teaching reading

The BJU Press Approach to Phonics

May 5, 2020 by Jenna

For most of us, by the time we reach adulthood, reading comes naturally. We don’t have to think about which letters make what sounds or the rules for making different sounds. We just read. But then you look at your young children who have only been talking for a short while. How do you even begin to teach them to read? Naturally, the ABCs are a great place to start, but what comes after that? What is phonics and how are you supposed to teach it?

BJU Press’s approach to phonics in early learning and Grade 1—and even beyond to Grade 3—is fairly straightforward. If your children can talk, then they already know most of the words that they’ll be reading. You just need to give them the tools to read them.

Laying the Groundwork with Fun and Games

As a homeschool parent, you might hear a lot about sneaky learning—the idea of hiding learning opportunities in games and activities that your kids enjoy. But when your kids are just learning to read, there’s no point in hiding learning because all they do is learn, and most of the things they do are fun and games. All you need to do is direct them towards fun that will prepare them for future learning. Songs that teach rhymes, alphabet games, tracing activities, even reading to them while they look over your shoulder all help prepare your kids for the next step in learning to read. And it sets up a strong foundation to build on.

That’s why each of BJU Press’s early learning programs—Pathways for Preschool, Footsteps for Fours, and Focus on Fives—focuses heavily on activities, games, and characters that will keep children engaged and prepare them for learning.

Building Awareness

Why do you spend so much time laying the groundwork? You’re helping your children associate the sounds they hear and use to communicate with the letters and words they see on the page. It’s a big step from auditory and oral functions to visual functions.

Letter Sound Associations

Before they can read words, they’ll need to identify the sounds they hear. And that requires phonemic awareness—the ability to hear and recognize the individual sounds, or phonemes, that make up words. The s sound, the i sound, and the t sound in sit, for example. In Focus on Fives, Phonics 1, and English 1, we use numerous strategies for building phonemic awareness, including phonics stories and characters, phonics songs, rhyming songs, and read-alouds.

Manipulating Sounds

But phonemic awareness goes beyond just recognizing sounds. It’s also about being able to use and manipulate them. If your child knows the letter sounds for sit, as well as other consonant sounds, he or she can manipulate those consonant sounds into other members of the _it word family. With phonemic awareness and word families, children can learn proper pronunciation and find meaning rapidly. For children learning phonics, the words they’re starting with are usually words they already know. They need to be able to associate the letters they don’t know with the sounds they do know, so it’s less about building vocabulary and more about being able to decode sounds from letters. As they learn new sounds, they can practice combining letters and sounds into real words, and even find new words by looking for familiar patterns.

Keeping It Fun

Instead of teaching one word at a time, you’re equipping your children with the tools they need for reading all kinds of words. Tools like short and long vowels, consonant blends, r-influenced words, special vowel sounds, silent consonants, suffixes, and syllable division. Of course, most of these tools don’t have much meaning to a 5- or a 6-year-old who’s learning to read. That’s where we bring the fun back in with characters and games. Mr. Short, Miss Long, Marker E, Bossy R, and Miss Silent all give engaging visual cues that help your children learn and remember.

Reading Readiness

The goal of phonics instruction is for your children to be ready to read with comprehension and confidence. But teaching phonics alone can’t get you all the way there. Your children will also need opportunities to apply phonics principles in reading lessons. One key to that will be a phonics and reading program that supports them as they develop their skills. In Focus on Fives, we teach phonics and reading together, but in Grade 1, phonics and reading are two correlated subjects, and children practice and apply their skills separately. We continue to support phonics through Reading 3. Additionally, your children will need regular opportunities to read silently to develop reading comprehension, and to read orally to develop fluency. When children practice reading aloud, they learn to apply speaking rules (pauses, emphasis, and pacing) to their reading, adding depth and meaning. This kind of practice also improves their ability to communicate verbally.

Ultimately, you are preparing your children to read the Bible with confidence and clarity so that they can build their worldview on its principles. The way there is just one step after another. Your kids will be life-long readers before you know it!

Reading Questions and Qualities

September 17, 2019 by Guest Writer

Our goal at BJU Press is to help your child get as much as he can from what he reads. Learning to gather meaning from stories can help him evaluate the choices others make and comprehend the information he needs to make good decisions. We also want to enable your student to recognize good writing as well evaluate characters’ choices from a biblical worldview. Here’s the final series of supplementary videos from Mrs. Walker that discuss asking good reading questions and recognizing good qualities in writing. We trust the videos will be a helpful guide as you encourage thorough and wise reading in your student.

Why So Many Reading Questions?

It may seem like we at BJU Press ask a lot of questions in reading lessons. And at times, so many questions may seem tedious. But research shows that giving your student questions before he reads will enable him to gather so much more information from the text in front of him. Good questions help your child read with a purpose, unlock learning opportunities, and reveal hidden meaning in the text. A well-formed question will pique your student’s interests and help him get that much more out of what he’s reading.

We encourage asking four types of questions:

Literal questions focus on what the author said on the page and ensure that your child is grasping the basic facts of a story.
Interpretive questions dig a little deeper and ask the reader what the author meant by what he said in the story.
Applicational questions encourage your child to evaluate the moral tone in the story. “Did the characters make good choices or bad choices? Is the character I’m reading about a good example to follow?”
Experiential questions help your child respond to the decisions and consequences in a story. “How should I respond when the good guy gets rewarded, and the bad guy gets punished? Is that right?”

Insightful questions are critical to helping your student learn the most from what he’s reading. Considering such powerful questions before engaging with a text will help your student in his education, his personal time in God’s Word, and his ministry and career further on in his life.

Recognizing Quality Reading

No doubt you’d agree with us that the skill set of reading is important—but what about the quality of reading? How will your student know good writing when he sees it? You can do a lot of things to encourage your child’s educational and recreational reading. We recommend that, if possible, you designate a specific time and place every day for your child to read. You’ll also want to guide your student in picking literature that expands and develops his abilities. “How long is this book? Is it too easy to read? Is this the same genre as the last book I read?” Eventually, you’ll want your child to progress from understanding the reading you put in front of him to making his own reading choices. Instilling a healthy love of reading in your student will help prepare him for the many opportunities that lie ahead of him.

Recognizing Quality Living

If you research how to give your child good reading material, odds are you’ll probably find a lot of information regarding selecting quality literature for students. But what you may not find a lot of is how to find literature for your student that clearly reflects a biblical worldview. Giving your child books consistent with scriptural principles and values is an excellent way to teach him how to live.

With every story, you will want to look for specific aspects that determine whether the book is good for your student. “What kind of behaviors happen in this story? Is good rewarded and evil punished? Is the evil made to seem harmless or even appealing? Are there any objectional elements in the story that really don’t need to be there—or are they discussed in too much detail?” Your rule of thumb in selecting literature for your student should be “Does it align with the truths of Scripture?” Giving your child stories that regard evil the same way God does will help him apply biblical truths in his life and see those truths played out in the lives of imaginary characters.

We hope that these videos have effectively communicated how to ask good questions and select valuable content for your student to read. Enabling your student to get the most of out of his reading will help him manage what he learns and apply what he learns in his day-to-day life.

Teaching and Assessing Reading Skills

August 26, 2019 by Guest Writer

The whole purpose of the BJU Press phonics system is to give your child the reading skills he needs to understand information and communicate well in life.

In these videos, Mrs. Walker explains the different parts of our system, the value of our emphasis on vocabulary, and the best way to give your student a clear and helpful grade. You’ll find a summary of each video along with a link to the video on YouTube embedded in this blog post. We trust the videos will be valuable as you help your student gather and present information from his reading.

BJU Press Phonics in Reading

Our phonics system involves four major components that will help your child become a better reader. First, we help your child recognize certain sounds. We help him learn the basic sounds of the alphabet and recognize what each letter sounds like. Second, we combine different letters and present what those combinations look and sound like. Once he knows these sounds, he can begin grouping them into words.

Third, we help him build a vocabulary of sounds and sound-combinations so that he can read new words easily. And finally, we take careful steps to encourage comprehension at every level of reading. We want to help your child to understand the material he’s reading, not just repeat sounds. Our phonics curriculum is an enjoyable and thorough way to help your student become the best reader that he can be.

Vocabulary Versus Service Words

In our lessons, your child will encounter both vocabulary and service words. Vocabulary words are words that may be unique to a story but necessary for your student to fully grasp what the story is saying. We place them in a normal context to make them easier for your child to understand.

Service words, on the other hand, are words that your student is more likely to hear on a daily basis, so we will drill these a little more to help your student incorporate them into his vocabulary. Growing and developing your child’s vocabulary will help him be clearer in his word choices and communicate more effectively.

What Do I Include in a Reading Grade?

It’s completely normal for homeschool parents to struggle with grading their child’s reading abilities. Since you can’t see what your student thinks before he says the words, how can you measure how well he is reading?

First, always remember that the two types of reading have different objectives. Comprehension is the goal of silent reading. How well does your student understand what he reads? Has he gathered all of the meaning that the author wanted to convey? In contrast, communication is the goal of oral reading. Can your child read a piece out loud smoothly without any mistakes? Can he read with appropriate inflection and expressions?

To help you grade both types, we’ve included rubrics and written work to evaluate how well your student is comprehending what he is reading. These items include many questions to clearly show you how much information your child is processing as he reads.

To calculate a final grade, we have provided a prioritized list of the important reading skills to help you give an appropriate grade and help your student progress. Once you’ve finalized the grade, be sure to carefully walk your student through the different parts of the composite grade. Reward the areas where he succeeds, and clearly show him the areas where he needs to grow. Giving your child an accurate measurement of his reading skills will help clarify his reading strengths and address his opportunities for growth.

We hope these videos will help you understand our intentions behind our phonics program and help you accurately track your student’s reading progress. To access more information about the Reading 2 program, view the full playlist of videos on YouTube, or visit our website.

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Learning Activities that Come Alive

November 21, 2017 by Megan

At the beginning of the school year, I had the perfect opportunity to create some excitement around a historical fiction piece in our Reading 3 curriculum entitled “Alex the Drummer Boy.”

As I read through the story in anticipation of our reading lessons, I realized that the plot is set against the background of the Battle of Cowpens during the Revolutionary War. We live in Greenville, South Carolina, so the Cowpens battlefield is less than an hour away. Why not go visit the battlefield and experience the real-life setting of this story?

A Journey Back in Time

Our family made the trek up to Cowpens somewhat spontaneously on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. We took a walking tour of the battlefield, hiking along the historic road that the soldiers themselves marched on. We stood in the wooded areas and pretended to shoot rifles. We watched a documentary about the famous double envelopment military maneuver that won the battle. We saw soldiers’ uniforms and weapons on display and studied maps that depicted the movements of both the British and American troops. It was an incredible educational experience.

And the learning opportunities didn’t end when we drove back to Greenville. As we read “Alex the Drummer Boy” in our reading book, all of those memories of the battlefield resurfaced. As we read, we were able to consult our battlefield map and the photos we took. We checked out a nonfiction book from the library that told the story of Cowpens in detail. The fictional story of Alex came alive in such a way that for weeks I caught my young daughters acting out the story using a metal popcorn container as a drum and a broomstick for a rifle.

Learning Activities that Build Enthusiasm

You won’t be able to travel to experience firsthand the setting of every story, but—with a little imagination and the help of the internet and other sources—you can find learning activities that build excitement for just about any lesson. Here are a few of my go-to sources for inspiration.

Teacher’s edition—BJU Press works hard to make learning enjoyable, and most lessons include fun learning activities for introducing or enhancing a lesson.
Pinterest—My daughters and I recently used the site to learn how to construct a clubhouse using large boxes. It was a great project to go along with our reading of The Case of the Dognapped Cat in reading. I love how you can search for just about any topic and find ideas for crafts, food, games, and so on. (Be sure to follow BJU Press Homeschool!)
The local library—Books and educational videos allow us to dig deep into any subject. Studying mammals in science? Watch some of Planet Earth to be amazed at God’s creation. Learning about early American history? Do what one of my daughters did—check out the entire shelf of books pertaining to the Revolutionary War, and dig deep into the subject.
Travel/visitor’s guides—Nothing makes learning exciting like a field trip. Travel brochures and visitor’s guides for your local area are great for discovering educational sites nearby.

As a busy homeschool mom, you probably won’t be able to enhance every lesson with fun activities. But I’ve learned enthusiasm is contagious—if you are enthusiastic about a subject, your child probably will be too. And you’ll be one step closer to inspiring your child for a lifetime of learning.

Make Reading Lessons Interesting with Questions

September 26, 2017 by Megan

I often tell other homeschoolers that reading is my favorite subject to teach. I love the deep, enjoyable conversations that my daughter and I can have over a fairly short and simple reading selection. I love the fact that she’s not just learning phonics and vocabulary but also how to think critically about the things she reads. That’s a skill that will enable her to be a lifelong reader and a lifelong learner.

So how does our reading curriculum foster these conversations? Through a four-level questioning approach.

On the first day of every school year, my daughter and I get out the brand-new reading books from BJU Press, look at the tables of contents, and excitedly preview the selections we’re going to read over the next few months.

But last year, both us had to stifle a bit of disappointment when we saw that Reading 2 included the full text of the classic children’s book The Puppy Who Wanted a Boy, which tells the story of Petey the puppy and his search for a boy to love. Our disappointment wasn’t because the book wasn’t good—it’s a wonderful book, one that we have enjoyed. But we had already read it many, many times—so many times, in fact, that both of us had part of the text memorized. I wondered how I, as the teacher, would be able to hold my daughter’s interest through the several lessons that the Lesson Plan Overview allotted for that particular selection. Wasn’t she going to get bored reading something so familiar?

I shouldn’t have worried. My daughter and I both ended up enjoying this selection. She enjoyed reading it, and I enjoyed teaching it. The multilevel questioning approach in the BJU Press Reading curriculum ensures that my daughter and I can have interesting, meaningful discussions about The Puppy Who Wanted a Boy or any other of the selections because it guides us in looking at the text from several different angles.

Angle 1: Literal

When you look at the discussion questions in your Reading Teacher’s Edition, you may notice that some of them are labeled as literal. These questions are designed to assess the most basic level of comprehension—the answers are easily found in the text itself. For example, one of the first questions in The Puppy Who Wanted a Boy is “What is Petey?”

Even though it’s sometimes tempting to skip over these “duh” questions, we as homeschoolers need to ask them because we need to make sure that our children are reading carefully and are understanding what they read. However, if we ask only literal questions, our children are going to get bored really fast.

Angle 2: Interpretative

The selections in our reading book get a whole lot more interesting with the use of interpretive questions. With these, our children have to use the text to draw conclusions. For example, in The Puppy Who Wanted a Boy, I might ask why Petey’s mother is worried after she returns without a boy for Petey. The text doesn’t spell it out; my daughter has to infer the reason from the conversation Petey and his mother have.

Angle 3: Critical

Thinking questions take our discussions to an even deeper level. When I ask critical questions such as “Why do you think the boy Petey found is outside by himself?” or “Why do you think the lady allows Petey to come inside?” my daughter has to think beyond what’s stated in the story to make evaluations, predictions, and applications. Often, these types of questions lead to biblical-worldview building opportunities as we apply the Bible to what we’re reading.

Angle 4: Appreciative

Appreciative questions are useful for helping to draw my daughter into the selection. While we were reading The Puppy Who Wanted a Boy, I asked her about a time when she really wanted a particular gift for Christmas or a birthday. When I did so, she suddenly sympathized much more with our puppy-protagonist and his disappointing search for a boy.

If you’re interested, take a look at the reading curriculum I’m using this year. You can also check out some of my other posts about the BJU Press reading curriculum: