Ms. McWilliams

Notes to Parents: 

B/D
For students who are having difficulties with b’s and d’s, a daily b/d “punch” should help. Write a random list of b/d on paper and have the student shape their hands into the b/d position (they know how) and ‘hit’ the letter with the correct hand while saying the letter name. (Have about 10 or 12 letters in a row to work on.)

Fluency
For students needing to work on fluency, your may copy my CVC pack along with the b/d pack of cards onto your own index cards. Have the student read through this nightly. Two minutes for the CVC pack and 2 minutes for the b/d pack “punching” the correct b/d before they say the word. Keep records of the number read and the date.  Your goal is to beat their number by one each time.  Also, reading orally each evening for at least 15-20 minutes is ideal.  Shared reading is OK too. (You can alternate reading a sentence or a paragraph or a page with your child if it becomes too difficult.) A general rule of thumb for choosing a book is to have them read a page and if they only make 5 mistakes per page, then the book should be OK. When they are reading, tell them the words they need. If you make a list of the words you see them having repeated trouble with, you may send them in with the student and we can either decode them using the rules learned to date, or put them in their sight word groups.

Fluency, Concepts, and Spelling
If your child has an R&R pack, review and reinforcement, then practice that with them nightly.  Read for 2 minutes and count the words always trying for just one more than the night before.  Also, ask your child why that word is in the R&R pack. I try to put in 3-4 words per concept that we have studied. Also, the pack is fair game to quiz them on spelling.  You could practice 5 per night.

Additional sites for practice are:
http://www.sadlier-oxford.com/phonics/student.cfm

http://pbskids.org/lions/parentsteachers/site/map.html 

http://iteslj.org/cw/    (Dolch sight words)

Layers of English