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Video explaining Phonemic Awareness.

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What Is Phonemic Awareness? | Reading Lessons

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The sight will make games from lists you choose.

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Univ of Utah Beginning Reads Text Project

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Univ of Utah Beginning Reads Text Project

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Printable books, lessons, and everything needed for a parent to do phonics with a child.

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free books you can read online

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Free quality phonics activities from This Reading Mama

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All the Printable Phonics Activities You'll Ever Want! - This Reading Mama

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Are you looking for printable phonics activities? You'll find all the phonics activities you'll ever want right here at This Reading Mama! I'm serious. Consider yourself warned. There's a TON! *This post contains affiliate links. Teaching phonics is one of my favorite things to teach.

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Do you teach a struggling reader? Perhaps you teach multiple. Helping struggling readers can feel like a daunting task.

Here at This Reading Mama, you can find helpful articles and printables for struggling readers.

Helping Struggling Readers

On this page, I'm including some of my most favorite resources for working with struggling readers.

There's a lot of information here, but I feel it can all be summed up with these SIX things:

1. Find the "holes" and begin instruction there.

Find where the confusion begins.

Maybe they're missing key elements (like phonological and phonemic awareness). Research has stated that as much as 85%-90% of learners who struggle are missing key phonemic awareness skills, so it's a good place to start!

Maybe there are holes in their phonics skill s.

Go back and start working on the skills there. You can use the resources listed above to help you do just this.
Don't skip ahead and start teaching where a struggling reader "should" be. Reading, phonics, and spelling all depend on important skills. And if those skills are missing, you'll be frustrating both you and your learner.
2. Build their confidence.

Most struggling readers, especially older ones, know that they struggle. They feel defeated and frustrated. And it comes out in words in phrases like, "I hate reading."

To top it off, we often give them books and work that's at their frustration level, compounding the problem. Helping them find "just right" books, even if it means backing up one or two levels, can also help build their confidence.

We can also help build confidence by pointing out the things they do WELL. You can get a list of ideas for encouraging struggling readers in our article from our 10 Thing Struggling Readers Need.

3. Don't leave them guessing.

Struggling readers don't always do the best at "reading between the lines" with phonics, spelling, reading, or comprehension. You need to make your teaching explicit. This means SHOWING them exactly what to do and how to do it. Spell it out for them step-by-step.

What seems natural to us isn't always so natural to a struggling reader.

If you teach in the classroom OR homeschool, I HIGHLY recommend All About Reading & All About Spelling. It was designed for kids who struggling {specifically kids with dyslexia}, so it does a fantastic job of spelling it all out, literally!

*Yes, I do love Words Their Way. But I recommend All About Spelling because it uses the Orton-Gillingham approach. This is especially important for students who are really struggling with their reading, such as kids with dyslexia.

4. Model the strategies.

This goes along with being explicit in your teaching.

But I want to take it a step further. Show them that even people who are "good" at reading make mistakes.

Struggling readers often think that only they struggle or make mistakes. In reality, we all make reading mistakes sometimes. It's what we do with those mistakes that matters. In my article specific to Reading Comprehension Strategies, I address this more.

5. Give them time to practice WITH your help.

We can often be tempted to model the strategies or skills and then expect struggling readers to jump right in on their own. But there's one more step we need to include.

It's called guided practice. This is when we become more of a coach as learners try things WITH our help.

6. Make it multi-sensory.

Our instruction needs to include visual, kinesthetic, AND auditory activities. The most effective way of teaching is to integrate ALL THREE AT ONE TIME when possible.

This allows the pathways in our learners' brains to make connections they otherwise might not make if we're just teaching one way. In an older 5-day series, I share several multi-sensory teaching tips for struggling readers. {Day 5 is specific to struggling readers.}

MORE for Helping Struggling Readers

Enjoy teaching!
~Becky

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Helping Struggling Readers - This Reading Mama

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Do you teach a struggling reader? Perhaps you teach multiple. Helping struggling readers can feel like a daunting task. Here at This Reading Mama, you can find helpful articles and printables for struggling readers. Helping Struggling Readers On this page, I'm including some of my most favorite resources for working with struggling readers.

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These help show what phonemic awareness is and breaks it down by initial sounds...

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A variety or resources including games, word lessons, and printable flashcards.

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The Dolch Sight Words list is the most commonly used set of sight words. Educator Dr. Edward William Dolch developed the list in the 1930s-40s by studying the most frequently occurring words in children's books of that era. The list contains 220 "service words" plus 95 high-frequency nouns. These words comprise 80% of the words you would find in a typical children's book and 50% of the words found in writing for adults. Once a child knows this list of words, it makes reading much easier, because the child can then focus his or her attention on the remaining words.

The Dolch words are commonly divided into groups by grade level, ranging from pre-kindergarten to third grade, with a separate list of nouns. There are a total of 315 Dolch Sight Words.

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The Dolch Sight Words list is the most commonly used set of sight words. Educator Dr. Edward William Dolch developed the list in the 1930s-40s by studying the most frequently occurring words in children's books of that era. The list contains 220 "service words" plus 95 high-frequency nouns.

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Florida Center for Reading Research Activities

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Florida Center for Reading Research Activities

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From 2004 to 2010, a team of researchers and teachers at FCRR collected ideas and created Student Center Activities for use in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms. The activities are designed for students to practice, demonstrate, and extend their learning of what has already been taught, sometimes with teacher assistance and sometimes independently. Students can complete the activities in small groups, pairs, or individually.

Accompanying these Student Center Activities is a Teacher Resource Guide that offers important insights on differentiated instruction and how to use the Student Center materials.

Component

Name of the reading component: Phonological Awareness (PA), Phonics (P), Fluency (F), Vocabulary (V), or Comprehension (C). Each component is color coded: PA is purple, P is orange, F is red, V is green, C is blue.

Subcomponent

Name of the reading subcomponent, which is a subskill of the component.

Activity Name

Activity Number

The letters correspond with the reading component (PA, P, F, V, or C). The numbers are listed in ascending order within each component. The activities are sequenced from simple to more complex within each component and subcomponent.

Student Icon

The suggested number of students for the activity. One student icon indicates that students may work independently or with a small group. Two student icons indicate that the activity requires students to work in pairs. Two student icons with a plus sign indicate that the activity requires two or more students.

Objective

States the goal of the activity, which is aligned with the subcomponent.

Materials

Materials are located on the pages that follow the Activity Plan. Most materials are non-consumable to be prepared and used repeatedly (e.g., word cards can be laminated). Some materials are consumable and will need to be duplicated for each student doing the activity. Other materials, such as counters, are commonly found in most classrooms.

Activity Statement

One sentence explanation of the purpose of the activity and what students do to complete the activity.

Activity Steps

The first step describes how to setup the center. The second step begins with: The student, Students, Working in pairs, or Taking turns depending on the number of students needed to complete the activity. The second step also starts the series of steps to complete the activity. The next steps explain what the student does to complete the activity. The last step lists one of three accountability methods: Self-check, Peer evaluation, or Teacher evaluation.

Example

A visual of the activity and key materials.

Extensions and Adaptations

Suggestions that extend or provide an adaptation for additional practice on the skill addressed in the activity. Materials for the extensions and adaptations are included after the pages that align to the Activity Plan.

Users may use the FCRR Student Center Activities resources as long as modifications are not made, the resources will only be used for non-profit educational purposes, and the copyright belong jointly to the Florida Department of Education and the Florida Center for Reading Research. These resources may not be used for any commercial purposes. These resources on our site may be linked to but not reposted, reproduced, modified, or copied to other sites. For questions about the use of these resources, please contact The Florida Center for Reading Research at fcrr@fcrr.org.

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From 2004 to 2010, a team of researchers and teachers at FCRR collected ideas and created Student Center Activities for use in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms. The activities are designed for students to practice, demonstrate, and extend their learning of what has already been taught, sometimes with teacher assistance and sometimes independently.