Winning Elementary Reading Strategies
For You and Your Students!!

Teachers should incorporate different types of elementary reading strategies into their lesson plans to promote and assist their students to read.

In today's electronic world with its easy access to video games,ipods,etc., children can find many distractions that take them away from reading.

It's up to teachers and parents to motivate their students/children to read by providing them with easy access to books that they will find interesting. This applies particularly to low income families who may not have easy access to reading materials.

Teachers should make reading enjoyable, taking the difficulty and stress out of reading by finding fun ways to teach students the basics. Students' inability to understand more complex vocabulary and concepts can quickly turn children off.

Here are some elementary reading strategies that will help vary your lesson plans that will keep your students interested and make learning to read fun and easy. I hope you will find useful.

Guided Reading

Guided Reading bridges shared and independent reading. Here's the process.

* Divide your students into small groups of about 6 students, all at about the same reading level.

* Select books for your students to read that they will find interesting, and somewhat challenging but not too difficult.

* Explain the process - You, the teacher will work with each group separately as students read quietly to themselves. You are there to provide guidance by asking and answering questions and then discussing the text with the group afterwards.

* Students should use strategies that have been learned, such as sound-letter relationships and finding embedded words, to get the meaning of the story.

* While your working with each group, your other students should be involved with other reading work, such as some of the fun and game activities that I mention below.

Fun and Games

Make reading more fun with the help of these two reading aids.

Hooked on Phonics provides interactive reading programs and activities that are fun and easy to use. Try them in your classroom and your students will become more motivated to improve their reading skills.

Another fun and motivating reading tool is Robot Reader. These printable reading games and activities are not only fun but are designed to help your students succeed in improving their reading skills.

With these two tools you'll find that teaching reading will make your job much easier!

Variety is Key

On some of my other pages, I've mentioned that there are visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners. This is true for reading as well.

For primary grade students just starting to read start with a phonics teaching strategy, since it's important that young children learn the fundamentals with a strong foundation for the alphabet and its sounds.

But don't just use a phonics or whole language teaching style. Vary your elementary reading strategies - don't just use rote learning. In addition to guided reading have students read out loud to the class or play reading games.

Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension can be improved by teaching students to make connections with themselves, within a story, and with the real world.

Connections with themselves are relatively easy for young students to make by relating story characters and their experiences to their own lives and experiences.

Connections within a story for junior grade students has them comparing characters within a story, one story to another, i.e. one theme to another.

Connections with the real world is the most advanced concept. Have students make connections between what they read and real life experiences that they have had.

For more of my elementary reading strategies be sure to read my page on motivating students to read.

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