Ready or not, Halloween is coming!  My daughter has already picked out her costume.  She wants to be Yoda from Star Wars.  This suits her.  She’s tiny in stature but mighty in spirit.  Still, when she goes trick-or-treating this year, she is hoping to be greeted with TREATS, not TRICKS.  This makes sense -- how many kids that you know of would look forward to hiking through hilly neighborhoods on Halloween if they thought they were going to get a bunch of nasty tricks rather than treats? 

The same is true of reading.  If your kids discover they are going to get "tricked" rather than "treated" each time they try to make their way through written text, most will quickly lose interest, and many will stop wanting to read altogether.  After all, it won't be fun.  It won't even make sense. 

It will be confusing.  And frustrating.  And they won't want to do it.

Can you blame them?  Who among us looks forward to doing things that are hard for us...that don't make sense...that confuse us...that make us feel stupid...that scare us...that make the people we love most seem angry and frustrated around us?

Not many, that's for sure.

If you want to make reading more of a "treat" than a "trauma" for your kids, you must prepare them for the words they will encounter on their journeys before you send them out to discover the world of reading on their own. In other words, you must turn the "tricks" they are sure to come across into treats!

To make reading more of a "treat" for your kids, you must teach them more than letters, sounds, and "sight words."  You must teach them to blend sounds together, starting on the left and moving to the right.  And, equally as important but often overlooked or introduced way too late, you must make sure your kids are equipped to deal with the many "tricks" they are sure to meet along the way -- letters and/or letter combinations that create new sounds when they appear together or in a certain position in words than they normally make when alone. Combinations like sh, ch, th, er, or, ou, tion, oo, aw, ay, etc.  And don’t forget “sleepy e,” “2 vowels,” and “le endings.”  Y at the end of a short or long word is another doozie you need to remember to teach them.  There are many others as well.  I’ve counted up to 37 so far, but I’m sure there are more.   

One or more of these "tricks" are hiding in almost every word!  If you skip this part of their training and rely on teaching "sight words" instead, your kids (especially those with less than stellar visual memories) may just turn to the “dark side” and begin guessing their way through unfamiliar text, saying such things as “why” for very, “tell” for tall, “deserved” for discovered, and/or “admit” for amount. You might even hear them confuse the word I with A!  "Had" might become did.  "Take" might become like. Such scandalous switches are common among those who have been sent to battle words before they have been adequately trained to even spar with them.  They simply don't have the tools or training they need to deal with such skilled adversaries. Before long, one previously "known" word starts looking like the next, and these untrained "readers" either give up or resort to spitting out words from their mental Roladexes each time they see a word with a somewhat familiar letter, shape, or size.

Don't let this happen to your young Jedi.  Teach your kids what they really need to know to read the words they will soon encounter -- letters, sounds, “tricks,” a good blending/segmenting technique, and a few common “outlaw words” (words that can’t be sounded out even if you know the “tricks”).  If you teach them these skills and give them lots of guided practice using them, you should see your kids' reading habits skyrocket.  You should see them turn into excellent readers who get "treated" as they read rather than "tricked."   And, as reading the text before them becomes easier and easier, you should see your kids learn to love interacting with books and literature, rather than racing off to avoid them.  Or crying.  Or complaining.  Or throwing a king-sized fit.

Of course, you'll also have to make sure your kids have a good vocabulary, adequate background knowledge, and a few other key reading ingredients.  After all, being able to decode words effectively is only the first step.  To be real readers, your kids must also be able to understand them! 

Regardless of where your kids are today, start giving them the skills they need to move forward.  They are counting on you.  Don't end their training early and neglect to teach them what they really need to know to read the words around them.  Don't send them out to battle a book only halfway prepared.

As my daughter loves to quote from Yoda, "Try not.  Do.  Or do not.  There is no try.” 

Train your kids.  Teach them what they need to know to be successful readers and writers.  Send them out this Halloween and every day thereafter equipped to turn any "trick" into a treat.  You won't be sorry. 


All the best and much success…and may the Force be with you!

Katy Huller

Author of Kinders Can! READ and WRITE! and Tricks Practice Cards (Set 1 and Set 2).  All available at www.KindersCanReadandWrite.com!)

You may have a class full of advanced kindergartners.  Or you may have a class full of struggling ones.  More than likely, however, your class is full of all sorts of kids at all sorts of levels -- some who have known letters and sounds for years and others who are just beginning to make sense of them.  Not a problem.  If you focus on what’s important and teach your kindergartners what they really need to know to write well, you can amaze all the people following their progress this year, especially their parents and your principal!


Tip 1:  Help your kids learn to break up words and write the sounds they hear in the order they hear them.

Learning to hear a word and segment it into parts is crucial to becoming a writer.  For your kids to begin writing their thoughts down on paper, they must first understand how to hear a word, break it into its individual sound parts, and represent each sound heard with the appropriate letters.  For instance, when they hear the word "cat," they need to be able to immediately break it into /c/ /a/ /t/, hearing each sound that makes up the word.  Naturally, they'll need to know the letters that represent each sound as well...and be able to write them properly as well.

But my kids don’t even know letters and sounds yet!  When should I get them segmenting...and how?
If you want your kids to become great writers by the end of the school year, you should definitely start working on segmenting with your kids as soon as possible, preferably by the third full week of school -- even if you have kids who come in with very little letter/sound knowledge.  If you are following the Kinders Can! READ and WRITE! letter order, this is easy to do.  You will start blending and segmenting words that use the letters you have reviewed and/or focused on so far (t, o, and p).  That means that even the kids who only know the letters you have officially gone over will be able to start blending and segmenting right away, reading and writing the words top, pot, tot, and pop!  This will help them begin to understand how letters and sounds work together to make words.  Each week will further this understanding as you continue to blend and segment new words utilizing all of the letters and sounds you have officially covered.  As more and more letters/sounds have been covered, even your least exposed kids should be able to read more and more words with ease.  If you also include a daily alphabet review and a number of other activities that go over important letter/sound information throughout the day (read Kinders Can! READ and WRITE! for more information on how to do this), you should really see your kids take off!

Regardless of the program and/or letter order you are using, make sure you get your kids blending and segmenting with whatever letters and sounds they have learned, and do your best to cover all of the letters and sounds as quickly as possible so that a lack of letter/sound knowledge doesn't hold them back.

All of my kids already know letters and sounds.  What should I do?
If your kids come to you already knowing letters and sounds, you can bypass going over letters and sounds each week, and jump right into teaching your students how to put their letter/sound knowledge to use!  Right away, you’ll want to introduce them to blending and segmenting all sorts of consonant-vowel-consonant words.  Ideally, you’ll want to choose words that utilize all of the letters of the alphabet.  This will help your kids get a good review of letters and sounds as they learn to blend and segment them. (For free word cards, go to www.KidsCanReadandWrite.com!)

What if my kids are having trouble blending and/or segmenting?
As you go over how to put sounds together and break them apart, make sure you help your kids gain a good blending/segmenting technique.  This is key to the reading/writing process.  Your goal should be to help your kids actually hear what they are saying as they blend sounds together.  I like to have my kids "punch" the first sound (say it loudly and clearly by itself), drag out the middle sound (say it for longer), and quickly but a little more quietly add on the ending.  In other words, if my kids were reading the word hop, they would say, "/h/ /oooo/p/, hop!"  When first teaching them how to sound out words, I would help them sound out the word three times as a group before putting it together.  This helps everyone learn to blend more effectively, and gives your confused kids more time to understand what everyone is doing to get the correct word.  As your kids get the hang of how to sound out words quickly and efficiently, however, take your voice out completely and begin to have them sound out each word only once.