ABRACADABRA (It really is magical!) ?✨

Teaching your child to read – www.abralite.concordia.ca

I work in the education sector, and I recently delivered a structured reading Intervention programme to Key Stage 1 children (Ages 4-5), using a very useful website that does a lot of the heavy lifting, leaving the teacher (in this case, you!) free to attend to the specific needs of the individual child.  It is a balanced game-based reading approach, and ultimately designed for beginner readers.  Before I begin an overview of the main sections of the website, here’s a list of the specific terms used, and their explanations:

Phonics: A method of teaching people to read using correlated sounds and symbols, in an alphabetic writing system.

Reading comprehension: The ability to read text, process it and understand its meaning.

Sequencing: The identification of the parts of a story, such as the beginning, middle and end; and the ability to retell the events of the story, in the order they occurred.

Blending: Joining speech sounds together to make words.

Decoding: The ability to read words, by translating the written symbols into the sounds of the spoken language. It is sometimes referred to as ‘Word Identification’.

Prediction: Using information in the text to anticipate what is to come.

I hope this information does not seem exhausting, but it will give you an idea of what your children will be learning in school and how teaching them to read is a structured process that can be supported at home.

Once entered, the site is quite self-explanatory and will give you different categories to use. To start off, you need to click though a few options:

Click ‘Student’, then ‘Activities and Stories’

Above is a picture of the main page and the way it’s laid out. You will choose one activity from the top and then choose a story genre underneath.  Notice the four main skills along the top, reading from left to right: Alphabetic, fluency, comprehension and writing. There are 17 story genres, so you should be able to find something engaging.

It is generally a good idea to start with the top row, clicking the first icon and then choosing the option ‘Animated Alphabet’, as this will give your child an introduction to the Alphabet and the way the sounds are pronounced.

The website address is: www.abralite.concordia.ca

I hope you enjoy.