Teaching your Child Letter Word Recognition

Helping your child Recognize Letters and Words

1. Use picture cues.
2. Look for word chunks.
3. Apply common phonics rules.
4. Recognize syllable patterns.
5. Connect known words with new words.
6. Repetition of words (have student read the sentence more than once).
7. Introduce a variety game activities focusing on recognizing letters and words).
8. Assign reading tasks based upon topics of interest (knowledge of high-frequency words, develops best when students read large amounts of text, particularly text that is relatively easy for the reader (Cunningham, 1995).

Tips for Teaching Proper Letter Formation

1. Visual Cues: Use visual aids like posters with arrows pointing to the correct direction for letters, or color-coding letter components. 
2. Air Writing: Have students practice letter formation in the air, emphasizing directionality. 
3. Multisensory Activities: Combine visual, auditory, and kinesthetic input, like using a sponge cube to trace a letter, then drying it with a paper towel, and finally writing it again with chalk. 

What to do When your Child Reverses Letters

To address the student’s difficulty with words containing reversals of b, d, p, and q (or others), the following are recommended:

1. Use a multi‐sensory technique where he looks at the letter, says the letter, pronounces it while tracing it several times, then writes it from memory.
2. Use whiteboard activities to teach him the proper directionality of each letter.
3. When correcting papers with reversed letters, use arrows to remind him of correct directionality.
4. Identify the letters that he commonly reverses or confuses (i.e., b, d, p, q) and have him practice making one or more of them correctly each day.
5. Given letters on separate cards, have him match them to reinforce his recognition of the letters
6. Use picture cues.

How to Improve Sight Spelling Skills

To address sight spelling, word scramble and letter choice concerns, the following activities are recommended:

1. Make reading fun by reading subjects in which he holds interest (gemstones, geodes)
2. Point out sight words when you see them as you read them together.
3. Identify objects representing sight words around the house, in his bedroom and affix word labels to them.

Building Vocabulary and Word Knowledge

1. Provide a student friendly description, explanation, or example of the new term.
   1. Provide a context for the term.
   1. Introduce direct experiences that provide examples of the term.
   1. Tell a story that integrates the term.
   1. Describe your own mental picture of the term.
   1. Find or create pictures that explain the term.
2. Ask students to restate the description, explanation, or example in their own words.
   1. Monitor and correct misunderstandings.
   1. Must be student’s original ideas, not parroting the teacher.
3. Ask students to construct a picture, symbol, or graphic representing the word.
   1. Model, model, model.
   1. Provide examples of students’ drawings (and your own) that are rough but represent the ideas.
   1. Draw an example of the term.
   1. Let them find a picture on the internet, if necessary.
4. Engage students periodically in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the terms.
   1. Identify synonyms and antonyms for the term.

How to Increase Sight Word Recognition

Research-based recommendations (Ayala & O’Connor, 2013; January, Lovelace, Foster, & Ardoin, 2017).

1. Introduce new sight words in isolation (i.e., the sight word by itself), but immediately follow this with repeated exposures to the same sight words in books and other text materials.
2. Do not introduce two sight words that are similar or easily confused at the same time. For instance, “will” and “well” should be introduced in separate lessons as should “on” and “no.”
3. Provide brief (i.e., less than 10 minutes per session) but frequent sight word instruction, especially for beginning and struggling readers.

Offer students numerous opportunities to practice and receive immediate, specific feedback. For example, if a child reads the word “this” correctly, respond with positive feedback: “Yes! The word is this.” If a child read “this” incorrectly, respond with corrective feedback: “The word is this. Say the word this.”