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Focusing on syllables is a great way to help teach students about phonemic awareness. Clapping, singing, and visualising syllables are all effective ways to help teach students about syllables (Groenewald, 2023).

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Reading out loud is a wonderful way for students to practice fluency. However, reading aloud can be daunting for some students. Reading buddies can be a wonderful way for students to get that practice, without feeling overwhelmed (Cleaver, 2024). Reading buddies are stuffed animals kept in the classroom, that students can use during reading time. Then, they do not feel silly reading out loud to themselves, and there is not the pressure of another person to read to.

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Practicing rhyming words is a great way to practice phonics! The similar sounds and letter patterns help students learn how different letters work together.

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This resource provides parents with newsletters for a wide variety of age groups. These newsletters also come in different languages.

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This resource provides parents with fun activities to help teach their children, or to give guidance to their children, about phonemic awareness.

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8 Easy Phonemic Awareness Activities - Begin Learning

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Phonemic awareness activities help kids develop an essential core reading skill. Get 8 easy ones from Begin's early learning experts!

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This resource has a plethora of games that parents can play with their students at home to help work on their fluency.

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Reading Educational Resources | Education.com

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Need practice with Reading? Education.com resources help students in Pre-K through 5th master critical skills. Get started now.

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This resource has plenty of articles to help parents understand fluency, and how to help their children understand it.

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Explore reading basics as well as the key role of background knowledge and motivation in becoming a lifelong reader and learner. Watch our PBS Launching Young Readers series and try our self-paced Reading 101 course to deepen your understanding.

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This site has some helpful tips and tricks to help parents teach their students phonics, and get involved with their learning.

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Teaching phonics to kids is no easy feat. Reading and writing are complex skills that must be explicitly learned, practiced, and mastered over time if children are to become proficient readers.

Whether your child is learning phonics in their classroom or you're educating them from home, a consistent and proven phonics program can have positive outcomes.

In this guide, we share practical tips on how parents can start teaching phonics at home-in ways that are proven to support kids' development. Let's dive in!

1. Create a Phonics Routine

The first thing you need to do if you want to teach phonics at home is to start an at-home phonics routine with your child.

Consistency is important not only for children's emotional development but cognitive development as well. Practice, routine, and clear expectations help children feel more comfortable and confident in their everyday lives.

When learning something new such as phonics-even if it's challenging-children benefit from daily routine. Whether it's ten minutes or thirty minutes per day, a structured learning practice makes a big difference.

2. Read Aloud With Your Child

Read books to your child regularly when they're little. As they learn basic phonics skills, read with them, making a point to include them in the reading process.

Let your child choose books they want to read with you

Welcome your child's questions about the story and characters

Take turns reading and kindly correcting each other's mistakes

Encourage active participation, using questions and real-world connections

When you read to (and with) your child, you model fluency and reinforce positive reading experiences. Even when you might not notice it, your child is "absorbing" a lot of useful information from reading aloud with you.

3. Prioritize Letters and Sounds

No matter what you include in your child's phonics education at home, make it a priority to practice letter-sound correspondence.

This is the relationship between alphabetical letters and the sounds they represent in spoken language. It's the fundamental basis of reading because essential skills like decoding rely on knowledge of letter sounds. To learn a few letter-sound teaching exercises, read this article from phonics.org.

4. Make Phonics Education Playful

Try playing some entertaining phonics games with your child to keep them interested and engaged. Kids typically learn best through play, so make this an opportunity to enjoy quality time together and strengthen those budding phonics skills.

For example, to focus on letter sounds, play games like "I Spy," where you silently identify an item in your surroundings and give letter clues. For pineapple, you'd say: "I spy something that starts with <P>."

5. Take a Multisensory Approach

Leverage the use of multiple senses during phonics instruction to go beyond sight and sound. Ideas include:

Tactile objects (foam letters, alphabet tiles, writing in sand)

Auditory cues (alphabet songs, nursery rhymes)

Physical movement (jumping/clapping along with syllables, letter hopscotch)

Sensory phonics games are especially helpful for kids who hate sitting still or those who need a break from focused "work" at a desk.

6. Apply Phonics to Everyday Life

Use real-life situations as opportunities for phonics instruction. Ask your child to sound out words on restaurant menus, find a specific letter on a street sign, point at labels in the grocery store, and do other fun quests.

7. Use Educational Technology

Learning phonics isn't limited to print. Thanks to the development of digital learning today, some educational apps and resources can enhance your child's phonics learning.

For kids who are digital natives, online phonics programs can be useful, beneficial, and fun. Put screen time to good use and choose a phonics app that implements proven instruction methods, engaging activities, and user-friendly experiences.
To find online apps that help kids learn to read, check out our phonics program reviews from literacy experts.
8. Extend Patience and Encouragement

Seeing your child progress in their phonics lessons is so exciting! It's easy to provide words of praise when they're doing so well. When a new concept or skill doesn't come naturally, though, it's even more important to extend patience to your child and offer encouragement.

According to Havard's Center on the Developing Child, consistently encouraging children to learn through curiosity, play, and social interaction can have a direct impact on the level of intrinsic motivation they experience into adulthood. So in addition to words of encouragement, model curiosity to your child and show them it's okay to make mistakes when learning.

9. Monitor Your Child's Strengths and Weaknesses

Every child has strengths and weaknesses when it comes to literacy development. Regardless of their skill level or expected abilities for their age, it's important to monitor their unique experience. That way, you can notice which areas they need more support in.

Ensure your child has a reading assessment to understand where they're succeeding and if they need additional support. Generally, children are assessed or screened for reading difficulties three times a year - at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year. Some children may require additional help and could be monitored more frequently to track progress and next steps.

Some reading assessments are more reliable than others. The DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) is a reliable resource for this. Explore the DIBELS screening tips for parents and families.

10. Give Your Child the Support They Need

Adequate phonics instruction provides a solid foundation for kids to become avid learners. When children know how to read and write effectively, the world is theirs to discover. With these tips, we hope you can better support your child's phonics journey at home.

An additional note: It's worthwhile to acknowledge that sometimes, children may need more help than what we can offer as parents. If a student experiences underlying issues that result in reading difficulties-such as stress, learning disorders, or a behavioral struggle-those issues must be addressed. If you and your child's teachers have tried everything but still notice little improvement, talk with a clinician or reading specialist.

No matter where your child is on their path to literacy, you can learn more reading education tips from our parent resources at phonics.org.

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10 Tips for Parents Teaching Phonics at Home - Phonics.org

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Trying to help your child learn how to read? Here are 10 tips from literacy experts on teaching phonics at home.

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This resource gives parents videos, articles, worksheets, programs, and more, to help their students learn phonics.

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Word maps help students connect a word to its meaning, in a way that allows for verbal and visual representation. The teacher writes a word on the board, and students write other words that relate to that word around it. This helps students make connections, and helps them understand the meaning of the original word (We are teachers, 2024).

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To encourage comprehension, teachers can write different, general questions that could be asked of any story on a large ball. These questions can consist of things like setting, characters, who/what/when/where/why/how, etc. (Kivi, 2023). The teacher tosses the ball, and whoever catches it answers a question that their hand lands on, on the ball.

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This resource gives parents tips and tricks to help understand vocabulary in a different light, and help their students understand it in that way as well.

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Want to give your children a major learning advantage? (Of course! Who doesn't?!)

Here's how...

Help them build their vocabulary! Kids with a large vocabulary understand more of what they read and hear. So big vocabulary=big learning! Exploring new words on a regular basis is one of the best ways parents can support learning at home.

Try these classroom-tested vocabulary building tips with your kids at home:

1. Notice new words when you're reading or listening. Talk about the importance of a large vocabulary and make an effort to learn new words.

2. Talk about what to do when we discover unknown words. (Hint: Don't just skip them.) Try using context clues or use another resource to find the meaning. Teach kids to locate words in the dictionary or use an online resource...

3. But focus on kid-friendly definitions and examples of new words rather than complicated dictionary-style definitions. (Note to parents and teachers: Please don't make kids look up long lists of words in the dictionary and copy long definitions. I remember doing that monotonous task as a kid, and it did NOT inspire a love of vocabulary.)

4. Keep track of the words you know. List them. Categorize them. Play games with them. Revisit them. Kids often need multiple exposures to words in order to really learn them.

5. Focus on learning the right kinds of words. Pick words that are more complex or descriptive versions of common words that kids already know. (For example, descriptive adjectives and verbs.) Also, focus on technical words kids need in order to understand a concept or a task that they are currently learning about.

6. Learn common roots, prefixes and suffixes to SUPER SIZE vocabulary knowledge. When you learn one word part, you'll begin to easily recognize many more words with the same word parts.

7. Interact with the words in some way. Draw their meaning. Act them out. Make them come alive so you'll remember them.

8. Try to find concrete examples of new words whenever possible to make meaning more clear.

9. Relate words to real life experiences. Make them meaningful and make connections with new vocabulary.

10. Read. A lot! Read all sorts of books, signs on the wall, directions, recipes... A wide variety of reading material will expose kids to a wide variety of new words.

Also, if your kids love word searches as much as mine do, check out this set of 12 word searches focusing on common root words. On each page, kids read the definitions of five related words and determine what they all have in common. (Each word shares the same root word, or relates to the meaning of the root word in some way.) Then they unscramble the words, and find them in the word search puzzle.
And here are a few more great vocabulary learning resources:
This post contains affiliate links which means I receive a small commission on items purchased through the links at no additional charge to you. Thanks!

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Vocabulary Building: Ten Tips for Parents - Home Literacy Blueprint

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Ten tips for parents to help kids with building vocabulary at home.

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This resource has many different options, ranging from helping students, to helping their parents. There are plenty of different options, in person, online, and more to help with learning.

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Online and Local ESL Resources for Students, Teachers, and Parents

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More and more non-native speakers need help learning English. Find where to get resources and support as an ESL student, teacher, or parent in this guide.

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This resource has strategies for pre, during, and post-reading, to help ELL students comprehend the material.

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How to help ell students with reading comprehension? - California Learning Resource Network

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How to Help ELL Students with Reading Comprehension: Strategies and Techniques English language learners (ELLs) can face significant challenges when […]

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This resource is very informative and can give parents insight on what to look for when assessing comprehension.

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Comprehension is the reason for reading. If readers can read the words but do not understand or connect to what they are reading, they are not really reading. Good readers are both purposeful and active, and have the skills to absorb what they read, analyze it, make sense of it, and make it their own.

Strong readers think actively as they read. They use their experiences and knowledge of the world, vocabulary, language structure, and reading strategies to make sense of the text and know how to get the most out of it. They know when they have problems with understanding and what thinking strategies to use to resolve these problems when they pop up.

Teachers can play a critical role in helping students develop their comprehension skills. Reading research has shown that comprehension instruction can help students do a better job of understanding and remembering what they read. Good instruction can also help students communicate with others, verbally and in writing, about what they've read.

What good readers do

Draw on prior knowledge. Good readers draw on prior knowledge and experience to help them understand what they are reading.

Draw inferences. In addition to understanding the literal points that the author is making, good readers are able to "read between the lines" and draw inferences about a wide range of hidden meanings, such as why events are unfolding as they do, why characters behave in a certain way, what the characters are thinking, and what might happen next.

Self-monitor. During reading, good readers learn to monitor their understanding, adjust their reading speed to fit the difficulty of the text, and address any comprehension problems they have. After reading, they check their understanding of what they have read. Students who are good at monitoring their comprehension know when they understand what they're reading and when they don't.

Form mental images. Good readers often form mental pictures, or images, as they read. Readers (especially younger readers) who picture the story during reading understand and remember what they read better than readers who do not create a picture in their mind.

Summarize and retell. Summarizing requires students to determine what is important in the text and then put it into their own words by retelling, verbally or in writing. Instruction in summarizing can help students become more purposeful as they read and more skillful in comprehending. Summarizing can help students to:

Identify main ideas orally or in writing.

Connect the main or central ideas orally or in writing.

Learn to weed out unnecessary information.

Remember what they have read.

Can your child tell you what happened in the story?

This video is from Home Reading Helper, a resource for parents to elevate children's reading at home provided by Read Charlotte . Find more video, parent activities, printables, and other resources at Home Reading Helper .

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Comprehension is understanding what you read - the goal of reading! It is the thinking process readers use to understand what they read. Strong vocabulary, background knowledge, and an understanding of how language works are keys to comprehension.

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This resource thoroughly explains the different components of reading instruction.

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Adams, M., Treiman, R., & Pressley, M. (1998). Reading, writing and literacy. In I. E. Siegal and K. A. Renniger (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Child psychology in practice (5th ed., Vol. 4, pp. 275-355). New York: Wiley.

Bear, D. Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (1996). Words their way: Word study for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill.

Beck, I. L., & McKeown, M. G. (1991). Conditions of vocabulary acquisition. In P. D. Pearson (Ed.), The Handbook of Reading Research (Vol. 2, pp. 789-814). New York: Longman Press.

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Omanson, R. C. (1984). The fertility of some types of vocabulary instruction. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans.

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., Hamilton, R. L., & Kucan, L. Getting at the meaning: How to help students unpack difficult text. American Educator, 22, 66-71, 85.

Beck, I. L., McCaslin, E. C., & McKeown, M. G. (1980). The rationale and design of a program to teach vocabulary to fourth-grade students. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Learning Research and Development Center.

Berninger, V., Vaughan, K., Abbott, R., Brooks, A., Abbott, S., Reed, E., Rogan, L., & Graham, S. (1998). Early intervention for spelling problems: Teaching spelling units of varying size within a multiple connections framework. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 587-605.

Berninger, V., Vaughan, K., Abbott, R., Abbott, S., Brooks, A., Rogan, L., Reed, E., & Graham, S. (1997). Treatment of handwriting fluency problems in beginning writing: Transfer from handwriting to composition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, 652-666.

Durkin, D. (1993). Teaching them to read (6th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Ehri, L., & Soffer, A. (1999). Graphophonemic awareness: Development in elementary students. Scientific Studies of Reading, 3, 1-30.

Fletcher, J. M., & Lyon, G. R. (1998). Reading: A research-based approach. In W. Evers (Ed.), What's gone wrong in America's classrooms (pp. 49-90). Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.

Graham, S., Berninger, V., Abbott, R., Abbott, S., & Whitaker, D. (1997). The role of mechanics in composing of elementary school students: A new methodological approach. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, 170-182.

Learning First Alliance (1998). Every child reading: An action plan. Washington, DC: Author.

Moats, L. C. (1995). The missing foundation in teacher education. American Educator, 19(2), 9, 43-51.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Fluency. Chap. 3 in Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: Reports of the subgroups (pp. 3-1-3-43). Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Text comprehension. Part 2 of Chap. 4 in Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: Reports of the subgroups (pp. 4-39-4-118). Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Vocabulary instruction. Part 1 of Chap. 4 in Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: Reports of the subgroups (pp. 4-15-4-38). Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.

Pressley, M. (1998). Reading instruction that works: The case for balanced teaching. New York: Guilford Press.

Scarborough, H., Ehri, L., Olson, R., & Fowler, A. (1998). The fate of phonemic awareness beyond the early school years. Scientific Studies of Reading, 2, 115-142.

Snow, C., Burns, S., & Griffin, P. (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children (pp. 80-83). Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Treiman, R. (1993). Beginning to spell. New York: Oxford University Press.

In addition to their mention in Every Child Reading: An Action Plan, these components are commonly delineated in documents such as research reviews, state standards on instruction, the Reading Excellence Act funding criteria, curriculum guidelines, and teacher instructional manuals.

Of course, as the National Reading Panel notes, "phonics teaching is a means to an end... . In implementing systematic phonics instruction, educators must keep the end in mind and ensure that children understand the purpose of learning letter sounds and that they are able to apply these skills accurately and fluently in their daily reading and writing activities" (Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institute of Health, 2000, p. 10). The panel's report also states that, notwithstanding the fact that explicit, systematic, synthetic phonics is the most effective approach, there remain unanswered questions on how to make this instruction as effective as possible. For example, the panel notes that more research is needed on questions such as how long single instruction sessions should last, how many letter-sound relations should be taught, and how many months or years a phonics program should continue. Moreover, some children will learn and appropriately apply phonics skills quickly and effortlessly, while others must be taught slowly, step by step. The individual variation in any group remains a continual challenge to teacher judgment, resourcefulness, and program management skill.

In the standardization of the Texas Primary Reading Inventory, these subtests combined predict the likelihood of success or failure with about 90 percent accuracy.

The readability of text, as reflected in sentence complexity and frequency of vocabulary, can now be assessed with software. Readability formulas tend to have more validity for children who have attained a reading level above 2nd grade than they do for those who are just beginning to read, and readability does not reflect the extent to which a text is decodable on the basis of what a child has been taught.

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9 Components of Effective, Research-Supported Reading Instruction

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We know from research that an effective reading program must address several aspects of reading. Among others, these aspects include the alphabetic code, fluency, comprehension, and motivation.

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This video goes in-depth into the different aspects of reading comprehension.

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This resource has many different resources within it, as well as a video that explains the different components of reading comprehension.

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Considering the five components of reading

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Education Scotland is a Scottish Government executive agency responsible for supporting quality and improvement in Scottish education.

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This resource is helpful for those who have students or children with reading disabilities, as it goes in-depth on how to help these students.

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I'll never forget the wide-eyed look and broad smile on a fourth-grader's face when I asked him if he was willing to read in a different way. He had a reading disability, and I had just taken him to the school library and told him to choose any chapter books that he was interested in reading, not just the "baby books"-his words-that he could independently decode. His picks were available and downloaded within minutes from Bookshare, an Office of Special Education Programs -funded organization that provides a vast library of free accessible ebooks for students with print disabilities who qualify.

This intersection of choice, self-determination, and technology was powerful-it started an entire new chapter of self-confidence and independence for this student.

Students with reading disabilities can interact with texts in a variety of ways. They can decode, they can listen to an in-person read-aloud, or they can listen to human audio text or digital text, also called text-to-speech (TTS). Using TTS allows for equity and access. If struggling readers are limited to text they can decode, how can they enjoy the richness of written language, participate in class discussions, learn academic content, and develop a love for reading? Text-to-speech opens up new worlds for them.

Research demonstrates that using text-to-speech tools increases engagement and allows students to access grade-level content and material, as well as websites and books of interest. Interaction with curricular content can help students improve their vocabulary, comprehension, reading accuracy, and fluency. Perhaps most importantly, the use of TTS improves students' positive feelings about reading and school.

Assistive Technology Tools and Digital Text Build Capacity

Students and teachers need a variety of tools in their toolboxes. Bookshare delivers with its extensive repository, reading tools, and ability to provide textbooks and honor text requests, giving students vast digital resources for both personal and academic use.

Learning Ally, a fee-based organization that sometimes takes requests, provides books with human audio, which is sometimes preferred for pleasure reading. Human audio text may or may not have simultaneous text highlighting to support tracking and does not have a mechanism to interact directly with text.

Many factors affect tool choice and use. A student reading a novel might use an assistive technology (AT) tool that can highlight and annotate digital text, instead of relying on a phone app that reads a menu or email, for example.

Settings where students learn and work, such as large classrooms, small groups, or the kitchen table, also impact tool choice and use. Staff, family, and student buy-in, as well as access to and ability to use AT tools, remain key factors in effective implementation. Keep in mind that students, environments, tasks, and technology change. Ideally, exploring AT tools and services should be an ongoing, problem-solving process throughout students' academic careers.

To assist students, teachers need to ask, "What is the goal of the activity? And is the student learning to read, or reading to learn?" Remediation and accommodation can coexist, and they can be balanced and beneficial in educational settings. Remediation assists the student in overcoming academic challenges and developing mastery, while accommodations such as AT include alterations of the environment, curriculum format, or equipment that empower an individual with a disability to gain access to content and/or complete assigned tasks. Using AT is not cheating; rather, assistive technology can change the academic trajectory of students with reading and writing challenges.

Teacher, Parent, and Student Teamwork Is Key

It's not enough to know what AT tools can do. We need to teach students how to use the tools, how they can improve their work, how to advocate for tool access, and how to choose the right tool for the task and environment. We need to make time for students to explore the tools in-depth and collect data on how the tools aid engagement and performance.

Furthermore, teachers need support in learning the tools, integrating the tools, and troubleshooting problems in real-time. "Show and tell" alone doesn't cut it-ongoing student and teacher coaching with clear expectations for tool use, understanding of how and when to access support, and outcome measures are key. And when teachers collaborate and communicate across content areas to ensure tools are successfully embedded across the curriculum, students succeed.

Parent education is also critical. Parents need to know when their child will be better served decoding text, reading digital text, or listening to audio text. They need to understand AT use and how to support their children at home and across educational settings so they can meaningfully participate and advocate within educational teams.

In many districts and households, lack of knowledge and limited budgets can negatively impact access to and provision of quality AT services. The individual and societal costs of illiteracy are immense. Bottom line: The literature supports the premise that students with learning differences who use AT transition more successfully to high school, show improved quality of work, gain positive perceptions of themselves as learners, and experience positive post-school outcomes. Such intersection of choice, self-determination, and technology can be powerful. How can we afford not to provide a valuable resource like assistive technology tools?

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Tools for Supporting Students With Reading Disabilities

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I'll never forget the wide-eyed look and broad smile on a fourth-grader's face when I asked him if he was willing to read in a different way. He had a reading disability, and I had just taken him to the school library and told him to choose any chapter books that he was interested in reading, not just the "baby books"-his words-that he could independently decode.

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This resource helps inform people on how to help gifted students continue to grow as readers, and not stay stagnant in their abilities.

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How to Ensure That Gifted Students Grow As Readers • The Great Books Foundation

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Denise AhlquistSenior Academic Consultant Denise Ahlquist has enjoyed leading thousands of Shared Inquiry discussions with participants ranging from ages 4 to 99, across the United States and abroad. A veteran educator and “road warrior,” she has introduced thousands of other teachers and learners to the Shared Inquiry method and supported them in a wide varietyContinue reading