Since it’s Reading Month, I wanted READING to be the focus during my mentoring hour with my six year old today. With very little effort, I was able to help him with all five components of reading AND have fun at the same time… in fact, his giggles were contagious! I enjoyed laughing with him. Here’s what we did.
First, I gave him a few options and let him choose the book we read. He was excited about the book and was engaged in the learning process.
# 1- Phonemic Awareness– the book we read had a rhyme and a rhythm to it that was easy to follow. He picked up on it and could mimic it easily. From time to time I would pause and leave out a word to see if he could figure out what word came next.
#2- Phonics– Before we turned a page, I picked out a sight word that we had just read and asked my friend to spell it using letter tiles from the game Bananagrams. He loved looking for letters and even called me out when I accidentally skipped.
#5- Vocabulary- The book that we read had pretty simple words in it, so to help develop vocabulary we played the game HEDBANZ. If you have never played this game, you can check it out at http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=hedbanz+video&view=detail&mid=F7624FD6F78459AA42F7F7624FD6F78459AA42F7&first=0&FORM=LKVR2
I changed the rules and let my friend describe the card that was on my head. At first, the only way he knew to describe it was by spelling it, but he finally got the hang of giving me clues about the word that was on my head. His clues not only made me giggle, they also showed me he knew the meaning of each word.
SIMPLE, FUN & IMPORTANT!