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Information for Parents

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Start with beginning and advance as items are completed.

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Progressive Phonics allinone reading program with free phonics books and free alphabet books

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Phonics are the sounds of letters.  We use these letter sounds to blend words together while reading.  To begin, we will review the letter names and sounds through various activities within this Padlet.  Other areas of phonics will be included for students who may need additional review, or who are advanced.

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Phonics are the sounds of letters.  We use these letter sounds to blend words together while reading.  To begin, we will review the letter names and sounds through various activities within this Padlet.  Other areas of phonics will be included for students who may need additional review, or who are advanced.

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For Fun:  Alphabet Song with Baby Shark!

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For Fun:  Alphabet Song with Baby Shark!

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A fun way to recognize letters of the alphabet!

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My Big World | The Delightful Preschool Magazine from Scholastic

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Get preschoolers ready for kindergarten with simple, fun nonfiction on seasonal themes, plus learning activities, videos, games, and more. Subscribe or log in now.

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SUPER WHY, the animated television series and interactive website, helps children ages 3-6 learn key reading skills, including alphabet, rhyming, spelling and reading comprehension, through interactive storybook adventures.

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Rehearse matching letter-sounds, blending and segmenting - all within the familiar environment of Teach your Monster to Read.
Launch the Monster Minigames
Use PC or laptop to play

More about the Monster Minigames tool

Covers the following letter-sounds: s, a, t, p, i, n, m, d, g, o, c, k, ck, e, u, r, h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss, j, qu, v, w, x, y, z, zz, ch, sh, th, th, ng, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er

Allows selection of specific graphemes that you wish to revisit, teach or practise with your children

A versatile teaching resource drawing directly from the Teach Your Monster to Read environment

Multiple uses

Can be used on a one-to-one basis, with a group, with the whole class, or independently

Can be used in school by the teacher, teaching assistant, children working together, or parents at home wishing to support their children's learning

Can be used at different stages of the teaching sequence for revisiting and reviewing graphemes, teaching new ones, or practising them

Important: Monster minigames is for use on an interactive whiteboard or computer only. A tablet version will be available in 2017.

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Rehearse matching letter-sounds, blending and segmenting - all within the familiar environment of Teach your Monster to Read.

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Inspire learning with our magical games for kids.

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Continue to review and move forward through games that help you with consonant digraphs!

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Continue to review and move forward through games that help you with consonant digraphs!

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Phonics games for first grade offer an incredible fusion of education and entertainment. They are affordable, engaging, and significantly effective in teaching crucial reading skills. If you are looking to give your child a well-rounded reading education, these games should definitely be in your toolkit.

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Rhyming is a great way to work on Phonics and word families while learning to read.

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Rhyming is a great way to work on Phonics and word families while learning to read.

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Let's watch a rhyming video to learn more about word families.

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LEARN HOW TO READ "AT" RHYMING WORDS with this FUN SONG!! (KINDERGARTEN AND PRESCHOOL CVC RHYMES)

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Let's work on rhyming with Dr. Seuss games and activities!

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Let's work on rhyming with Dr. Seuss games and activities!

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Please click on "Fox in Socks"

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Welcome to Seussville! Find your favorite characters and books at the home of Dr. Seuss.

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PBS Information for Parents about Phonics

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PBS Information for Parents about Phonics

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These are Phonics Application recommendations for parents.  Please read content carefully prior to downloading.  Websites may be included to provide background information.

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These are Phonics Application recommendations for parents.  Please read content carefully prior to downloading.  Websites may be included to provide background information.

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As a follow-up to Endless Alphabet, set the stage for early reading success with Endless Reader! This app introduces "sight words", the most commonly used words in school, library, and children's books. Kids need to recognize these words by sight in order to achieve reading fluency.

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‎The Phonics Museum will teach your kids to read in record speed. It's so much fun they'll be begging you to play! Phonics Museum is both entertaining and educational fun. Teaching children to read at a young age is one of the best things parents can do for children's future academic success, but...

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‎Learn how to pronounce and practice the consonantal sounds in the English language with 6 fantastic and engaging articulation activities! Created by a certified Speech-Language Pathologist, Articulation Station Classic is a full featured articulation application to help children as well as adults…

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‎Simplex Spelling Light improves spelling and reading skills in a fun and interactive way using a unique "reverse phonics" approach in combination with contextually relevant spelling rules. It has the same critically acclaimed design and features as the full version of Simplex Spelling HD but comes w...

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Information for ELL Families: U.S. Department of Education 

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Information for ELL Families: U.S. Department of Education 

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Talk, Read, and Sing Together Everyday!

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Find the latest information about ED's work in supporting our nation's youngest learners. Join our Early Learning Newsletter mailing list to receive regular ED early learning updates and the monthly early learning newsletter.

High Quality Early Learning is Essential

ED, HHS Issue Recommendations to Improve Young Children’s Social-Emotional Development, Mental Health

The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services issued a Dear Colleague Letter on June 14 with four recommendations to equitably support the social-emotional development and mental health of young children.

These recommendations and action steps are intended for State, territorial, tribal, local administrators and policymakers to encourage early childhood systems to work collaboratively to ensure that young children and their caregivers have access to high-quality resources and services to support young children’s health and well-being, social-emotional development, and early learning.

The letter includes links to resources to support the four recommendations, which are:

Implement evidence-based practices that support positive social-emotional development and mental health for all children and wellness for every caregiver.

Prioritize workforce wellness and enhance workforce capacity to identify and respond to children’s and families’ social-emotional and mental health needs.

Leverage policy and funding to increase access to social-emotional and mental health support and reduce barriers to access.

Use data to promote equitable implementation and outcomes.

A series of videos, to be released throughout the summer and hosted on the HHS Administration for Children and Families’ website, spotlights issues for supporting young children’s mental health and well-being.

The letter, recommendations, and resources are part of ongoing work across the federal government to address mental health needs of children and their families.

Related Resources

Supporting Child and Student Social, Emotional, Behavioral and Mental Health

06/14/2022

Older Featured Items

ED's Early Learning newsletter provides monthly updates to subscribers on early learning initiatives led by the Department and our partners across agencies and in the field. Join our mailing list to receive regular ED early learning updates and the monthly Early Learning newsletter. Past newsletters are also available.

Last Modified: 06/15/2022

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Early Learning at the U.S. Department of Education and beyond

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Teaching reading IS rocket science.
~Louisa Moats

Learning to read is a little bit like learning to ride a bike - while you are balancing a person on the handle-bars, holding a pole, spinning plates, and focusing on the destination at the same time!

Reading is a complicated process, which is why so many children struggle to become strong readers. The process of learning to read can be particularly challenging for English language learners (ELLs), especially if they have little or no formal schooling and they have not learned to read in their native language.

In this article, I will highlight ELL instructional strategies based on the five components of reading as outlined in Teaching Children to Read by the National Reading Panel (2000). This report is a study of research-based best practices in reading instruction and it focuses on the following five instructional areas: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Vocabulary, Fluency, Comprehension.

Each of these topics is explored below, and each section includes:

a definition

an explanation of why the component is important when learning to read

challenges that ELLs may face

strategies for ELL instruction

You will find references to more in-depth information about ELLs and effective reading instruction from our Literacy Instruction section and Reading Rockets throughout the article, as well as in the Hotlinks below.

Phonemic Awareness and English Language Learners

Phonemic awareness is one of the best predictors of how well children will learn to read during the first two years of school instruction. Sometimes it is nearly impossible, however, for speakers of a second language to "hear" and say sounds in the language they are learning.

Perhaps you have had a student who simply could not master a particular sound in English. Chances are good that that sound was not a part of the student's native language, and so the student didn't have the ability to produce that sound.

I experienced this when learning Sinhala in the Peace Corps. There was a "th" sound that seemed to be a combination "d" and "th," and no matter how hard I tried, I could not hear or produce the sound correctly. I knew which words it belonged in, but I couldn't say it. The native Sinhala speakers struggled to make sense of my pronunciation. ELLs may have similar difficulties with sounds that are not a part of their native language.

Phonemic Awareness: Challenges and Strategies

What: The ability to hear and manipulate the different sounds in our language.

Why it matters: Phonemic awareness is the foundation for spelling and word recognition skills.

Help beginning readers learn to identify sounds in short words

Have students practice identifying the sounds in the beginning, middle, and end of these words. You may wish to use words that begin with a consonant, have a short vowel, and end in a consonant (CVC words) such as mat, top, and bus.

One very effective method is having students match pictures of words that have the same beginning, middle, or ending sound.

Be careful to use only words that students know in English!

Phonics and English Language Learners

Phonics instruction aims to help new readers understand that there are systematic and predictable relationships between written letters and spoken sounds.

Students will benefit from learning and practicing sounds and symbols, including blended combinations. This is fairly common in the primary grades and ELLs may pick up the code very quickly and appear to be fairly proficient readers. However, it's important to remember that knowledge of phonics and decoding does not ensure good comprehension.

Vocabulary and English Language Learners

Vocabulary plays an important part in learning to read, as well as in understanding what is read.

As students learn to read more advanced texts, they must learn the meaning of new words that are not part of their oral vocabulary. For ELLs, vocabulary development is especially important as students' develop academic language.

Fluency and English Language Learners

Fluency is a tricky area when it comes to ELL reading instruction. For native English speakers, fluency and reading comprehension often share a strong correlation because fluent readers recognize words and comprehend at the same time.

This is not always the case for ELLs, however. Many ELLs can be deceptively fast and accurate in their reading because they are good readers in their primary language and have strong decoding skills. Yet they may demonstrate little understanding of the text, and hearing the text out loud may not necessarily provide a step towards comprehension as it is likely to do for native speakers.

Comprehension

Comprehension is the understanding and interpretation of what is read. To be able to accurately understand written material, children need to be able to 1) decode what they read; 2) make connections between what they read and what they already know; and 3) think deeply about what they have read.

Comprehension can be the most difficult skill to master, however. ELLs at all levels of English proficiency, and literacy development, will benefit from explicit instruction in comprehension skills along with other skills because improved comprehension will not only help them in language arts and ESL classes - it will help them in content-area classes and in daily activities. It will also improve the chances of their interest in reading for pleasure.

Learn more from the following articles:

These strategies for ELLs just scratch the surface. If you'd like to learn more about the five components, be sure to take a look at the resources in the Hotlinks below. Remember: little things can go a long in way in providing effective literacy instruction for ELLs!

Videos: ELL Reading Instruction

Classroom Videos: ELL Reading Instruction

See more from Dr. Cloud about the use of the native language in reading instruction and how to help ELLs who struggle with reading in her Meet the Expert interview.

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Reading 101 for English Language Learners

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Teaching reading IS rocket science. ~Louisa Moats Learning to read is a little bit like learning to ride a bike - while you are balancing a person on the handle-bars, holding a pole, spinning plates, and focusing on the destination at the same time!

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Username:  Student1
Password: Student1

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Advanced Activities

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Progressive Phonics allinone reading program with free phonics books and free alphabet books

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A quick reference for common word blends to practice.

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Word making with onset and rime.  How many words can you make?
How many words can you rhyme