Xerox

To assist children learning how to read, we offer small group instruction that focuses on the six syllable types. Using Road to Reading, and Wilson Language, each week children receive instruction that meets them at their instructional level. Typically children meet in small groups with a teacher four times a week for 20 – 30 minutes each. Students manipulate letters on a sound-board to make words which change one sound at a time. For example: (hat, hit, hot, not, cot, cat, mat, map, mop.) At other times they play games (such as Go Fish, Bingo, Word Sorts and board games) to practice these skills. In a third session they are asked to write words, sometimes sorting them into columns (such as short a, short i, short o), sometimes writing complete sentences. Finally each child reads one-on-one with an adult to practice these skills in context.

Currently we have five groups of children benefitting from this program. We have beginning readers working on cvc syllables (such as cat, pig, log, net and bus), another group is being introduced to blends and digraphs (such as lift, glass and ship). A third group is working on reading cvce syllables (such as cake, bike). A group of older students, having mastered reading two syllable words with combinations of open, closed and silent-e syllables, have moved onto vowel team syllables. They started with vowel teams that make only one sound: ay, ai, oy, oi, oa, aw, au and ee. Once these are mastered and they can read them in two syllable words, they will move onto syllables with the vowel teams which make more than one sound: ea, ou, ow, oo, and ew.