Don’t get me wrong, the repeated reading and increase in fluency in itself is awesome, but do you know what is even better, the boost in confidence that faster time gives each and every kid.
“Mrs. Darling, I thought this was so hard for me, but look how fast I got!”
That confidence boost is why I do continue to encourage my kiddos to time themselves each week. It makes reading fun and something my kiddos want to do. It is magical!
Now, you might be thinking, you teach kindergarten, right? Students timing their reading?! That sounds like a lot of pressure! And you are not wrong, it is a lot of pressure. Additionally, some experts have cautioned against timed readings. Think about your own reading, you don’t usually read things as fast as you can, in hopes of beating a timer. You read to gain information and learn something. For this reason, I do not do any other times readings in my classroom. All other reading in small group and the whole group is done with proper speed and phrasing.
If you want to give this a try, check out my free information for parents’ handout above, or check out any of the free passages in my tpt store!
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Don’t miss out on these freebies from my tpt store!
Decodable Text Mega Bundle in my TPT store
Free Level 1 Passages
Free Level 2 Passages
Free Level 1 Book
Here are some other options that I have used:
- Reading A-Z has a whole library of decodable text. Occasionally, I have difficulty matching it to my readers, but it was still a great resource. They offer a 15-day free trial that would definitely let you try their books out.
- Fly Leaf is offering ALL of their decodable texts for free at the time of this writing (11/23/2020). I like this company as well for students who have mastered consonants, short vowels, and some blends and phonics chunks.
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