Early reading support with Clicker
Table of contents
Introduction
Recently, more schools have requested online training for using Clicker with younger learners, especially emergent readers and early reading.
As a former early elementary teacher, I use my experience in these sessions to showcase how many of Clicker's key features are beneficial for these students.
Here are the four key elements of teaching early reading that I would focus on supporting with Clicker:
- Exploring vocabulary
- Decoding
- Using expression
- Comprehension and understanding
Exploring vocabulary with early readers
Matching Sets
I am a huge advocate of using Matching Sets to support with those vital early reading skills. They are a flexible resource and intuitive for children to use independently. They also make a great teaching tool on your interactive whiteboard! Matching Sets enable students to match words, pictures, and sounds to rehearse and consolidate new vocabulary.
I would often pre-teach vocabulary ahead of a new topic or text, and Matching Sets are a fantastic way to do this. In my experience, letting students explore new words and connect them to their sounds and images helps them read more confidently on their own.
Teaching vocabulary is crucial for early reading, so LearningGrids offers numerous ready-made Matching Sets on various topics.
Decoding resources for early reading
Having taught younger learners, I know how important phonics activities are to help students build confidence decoding new words.
Our fantastic phonics resources on LearningGrids are easy to build into your planning to support your phonics teaching.
The recently added CVC decodable stories and activities are written with phonetically decodable text and a few high-frequency sight words, helping students to build key early reading skills. They are perfect for 1:1 reading sessions, but they also work well in a group or as a whole class activity.
Clicker Books
As reading is vital for students to fully access the curriculum, making sure early learners are secure in their knowledge of phonics is one of the key priority areas. Reading books that are decodable for a student and pitched at their stage of learning is important for building confidence.
Use the Read a Book version of the stories for added speech support. The Read It Yourself version is designed to encourage students to have a try at decoding and reading the text for themselves, so it's ideal when children are feeling more confident with the phonemes and graphemes at their level.
Matching Sets
Another way I always recommend using Matching Sets is to support your phonics teaching.
In my teaching days, I loved simple phonics activities and games that my class could access independently. Matching Sets are an excellent resource for students developing blending, segmenting, and grapheme-phoneme correspondence skills. They are a valuable tool for supporting early reading to help students develop their decoding skills and ability to sound out words.
Using expression as early readers
From my experience teaching 1st grade, I know that teaching expression and intonation in reading can be challenging. Though students are learning many new skills, developing expression is key to building comprehension and a love of reading.
Adding our recording tool into a Clicker Book is a great way to support students with this.
Clicker Books
You can edit Clicker Books to include an audio recording of students reading the text aloud. They can listen back to this to:
- Hear the story read in their own words
- Listen out for how they've used expression
- Check if they've paid attention to punctuation
- See if their sentences make sense
You could also record adults reading the text aloud using these recording tools and ask the students to play teacher! If an adult purposely reads with little expression or poor punctuation, students can listen for ways to improve and give feedback - simple but effective way for students to demonstrate their understanding of these skills, without even realizing it!
Early reading comprehension and understanding
It's great when a student can read a word, a full sentence, or even a whole book but how can we ensure they've actually understood what they've read?
Comprehension skills are a vital part of early reading, and Clicker has a few ways to help!
Reading into writing
One of the things I love about using Clicker Books from LearningGrids is the corresponding writing activities. Writing grids vary in scaffolding and help students write about the book they've read. This is perfect for helping them to consolidate the text and show their understanding.
Speaking and listening
Talk Sets are another fantastic way to gauge a student's understanding of a text. They allow children to verbally share what they've read and are especially useful for students who struggle to express themselves in written form. They can record their thoughts about different parts of the text, describe characters or settings, retell a story, and so much more!
Conclusion
Clicker offers a wide range of resources that can support early reading skills, from pre-reading skills such as exploring new vocabulary, to post-reading comprehension activities.
By incorporating Clicker's interactive activities into your lessons, students are provided with valuable opportunities to practice and consolidate a range of key reading skills, allowing them to gain confidence in accessing content across the curriculum.
This is just a small snippet of how Clicker can help with early reading skills. Here are some other resources you might find helpful:
The science of reading and Clicker's decodable books
