Helping your student at home

Learning how to read fluently is foundational.  Below are two aspects of learning to read fluently where parents can help their children.

1. Learning to hear sounds. This is called phonological awareness.
2. Learning to sound out written words.  This is called phonics.

How do you support your student to read fluently?

1. Learning to Hear Sounds

In ISD, we use Heggerty as our curriculum to teach students to hear sounds in words.

If your child is an early reader, not yet reading words, word play is an important way to help your child become a reader.  Heggerty has a parent resource page for parents with ideas for word play.  

2. Learning to sound out written words.

Being able to use phonics skills to sound out words is important.  Watch this video below to learn from Understood.org about how parents can help their child with phonics skills.

ISD uses Flyleaf for readers that support phonics - these are books designed to help students practice phonics skills.  Flyleaf offers free access to decodable books: https://portal.flyleafpublishing.com/learners-resources/.  Reading these at home can make reading more accessible to students.

One of the programs we use to teach phonics is Really Great Reading.  They have a great parent resource page with directions for helping your students learn to read.

If your child is receiving Really Great Reading instruction (1st-5th grade) from a Reading Specialist or Classroom teacher, the teacher could tell you which series your student is on.  If you are just exploring and want to know which resources to use from Really Great Reading, keep this in mind:

• Countdown is for beginning to early readers.  ISD uses Countdown mostly in 1st grade readers who need additional support with early phonics skills.
• Blast is for emerging readers and readers building their phonics skills.  ISD mostly uses Blast for students in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade who need additional support with phonics and fluency.
• HD Word is used to continue building phonics skills.  ISD mostly uses HD Word for 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students who need additional support with reading fluency.

 

As students learn how to read the words, sentences and paragraphs fluently, they focus more and more of their thinking on comprehension of what they read. 

The number one thing a student can do to increase comprehension is read high-interest fiction and informational books, every day!

A fantastic new tool for supporting students who have some difficulties reading is Learning Ally.   Learning Ally is a tool that gives qualified students access to audiobooks, matched with written text – a highly effective way to promote independent reading for students experiencing reading difficulties.  

CLICK HERE to learn more about Learning Ally and whether your student has access.

 

What if you have a reluctant reader?  What if you want to do more at home to support your reader to better understand what is read?

Let's talk about what comprehension includes...

1. Understanding words.  Building a student's vocabulary is a critical part of reading with comprehension.  Parents can support vocabulary by...

• Noticing words their child may or may not know and talking about the definition.  Have fun!  Play fun word Friday where everyone in the family has to find a new word and describe it to the family by Friday.
• Having great conversations together.  Whether you go for a walk and talk or just talk at dinner, adult-child conversations are a great source of learning new words. 
• Learn about topics of interest.  Whether by watching PBS or National Geographic, researching topics online or checking out informational books to read together, learning about real-life topics increases vocabulary.
   

2. Understanding stories (also called narrative texts).  Reading with your student while they are young, and reading the same book as your student as they transition into chapter books is a great way to help your student read and learn to love reading.  Allow a range of reading levels and types, guided by your child's interests.  Series of books and graphic novels are great for growing reading skills and interests.  Whether you read with your child or not, here are some questions and prompts you can use to help them grow in comprehension.

• What happened?  Ask your child to retell what was just read.  This starts with a literal retelling, then as they grow encourage them to summarize - give the highlights of the story.
• What are the characters like?  Learning to think of the characters in the story as real people causes students to think, make inferences and connections to the story.  As they grow as readers ask them how the characters reacted to the events in the story and how did they change during the story.  
• Where does the story take place?  What is that place like.  This is called the setting and growing readers learn that the setting is important to understanding the story.
• What is the problem and solution of the story?  Most story's center around some sort of problem that gets resolved by the end of the story.

A drop-down below provides a guide for finding the right-fit book for your child's reading level using the Lexile provided by i-Ready, or the correlating F&P level provided by your child's teacher.

3. Understanding informational texts.  Some student naturally enjoy reading about real-life topics, while others prefer stories.  Both are important.  Going to the library to get informational books on high-interest or new topics and even watching informational shows (PBS, National Geographic...), can help grow reading comprehension skills.  Here are some tips and prompts you can use as your child interacts with informational texts and videos.

• Read and Learn together.  Some informational texts and videos are at a higher level than your child reads independently.  Reading them together grows interest.
• Talk about the words.  Informational texts are loaded with words we don't use every-day.  Notice these words and talk about the meaning.  Sometimes ask them first what they think the word means before giving your definition.
• Get several books on the same topic.  Getting a variety of informational books, at different levels, is a very powerful way to grow reading skills, vocabulary and interest.

Your student's teacher may have already shared a reading level using F&P's letter scale (A-Z).  Below is how you can use the Lexile score provided by i-Ready to select books for independent reading.

Always keep in mind that every student has a reading RANGE, not a single level.  When reading text that is of high interest, students can read at the high end of their range.  It is also appropriate to select text toward the low end of the range – an easy reader.  All reading provides benefits.

So how do I use the Lexile Score?

Step 1.  Look for your student's Lexile score in Family Access.  In family access, test scores take note of the last i-Ready Lexile Score.

Step 2.  Find the Lexile RANGE.  The Lexile RANGE is the Lexile score + or - 75.  So if a student receives a Lexile score of 500, the student's Lexile range is 425 - 575. 

Step 3. Use the book finder.  CLICK HERE to find books by Lexile, Lexile Range or Grade Level.  OR  You can match your student's Lexile Range to an A-Z reading range by using the chart below to estimate F&P reading range from your Lexile range.

note: Lexile and F&P are two different ways to measure text complexity and reading level.  Both are estimates and any given book may have a higher Lexile and lower A-Z level or lower Lexile and higher A-Z level.

If the Lexile Score is in this range...	My F&P Reading Level range is likely to be...	Which is at this Grade Level range.
BR400-BR251	Pre-A	Pre-Kindergarten - Kindergarten
BR250-99	A-D	Kindergarten - 1st grade
100-199	D-G	1st grade
200-299	G-J	1st grade - 2nd grade
300-499	J-N	2nd grade
500-699	N-Q	2nd - 3rd grade
700-849	P-S	3rd - 4th grade
850-999	S-U	4th - 5th grade
1000+	W-Y	5th grade & beyond

In general, some great ways to support your student become a better mathematician includes the following:

• Get to know what skills your child is working on, such as adding or multiplying, and what kids of numbers they are working with, such as numbers 1-10 or larger numbers 20-100, or fractions and decimals.
• Encourage your child to stick with it whenever a problem seems difficult. Rather than give them the answer, help them think through the problem and find a solution with little help.  This will help your child see that everyone can learn math.  
• Praise your child when they make an effort and share in the excitement when they solve a problem or understands something for the first time. 
• You can also use i-Ready My-Path (see above) for your student to work on Math skills.  Completing 3-4 lessons or 45 minutes per week can help students build skills in their areas of need. Please let them do the i-Ready lessons as independently as possible.

ISD Parent Resources

Parent Road Map: These resources give a guide to understanding the math your student is learning, by grade level

• Kindergarten
• Grade 1
• Grade 2
• Grade 3
• Grade 4
• Grade 5

Eureka Math Parent Tip Sheets:  These tip sheets help you with content taught at each grade level.

• Kindergarten   
• Grade 1
• Grade 2
• Grade 3
• Grade 4
• Grade 5

Standards for Mathematical Practice for Families : This document provides ideas for how you can talk to your student about the math practice (thinking skill) they are using in math.

Additional Resources

• Zearn 

• i-Ready My Path

• K-5 Math Games

• Figure This—Math Challenges for families in English and Spanish

• Use everyday objects to allow your child to count and group a collection of objects in different ways. 
• Encourage your child to build, read and write numbers in multiple ways. 
  • Example: What are ways to build 10?  (3+7, 12-2, 2x5 ...)
  • Example: What are ways to build one half?  cut a whole in half, 1/4+1/4
• Help your child explain relationships between different numbers. 
  • Example: 147 is 47 more than 100 and 3 less than 150
  • Example: one whole is made up of one-fourth and one-fourth and one-fourth and one-fourth. 
• Provide opportunities to add, subtract, multiply and divide using numbers seen all around such as in a store or on a street sign or food labels. 
• Example: This soup costs $2.50, what will 4 cans cost?  

• Have your child create math story problems using real situations around the home using the math skills they are learning.
  • Example: I have $7 and need $13 to get the toy I want.  How much more money will I need to save to get the toy?
• Encourage your child to write equations to represent story problems. 
• Example: These may include equations such as 7 + __ = 13, rather than expressions that require finding just a sum, difference, product or quotient (such as 13– 7= __). 

• Have your student practice measuring items around the home using non-standard units (such as, “How many pencils long is the TV?”)
• Have your student practice measuring items around the home using standard units (inch ruler, measuring cup, analog clock). 
• Provide opportunities to compare measurements using words such as more, less, taller, heavier and faster. 
• Survey family members and represent data in different ways (tally marks, pictographs, bar graphs, etc.) 

• Look for and compare two-dimensional and three-dimensional shapes around the neighborhood or home. (Road signs, household objects, ...) 
• Draw characters or other objects using specific shapes (example: draw an animal using circles, triangles, rectangles)
• Identify real world angles that are acute, obtuse, right and straight, and find lines that intersect or are perpendicular or parallel. 
• Use positional words such as before, after, above, below and beside. (example: The clock is _____ the TV?  answer: above)