Mrs. Mazzone's News

Welcome to room 8! In F8’s blog, you can find helpful tips and suggestions to help your child succeed in 1st grade. Reading is one of the most important skills your child will ever learn. Mastering reading leads to success in school and helps us learn and grow throughout life. In F8, we are working hard on phonemic awareness, phonics skills, reading fluency, vocabulary skills, and reading comprehension. These are skills that we work on daily.

Activities to help your child succeed in reading:

Phonemic Awareness
- Keep lots of books in your house that your child can read and observe.
- Match pictures of things that have the same beginning, middle and ending sounds (black, blue; sit, pit; sing, ring).
- Say a word and have your child come up with a word that rhymes with it.
- Ask your child to substitute one sound for another to make a new word (snack to back - take off the sn in snack and add a b)
Phonics
- Practice saying the names and sounds of the letters with your child.
- Place letter magnets on your refrigerator and ask your child to sound out letters and make words.
- Say a word such as pig and ask your child to change the letter p to tw to make the word twig.
Fluency
- Practice rapidly naming the letters of the alphabet
- Practice rapidly naming the sight words.
- Read a story, poem or play to your child with expression. Pause for punctuation. Then have your child read it over to you.
- Ask your child to read familiar stories over and over. See if he or she can read the story more quickly and smoothly over time.
Vocabulary
- Ask your child to read words he or she sees everyday.
- Talk with your child about his or her day at school. Encourage your child to give you details (for example, “What books did you read today?).
- Look through a book before reading and ask your child to use words to describe the pictures.
- Pause when reading a book with your child and explain any unknown words. Ask your child to make up a sentence using the word.
Comprehension
- Help your child check out books from the library.
- Allow your child to read and carry out simple recipes.
- Stop and ask your child questions while reading (Who are the people in the story”; “Where does the story take place? and “What is the story about?”).
- Ask your child to retell parts of the story.
- Ask your child what happened at the beginning, middle and end.
- Ask your child to draw a picture of the favorite part of the story.
- Have your child keep a book report journal and write a sentence and picture for each book read.

Fun Learning Activities

- Sight Word Bingo
- Hangman with Spelling words
- Go Fish game using the sight words
- Make a board game with the sight words.
- Write an E-mail or letter to a friend and send it.
- Keep a journal or diary
- Join a book club at your local library.
- Practice sight words with alphabet beads
- Practice writing letters with shaving cream

HAPPY READING! THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT!