Fishing for Sounds

Since we finished 100 EZ Lessons on Tuesday (hooray for us!) we've been having a little fun during our reading lessons in the morning. I've been using Jessie Wise's The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading to reinforce and build on some of the basic lessons the sweet girl learned in 100 EZ. Right now she mostly needs practice to gain more reading confidence, and a chance to review and expand some sound combinations.

Wise's book has some lovely supplemental suggestions that help keep things fun. One suggestion I tried this week, which has been a smashing success, is a little "fishing game" she outlines in the lesson that teaches the digraph "NG."

This is a great way to reinforce the "NG" words -- those words that end in ING, ANG, ONG, and UNG. Below, I'm re-capping from Wise's directions on p. 115 of Ordinary Guide...and adding a few of my own comments.

Print each of those endings: ing, ang, ong, ung, on an index card.

Cut nine other cards in half and write one letter or letter combination on each card. You'll need h, b, f, r, s, p, cl, sl, w, k, d, z, sw, fl, br, g, and l

Clip a metal paperclip on each card.

Make a fishing pole! She suggested tying a piece of string to a pencil, then tying a small metal magnet to the other end of the string. We didn't have a small magnet with a hole, but we did have a roll of magnetic tape (handy thing to have around). We found that worked well -- just cut a small square of magnet off the roll, and use the "sticky" tape side of the magnet to attach it to the string.

Turn one of the ending cards (ing, ang, ong, ung) over so your child can see it. Then turn the half-size cards face down so she can't see the letter sounds. What you want the child to do is to "fish" with her pencil pole, pick up a card, and then put it front of the ending to form a word.

The letters you need for each "sea" are as follows:

For "ang" -- use the h b f r s p cl and sl cards

For "ing" -- use the w k d p r s z sw cl fl sl and br cards (this was our favorite set)

For "ong" -- use the b d g l and s cards

For "ung" -- use the h l r s fl sw and sl cards

What I liked most about this game (besides the fact that it was fun and my little girl responded to it so eagerly!) was how it helped her to visually see the formation of words from sound combinations. I also spent some time talking with S. about each of the words -- we tried using them in sentences, and we defined ones she wasn't sure about. That worked well too; this morning she casually used the word "cling" correctly in a sentence, and I'm pretty sure she'd never heard the word (or at least been aware of its meaning) until yesterday.

A fun exercise! I highly recommend this book as a supplementary resource for teaching reading.