The Educational Foundation has been assessing the keys to competent reading in our local elementary school’s first graders since 2022. Using DIBLES, a reading assessment tool, we have followed the development of the five skills students need for success. These skills are basic but unless they are learned to fluency, the reader’s proficiency will always be limited. These are skills that can be mastered by every child
Historically, students entering first grade are limited to the performance level they achieved on their Kindergarten Readiness scores. A Kindergarten class showing a 25% readiness score will typically produce a third-grade class with only 25% of students reading competently. Unfortunately, statistics show that most children who fail to learn to read in first-grade never become competent readers. Students who cannot read at grade level drop out of school at the highest rates so this is a critical indicator of a school’s success. Our goal is for every student to be a reader so there is much work to be done. to ensure that your child becomes a successful reader.
These are the five keys for first grade students every parent should know in order to assist their child.
First, teach them the alphabet. Historically only 25% of our K-5 and first graders enter school knowing their alphabet. By the time a child begins first grade, she should be able to identify 42 letters in a sixty seconds timed exercise. Flash cards are excellent for this. For the first graders, the alphabet to be learned consist of both capital and small letters. Our DIBLES test omits both the capital and lower case “i” and the “w”. These are introduced later. It is common for the best students to recognize more than 80 letters in a minute, with no errors.
Reaching fluency is important. Fluency is defined as unhesitant, accurate performance and is the basis for all true learning. Subjects learned to fluency are retained longer than when learned to simple mastery. Achieving high levels of performance, whether in music, sports, work such as carpentry or plumbing, or academics is critical. The sooner a skill becomes automatic, the faster the learner progresses. A person solving 40 simple math problems is a minute knows math better than one who takes 4 or 5 minutes.
As more students become fluent in their basic reading skills, teachers have more time for students who are at-risk of failing. Success fosters success! Also, greater gains are made in other subjects such as Math and Science as reading is fundamental to understanding these subjects.
Second, teach them the sounds of letters (phonemes). Letter names and letter sounds are different and a learner must know both. The sounds of consonants are easier to teach as they stay the same. Vowels, however, change depending on whether they are a long or short vowel. The “A” in apple is different from the “A” in about. First graders learn the sound most often used in their first grade vocabulary. This vocabulary can be found on the internet and is not a very long one. DIBLES tests use only about 650 words to establish successful reading practices. Our successful readers can give the sounds of the letters at the rate of better than 50 correct per minute.
Sight words are words that a child should know and which often do not follow normal conventions. Of course, some such as “it” do follow the rule. Others, such as “that”, are on the list because the “th” sound is not learned until later. Your school will have a list of sight words you should help your child learn.
Third, help your child learn simple consonant-vowel-consonant combinations without always linking them with to words. DIBLES uses nonsense words to test a child’s ability to recognize letter sounds and vowels. These are usually patterns which are found in many words. Nonsense words, such as “non”, “lum”, “hap”, and “tup” are introduced to ensure the learner can decode more complex vocabulary. It is very similar, but not the same as, rhymes where a sound, once learned, becomes the basis for an expanded number of words. Jill can easily be changed to fill, if the child knows the “ill” combination and the phoneme “f”, for example. Our best students can give the individual letter sounds in these nonsense words at a rate of more than 50 per minute. The rate of sounding the entire nonsense word (without breaking it into its partsJ) is 20 or more per minute.
Fourth, teach your child as many “sight” words as possible. As mentioned before, these lists are available on the internet and from your child’s schools. This is not the same as teaching them to read. These words occur so frequently that memorization creates a short-cut for the reader, allowing them to read faster. Again, with fluency, the faster a child can read with accuracy, the more competent they become in the skill. Our readers can identify more than 40 words per minute from a list.
Fifth, teach your child to read with expression. DIBLES measures both the rate and accuracy of words read. A child beginning first grade should be able to read at least 10 words per minute with an accuracy of 67%. That means that he will make fewer than 3 errors. By the middle of first grade, this jumps to 21 words per minute with 87% accuracy which is around 2 errors. We know that only children at fluency can add expression to their readings. We also know that comprehension increases with fluency. Twenty percent of our readers can read, from a passage, more than 50 words per minute with fewer than 3 errors.
For more information on how to help your child succeed at reading, contact us at The Educational Foundation of Lower Florence County (info@flo3foundation.org).
https://screportcards.com/overview/academics/preparing-for-success/?q=eT0yMDIzJnQ9UCZzaWQ9MjEwMzA1MA.