Part 2: A Parents Guide on How to Help With Literacy Support at Home

If your child struggles with handwriting, they may need more practice with letter formation. It may seem old-fashioned, but there is a single, correct way to form each letter, and getting your child to be automatic in their letter formation will help with both reading and writing. 

It is important to get this right from the beginning, as incorrect formation habits will only get harder to fix as they become more ingrained.

💡How to support handwriting:

• Model correct letter formation. Use a formation guide if you need help remembering (see resources below).
• Use verbal reminders as necessary. Remind them that every letter has a single starting point. All capital letters start at the top. Lowercase letters are trickier, but none start at the bottom or below the line.
• Especially in the early grades, handwriting practice should be supported with double or triple lines (as guides).

💡Handwriting Resources:

• Learning Without Tears Free letter formation guide (and in Spanish).
• Ask your child's teacher for worksheets or packets for additional practice.
• There are mini whiteboards with lines for repeated practice at home.

Children who can spell a word can almost always read the word, but the opposite is not necessarily true. Encoding (or spelling) requires a much closer attention to each letter-sound correspondence. 

Structured spelling practice should not just be memorizing lists of words; it should follow the same phonics scope and sequence, and reinforce recently taught phonics skills.

💡How to support spelling:

• If your child struggles with spelling and writing, first check on their letter formation. If they are forming their letters incorrectly and/or are illegible, be sure to focus on handwriting.
• For K-2 students, it is easier to practice spelling with manipulative letters. There are multiple benefits to physical letters: they provide a tactile method that conceptualizes letters to sounds (similar to conceptualizing numbers with objects). They also remove the need to think about letter formation, which reduces cognitive load.
• Follow this simple spelling routine, which is great for doing Word Chains at home.
• • Note: this routine is highly supportive, which is useful for early or struggling readers. As your child becomes more experienced, they may not need all of the steps.

💡Spelling Resources:

• Word Chains are one of the simplest and most effective ways to practice both decoding and encoding. If your child has UFLI instruction at school, ask for updates on what lessons they did this week, and use the corresponding UFLI Home Practice pages (full instructions on how to do UFLI practice at home).
• • Word Chains can be done with manipulative letters (see below) or writing on whiteboards.
  • K Home Practice, 1st Grade Home Practice, 2nd Grade Home Practice
• Manipulative letter options
• • UFLI printable alphabet tiles- a great low-budget option, recommended to print on cardstock.
  • Magnet lowercase letters- recommended to get all in a single color, but that is remarkably difficult to find.
• Literacy Through Language has orthographically organized spelling lists (for grades 1-5)

If your child is just starting to read, we recommend that you start reading with decodable books. These are books that limit most of the text to words your child knows how to sound out (or decode). They start with very simple sentences, such as “The cat sat on the mat” and gradually get harder.

There are a few different places you can access free decodable books or texts:

💡King County Library

• Stairway Decodables- these are newer decodables. We have read these at home and I can personally attest to the quality of the text, illustrations, and characters in these books.
• Older Phonics Books- phonics has been around for a long time, so you can find older books that still are worth using today, including:
• • Bob Books- these remain very popular, and while they’re not my personal favorite, they are decodable and get the job done.
  • Phonics Practice Readers- published in the 80s, these readers are definitely old-school, but contain a lot of stories and skills in one book.
• We Both Read Books- these are slightly older books and are not as controlled as the decodables recommended above, but are good for working on trickier words, stamina, and fluency once your child has more of the code.

💡For free online

• UFLI’s decodable passages (Kinder, 1st Grade, 2nd Grade)
• The Measured Mom free decodable books.
• Amplify’s decodable skills readers (in English and Spanish too!)

There are many more free resources available online. There are also many sets of decodable books that you can purchase. The Reading League and UFLI both have compiled lists of decodable texts (TRL Decodable text guide and UFLI decodable text guide).

💡How to support reading:

• Use a finger to track reading, ensuring attention to all letters.
• Encourage sounding out unknown words.
• Reread words, phrases, and whole sentences after sounding them out, for better understanding.
• If your child is resistant to reading, offer more support and make reading a successful and positive experience:
• • You can start with reading out loud together. This is called choral reading, though if your child dislikes this, you can also try to:
  • Take turns reading. You can alternate who reads or read a sentence and have them read it again.
  • Gradually build up stamina. When they get tired, stop and pick it up another time.

Fluency is the ability to read in a smooth and natural way, with appropriate accuracy, speed, and expression. If your child is a more experienced reader, but struggles with fluency, have their phonics/decoding skills assessed. Many fluency issues are from gaps in phonics knowledge, but there could be other underlying issues (see fluency resources, below, for more info).

💡How to support fluency

• Take turns reading and have family members model fluent reading (reading a passage first to demonstrate proper accuracy, rate, and expression).
• Oral dictation and repeated practice and recitation of poems, songs, plays, or other types of spoken word; literature that is meant to be delivered aloud is perfect for fluency practice.
• Practice, practice, practice! All literacy skills require practice, but becoming a fluent reader takes a lot of practice. Some kids will naturally need more practice.

💡Fluency Resources:

• A very detailed blog post on fluency, including lots of other resources and potential other issues that can cause fluency issues.
• UFLI Placement Test- you can administer this at home with your child if you suspect phonics gaps and want to know where they have gaps and what skills to work on.

Comprehension, or understanding and making meaning from text, is the purpose of learning to read. However, comprehension is not a skill that can be taught– it is a complex process. You can help by focusing on understanding smaller units (words and sentences) and building language skills and background knowledge. 

💡How to support building language and knowledge:

• Explain new words as you encounter them in any context.
• Encourage inquiry and interruptions to ask about word meaning. For older students, use morphology instructions to make connections and find meaning in words. For example, the morpheme ‘dict’ means “to say/speak” and can be found in words such as: dictionary, predict, contradict, verdict.
• Before asking your child what an entire story or text is about, start smaller. Ask them to explain what happened in a sentence or a paragraph.
• Continue building oral language skills and general/background knowledge via exposure to a wide range of topics and literature. Some studies have found the integration of social studies to be most impactful.
• Oral language is particularly important for kids who are learning English as a second language.
• Kids learn and build knowledge all the time, and going on trips and excursions is another way to do this.

💡Knowledge Resources:

• King County Library- for books and audiobooks, and for free passes to local museums.
• Literacy Through Language Morphology- is a free morphology program, for grades 4-8.
• CKLA- is a free knowledge-building language arts program with a strong social studies component, for grades K-8.
• Take advantage of local events and excursion opportunities. There are local, parent-oriented websites that curate ideas and lists of events, including ParentMap and PEPS.