9 Great Ways to Teach Reading Strategies

A strategy is a plan of how to move forward especially if stuck, so a reading strategy is how to move forward when reading especially if stuck. If students are equipped with strategies they can go to when they find themselves struggling – they feel more confident about reading. Reading strategies turned into animals to help students remember the strategy isn’t anything new – I first learned about it when teachers were using beanie babies to teach them. I don’t have beanie babies but  have posters!! Here I introduce you to the strategy name – if you click on the poster it will take you to my guided reading level A program.

Owl Eyes

What is the strategy?

The student will look at the word they are trying to figure out and use the picture on the book to figure out what the word can be.

Why is it important?

Students are learning that pictures help the reader to understand the book. This strategy helps students understand to use the picture as a clue to the book.

How to teach it?

To teach this strategy, tell the student that they need to use their owl eyes when reading. You can say, “Sometimes when we don’t know the word we can use the pictures to figure it out. Point to the word you do not know. Look at the first letter and figure out the sound. Then look at the picture to see if you can find a word that would make sense.”

Tap it Turtle

What is the strategy?

The student uses this strategy to help them keep track of where they are while reading.

Why is it important?

Teaching one to one correspondence with words while reading helps students to keep on track and really internalize what they are doing. It is very important although after level C you will want to discourage this behavior.

How to teach it?

Tap it Turtle likes to touch everything it reads. Use your finger to touch each word as you read it.

Fish Lips

What is the strategy?

The student will look at the word they want to read and form their lips to make the sound of the first letter.

Why is it important?

Students that use this strategy to get their lips ready for the first sound.

How to teach it?

When teaching this strategy, tell your students that they should make fish lips and form the first letter sound using their lips before saying it. When teaching letter sounds refer to fish lips to help your student remember to focus on where there lips are when forming the sound.

Stretchy Snake

What is the strategy?

The student can look at a word and decipher how to read it by stretching each syllable.

Why is it important?

Students can learn how to read a word based on decoding each syllable at a time. This will be handy as they move from words with one syllable to longer and complicated words.

How to teach it?

First, give your students a slinky or show them a picture of a snake. Then introduce them to Stretchy Snake, the animal that stretches the sounds in words to help them read. After that, demonstrate this with a familiar short CVC word. For example, if you used fog, ask your students to pronounce is as “ffffffoooggg” first then say “fog” normally.

Chunky Monkey

What is the strategy?

Students can figure out familiar chunks of sounds in an unfamiliar word using this strategy.

Why is it important?

Your students can decode unfamiliar words based on the letter pairs they have encountered before. For example, if they see the word “trying” for the first time, they can separate it into “try” and “ing” before reading it as one word.

How to teach it?

Show them Chunky Monkey, whether as a picture or a plush toy. Tell them that Chunky Monkey is a great reader because he knows how to put words into chunks so that he can figure out how to read them properly. After that, you can show them a compound word (i.e. handshake or rainbow) and break it down into several syllables (i.e. rain-bow). Test their skills afterwards by giving them exercises to divide words into chunks and reading them out loud.

Flip it Fox

What is the strategy?

The student will look at the word and try to figure out if the next syllable is a long or a short sound.

Why is it important?

Students can learn the difference when they would have to use short or long vowels when reading a word. It helps them make less mistakes when reading unfamiliar words.

How to teach it?

First, introduce them to Flip it Fox. Say that they’re good in flipping and that they flip a word’s vowel sound to check if it makes sense for them so that they can learn how to pronounce a word correctly. Then, show this example in practice by mispronouncing a common CVC or CVE word then telling students that it doesn’t sound right and it should be pronounced the other way around.

Bunny Hop

What is the strategy?

The student will look at a word they have trouble reading and learn how to hop to the next one.

Why is it important?

Once you teach this to students, you can help prevent your students from getting frustrated as they read anything by themselves, they will just hop it and come back to it and use other strategies to figure it out.

How to teach it?

Show your students Bunny hop. Tell them that bunnies love to hop, even in reading. If bunny encounters a word that it can’t read, it skips over it and reads the rest of the sentence first. Teach them this by showing them a sentence and going over each word with your students. If anyone finds a word hard, you will then show them that they can hop it for now and get back to it. Then, use any other reading strategies to identify the word.

Try it Lion

What is the strategy?

The student can use this strategy to be able to read unfamiliar parts of a sentence.

Why is it important?

It is important so that they can remember the previous reading strategies you taught them. Using this strategy, they can feel relieved that they can make use of everything that they know to figure out how to read it by themselves before asking for help.

How to teach it?

Introduce them to Try it Lion first. Then, tell them that he doesn’t give up trying to read a book by himself first using the skills from his other animal friends before asking for help. Then, demonstrate this by letting your students figure out how to read an unfamiliar word in a sentence. Let them decide which strategy to use and frequently ask them the questions “Does it make sense?” and “Does it sound right?”

Meaning Mouse

What is the strategy?

The student uses this strategy to make sure if the word makes sense by using context clues.

Why is it important?

Using context clues and looking at the picture are great strategies to teach students because it shows them how everything works together to create meaning.

How to teach it?

If students are unsure of a word, have them look at the words around it and at the picture. Have them ask themselves if that word makes sense in the sentence.

These nine reading strategies are great for your beginner readers! When I teach these to my students, it certainly makes it easier for them to figure out how to read words. I hope that this guide will help your students become stronger readers and discover their love of reading.