Reading is one of the foundations for learning other subjects. No wonder it’s one of the major goals set by the Common Core State Standards. I see reading as a way to access knowledge about the rest of the world–when you know how to read, you can learn anything! Maybe you’ve come across this post because you’re looking for ways on how to teach reading for kindergarten.
This is a sponsored post by Rhyme to Read, a successful program made for early readers. You may access their app or website.
I can’t specifically recall the time I was learning to read myself, but I do recognize the difficulty of some of my students in the past as letter sounds were taught in an alphabetical manner.
However, this method often yields slow results and does not encourage a quick mastery of reading skills. In this post, I will show you a better way on how to teach kindergarten reading using a different approach.
How to Teach Reading for Kindergarten: Effective Strategies
Utilizing rhyming words
When teaching a beginner to read, you may notice that they can often feel overwhelmed by the number of letter sounds and the combinations they can make. Approaching this head-on without a structure can make your toddler feel like there’s so much to learn in a short amount of time.
This is why the use of rhyming words work. Rhyming words helps students recognize similar patterns, and generalize these “reading rules” with less mental effort.
To do this, you can start with 3-letter words in a consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) pattern. Words such as cat, hat, bat, etc. belong to a word family. Although, this can be problematic as reading is more effective when it is taught in context. Simply reading a bunch of rhyming words without comprehension can sometimes be ineffective when you are also targeting reading comprehension.
In the Rhyme to Read series of books, you will see that each book has its target set of rhyming word families, arranged according to the level of difficulty.
Use of color-coded letters
Another way on how to teach reading for kindergarten with more ease is through the use of color-coded letters. After creating rhyming words, your child will have more ease in mastery when word families have a designated color. This means that the -“ock” in sock and dock should be purple, or red, or whichever color you assign it to.
Using colors can be a great way to help children access parts of their memory recall when it comes to reading. Instead of trying to decode each letter sound piece by piece, they will have better ease in recall through color associations.
As you notice here in the Rhyme to Read program, the syllable “-an”, has a different dark blue color compared to the “-at” syllables. This aids in improved recall and a prompt that will help the child remember that these minimal parings of syllables should be read differently, hence decreasing the mistakes in reading.
Mastery of sight words
Sight words are commonly used words in reading and writing that often do not belong in word families. Examples of sight words are: “And”, “we”, “to” among many others. If you want to boost the ways on how to teach reading to kindergarten, mastery of sight words is a must.
The problem is, when sight words are just plainly read out-of-context, it becomes tedious and boring for your child. However, when they are read within a story, there’s much more meaning and integration in learning these sight words.
Another great thing about the Rhyme to Read program is that each page of their book series has an indicator of the target sight words. In this sample page, you would see that on the upper right corner there’s the sight word “and”. This would help your child remember that the target sight word will come up eventually in the story.
Make reading fun
Lastly, the hack that you must remember is to make reading fun for your child. Forcing them to read, giving punishments, or making the task “all about reading” won’t make it any easier for you and for your child.
It is best to incorporate other activities that include reading as a skill, such as shooting balls as they read words, or jumping through an obstacle course as they pick up a word-family sound. There are so many possibilities, the only problem is the time it takes to have these creative ideas handy.
The Rhyme to Read program has ready-made materials that are related to the skills found in the book series. For example, this sorting of the “-at” and “-an” words can be used at home or in school by integrating it with a fun obstacle course! Here, I simply placed mats that children can skip and jump on while sorting the words.
Truly, there are many ways on how to teach reading for kindergarten, but there are better ways to do it. I encourage you to try Rhyme to Read to help in fast mastery as well as integrating comprehension and fun in your child’s reading journey. They currently have a sale on their store for more than 60% off, so grab the program at a low price when you can!
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