Some Approaches For Teaching Reading

Lately my focus has been to work on Tuhina's reading skills. This includes both – introducing as many functional words or written words of things she regularly uses, as well as developing the skills to read sentences and enjoy reading as an activity (in other words develop comprehension). I have this feeling that she has the ability to be able to learn to read and I refuse to believe that a day would not come when she would be able to independently read, understand and respond. This is just the beginning and I stumble on roadblocks every now and then. Some days are good, some not so. I am still trying to find the best approaches and the same thing does not work every time, but here are some of the things I am trying with Tuhina that

1. Sight reading is a good place to start – I started with sight reading a while back, with functional words and words that interest her. I had also written a blog about sight reading a while back when I started with it.
2. Introduction to phonics – Sight reading is the whole word approach, which is very helpful for functional words and words that are don't have a phonetic pronunciation. However, introduction to phonics is important to building on reading skills. A good friend, who is a Montessori trained teacher suggested introducing phonic using lower case letter and I started the same with Tuhina shortly after starting sight reading. Although she is non verbal, she could receptively identify phonic sounds early on.
   For quite some time I was stuck at this stage with Tuhina and could not move forward anymore. A lot of it was to do with her inconsistency with receptive identification of phonics and since she was not able to produce sounds I could not be sure if she actually knows or is getting a verbal cue while responding. But I guess out kids don't learn in a sequential fashion and even with the inconsistencies she showed in responding she was ready to join sounds. I still follow both the whole word and phonic approaches and use some of these resources to work on reading
3. Dolch word list – Dolch sigh word list are list of words commonly encountered in childrens' reading books, divided at different grade levels. Many of these words and used in everyday simple sentences. Teaching sight words from this list, as a next level to functional words has helped me in introducing simple adaptive book reading for tuhina.
   http://www.dolchsightwords.org/
4. Natalie Hale's approach to reading - I found Natalie Hale's approach very helpful in introducing very simple books that Tuhina could read and try to comprehend. I made some adaptive books using Tuhina's topics of interest and introduce words in book (including dolch words) separately in flash cards as well as in books. For now she does find it difficult (or probably my books are not interesting enough :) ) but I feel it will take us somewhere better. Here is a link to an adaptive book I made for Tuhina, keeping in mind her interest and level. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlyWnmM3AXU
5. Phonic words and joining of sounds – This was somewhat a surprise as after introducing around 15-18 phonic sounds when I once tried to see if Tuhina can join sounds, she could give consistent responses for very simple words like 'at', 'am', 'as'. I would slowly verbalize the word stressing on individual letter sounds followed by whole word. Starting with long sounds and 2 letter words stating with same letter (at, am, an, or, of, on, it, is, in etc) and gradually moving to 3 letter phonic words. She is still at 3 letter words and is not always correct but getting there. Here is the link to one of the sessions I recorded  reading with phonics
6. E-reading (educational sites) – The one site that I find very useful is starfall.com. This helps Tuhina to practice reading without realizing and gives an alternate play-way to learn phonic reading. The content is well laid out and interesting
7. You tube music videos of alphabet, phonics rhymes – This came across the best way to introduce phonic sounds to Tuhina. Cut down all the table time resistance and she was learning phonics even when she was watching videos. Both of us were happy :). Tuhina memorized much of the phonic lessons and alphabets through you-tube videos and later on it was easier to introduce those concepts on table top.
8. Reading simple books and adaptive books as an activity – This is something that we do whenever time ( and her mood) permits. Even if it is just me reading to her, it helps to introduce books and the love of reading. And she must be gaining just by listening, developing her concentration skills and looking at familiar words by fleeting glaces.

I am not very sure at this stage how much is independent reading, or reading using cues and how much is just being read to, but it doesn't hurt to try and use whatever method words whichever day. This is surely going to take us to a better place at some point in future. And if we don't try, who else will.