As you help children learn new words, use some of the following teaching suggestions:
- Use language that makes it clear you are talking about a word (not a letter): “This word is [word].” (Some children confuse letters and words and may be focusing on only a part.)
- Encourage children to look at the beginning of the word and show them what that means.
- Read the word as you run your finger under it, left to right.
- Ask children to look closely at the word and say what they notice at the beginning.
- Ask children to look at the word and then read it as they run a finger under it, left to right.
- Use another word to help children remember a new word: an, and; the, then.
- Help children notice the first letter and then look across the word left to right to notice more.
- Give children magnetic letters in order to build the word left to right.
- Using magnetic letters, have children break a word by pulling down the first letter and then the rest of the letters. Then have them put it together again.
From Leveled Literacy Intervention Orange System Guide, Second Edition by Irene C. Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell. Copyright (C) 2017 by Irene C. Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell. Published by Heinemann.