5 Essential Aspects of a Homeschool Reading Curriculum

Here at the Brightly Balanced Classroom, I believe a homeschool reading curriculum and reading instruction doesn’t have to be head-scratching or be done without a road map. I also believe a “classroom” isn’t defined by four walls or a building. A classroom is anywhere a child can learn whether in the living room of your home, on the patio, at a picnic table, etc. Children are inherently bright and curious. They will remain that way with a balanced approach to learning especially when teaching phonics at home. Balancing takes on many forms. Balancing time indoors and outdoors, time spent with peers, and time in silence and learning that is instructional/direct with learning that is hands-on and explorative. When it comes to reading, creating a balance means that each aspect of reading is given ample time and development.

Homeschool Reading Curriculum should include these 5 components

The 5 main aspects of reading are phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. In the literacy world phonics is receiving a great deal of attention lately and for good reason. Phonics instruction gives children the ‘why’ of and the ‘how’ when learning to read. Children often thrive off of why and how many things in their world work and phonics is no different. However, it can be easy to give phonics more instructional time than other components such as vocabulary and phonemic awareness.

To me it is like this, if I were mathematician who only ever focused on learning to add (phonics,) then I would never learn to subtract (vocabulary) or multiply (comprehension) or divide (phonemic awareness). Studying one aspect of math doesn’t create balance in becoming a strong mathematician. While I may be able to add any given equation, if I can’t subtract, multiply or divide, then am I even a strong mathematician? Is a child a well-rounded reader and able to comprehend with only strong phonics skills?

A homeschool reading curriculum must include and teach children each component of reading. Throughout the journey of learning to read, different components will receive more attention than others. However, all aspects must receive adequate attention. Below I will break down each component of reading and its importance. Again, the aim is balance and to provide proper attention to all components of reading. 

Phonemic Awareness

Recognizing spoken words are broken into individual sounds is phonemic awareness. There is absolutely zero print involved in this skill. When print is incorporated, students are then studying phonics. A combination of sounds, or phonemes, create words. For example, the word ‘dog’ has 3 phonemes which are /d/ /o/ /g/. The word ‘boat’ also has three phonemes /b/ /oa/ /t/ but 4 letters. The /oa/ work together to create one phoneme. The number of phonemes in a word is not always the same as the number of letters in a word. 

Why is it essential for children to hear and discriminate phonemes before viewing print? Having a strong understanding of phonemic awareness means children can identify and combine (blend) phonemes heard in spoken words. Students need to establish this skill to be able to decode and blend words they read in books. Imagine a child who knows all the sounds for the letters in the English alphabet, but cannot blend those sounds to create words. Stating three sounds for a word, for example, the word ‘cat’, with no ability to blend the phonemes to determine the word doesn’t allow the child to read. They will be stuck only knowing three isolated phonemes. 

Phonemic Awareness is The First Step

The precursor to phonics is phonemic awareness and must be taught first. A homeschool reading curriculum must begin with phonemic awareness. Practicing this skill can begin as early as preschool or even before, whereas phonics typically begins in kindergarten. Many children will pick up phonemic awareness naturally without much explicit instruction needed. However, other children will require more time and specific practice. 

So how do you practice phonemic awareness? No print is involved, so practice can take place almost anywhere. Playing verbal games, singing nursery rhymes and reading children’s books are also wonderful. Children’s books mostly contain a sing-song pattern and often contain many rhyming words. Stopping to point out rhyming words on each page is beneficial for building an awareness of rhymes. Singing children’s songs is another wonderful activity because there is also naturally a lot of rhyming and children tend to remember these songs with ease. 

As with literacy, phonemic awareness has several components which are rhyming, phoneme isolation, blending, segmenting and phoneme manipulation. Below is the list of phonemic awareness components. You can also click here to access my activity pack to support your child’s phonemic awareness understanding. 

Rhyming

The first step of phonemic awareness is rhyming. Rhyming words consist of two parts: the on-set (initial sound) and the rime (the ending sound). For example, in the word ‘mad’ the on-set is /m/ and the rime is /ad/. When asking a child to rhyme you are asking them to change the on-set phoneme and keep the rime. Rhyming games are so fun and simple and yet hold their weight in gold for building phonemic awareness. Read the blog post here about ways to play rhyming games. 

Isolating 

For this skill, children identify a sound from the beginning, middle or end of a word. For example, if I stated the word ‘frog’, I then asked the child what sound they heard at the beginning (answer: /f/). When asking students to identify and isolate sounds remember they learn in the order of beginning, ending and medial (middle) sound. Therefore, once children have mastered isolating and identifying sounds at the beginning of the word, move to identifying sounds at the end of a word and finally identifying sounds in the middle of a word. 

Blending

Blending is crucial because this is the skill students will use once they begin sounding out words. This skill is just as it sounds, combining (blending) sounds to create a word. For example, I could state the sounds /p/ /e/ /t/ (segment each sound) and ask the child the word I stated (answer: pet). This directly correlates to reading words in books. 

Segmenting

To segment a word is the opposite of to blend a word. When writing, one must segment words into sounds to spell accurately. With segmenting you begin by stating a word and the child will break, or segment, the word into each phoneme. For example, to segment the word ‘sun’ it breaks into the phonemes /s/ /u/ /n/. 

Manipulating

Next, students manipulate phonemes within words. This means they add a sound, delete a sound or substitute a sound in a word. An example of adding a phoneme is asking a child to add the sound /h/ to the beginning of the word ‘at’ and state the newly created word (answer: hat). Deleting sounds is when you state a word and ask them to delete or remove one sound. For example, the word is ‘bat’, and if you delete the /b/ sounds the word becomes ‘at’. Finally, changing, or substituting, sounds would look like having a child change the beginning sound heard in the word ‘bog’ to a /l/ and state what the new word is (answer: log). There are many fun ways to play these games and using picture cards is a great tool.

Remember that all aspects of phonemic awareness develop with time and most children will develop this skill naturally. Click this link to receive a free and fun way to assess your child’s phonemic awareness. This assessment will show areas of strength and areas needing growth.

Teaching Phonics at Home

The next natural step after establishing strong phonemic awareness is teaching phonics at home. Phonics instruction incorporates print and students connect sound to print. This is first done through individual letter sounds. Children learn each letter sound in the English alphabet. When learning the letter sounds it may seem natural to just teach the sounds in alphabetical order. However, it is best to introduce the letter sounds in order of frequency used in the English language. 

Creating strong readers means explicit phonics instruction must be included in a homeschool reading curriculum. Learning to read needs clear rules and explanations. Students should not simply memorize words. There will be a heightened emphasis on phonics instruction for much of Kindergarten and 1st grade. This is because there are 26 letters of the alphabet and 44 different sounds. Combining 2, or more, letters to make new phonemes creates the additional 18 sounds. Within each phoneme are rules about where to typically place them inside of words. For example, the vowel team ‘ai’ and ‘ay’ both make the long a sound. However, ‘ai’ is typically found in the beginning or middle of a word and ‘ay’ is typically found a the end of a word.

Teaching Phonics Order

Since there are several rules for students to learn and apply it is best to teach phonics following the sequence shown in the picture below. Phonics instruction will span about 2-3 years and the goal is never to rush through instruction. In reading I firmly believe we teach slow to go fast. Put in the time and attention to phonics rules initially and watch students soar and become brightly balanced readers later. Do you want to know more about each phonics skill mentioned below, then click here to read a post.  

Teaching Vocabulary

Teaching and building strong vocabulary allows students to better comprehend and make connections. Students with a rich vocabulary will understand the broader topics much quicker. They will make connections to themself, others and the world around them while reading. With strong vocabulary and background knowledge a child will actively think, analyze and predict while reading. This is the desired goal. Background knowledge is prior information known about a topic from reading, exploring and studying about it previously. If a student acquires phonics skills with ease and is a good reader, but given a topic of zero background knowledge, then the student will not show any understanding and struggle to read. Students better understand with explicit vocabulary instruction.

Ways to build vocabulary

Reading aloud rich text and discussing unknown terms increases children’s vocabulary. It is important to model your thinking of what a word might mean based on the sentence, topic or subject.

Explicitly previewing vocabulary from a book or passage prior to reading is another great way to build vocabulary in children. By doing this you are building children’s background knowledge. Therefore, when they encounter the word in the text they will have some familiarity with it. 

Finally, students can become word hunters and gatherers/collectors. When students encounter an unknown word they simply put a sticky note on the word and continue reading. Later students will find the meaning of this word and even draw a picture to commit to memory. Always coming back to unknown words is important in developing a strong vocabulary. The goal is to build up their vocabulary bank so when they encounter new text they will have some background knowledge to apply for comprehension. 

Teaching Reading Fluency Strategies

Often people think of reading fluency as reading quickly. However, fluency is the combination of reading with expression (good intonation), proper pace (not too fast or too slow) and accuracy (reading the words correctly). To read a passage quickly without expression or to read a passage quickly with many errors isn’t true fluency.

Building Fluency

Ways to build fluency are first and foremost to read often and to read out loud. Students should hear themselves reading to help build reading expression. It also helps them to determine if they read accurately. Another way to build fluency is by reading a passage or story multiple times. Multiple exposures to text brings familiarity and ease and students can then focus on expression and pace and less on decoding and accuracy. 

I often have my students read a passage three times, which I call cold, warm and hot reads. I explain that the first time they read a story (cold read) it may be more challenging. They will sound choppy (less fluent) and more decoding is needed. This is sort of like jumping in cold water. It is not super easy. The next time they read the same passage (warm read) it is a little easier. They are spending less time decoding which increases speed. This is sort of like jumping into warmish water, which is easier than cold water. Finally, as students read the same passage for a third, or even fourth, time they are often very fluent. This means they read without many errors, have good tone and proper pacing. This is like jumping in hot water that feels perfect to the skin. It is easy and you want to stay there. 

Homeschool Reading Comprehension Curriculum 

We all read to comprehend and understand. Building a child’s comprehension ability is a huge component to teaching reading, which should never skip this step, although it often is. Give time and attention to building comprehension to increase fluency. Remember to asking questions throughout a story is as important as asking questions at the end.

While reading a story stop to ask:

• Why do you think the character did _____?
• What do you predict will happen next?
• What do you predict the ending will be?
• How will the character solve ________?
• How would you feel if you were the main character right now?
• How would you solve the problem?
• Are there any words you need help understanding?

After completing a story be sure to ask a few of the questions listed below:

• Who was the story about?
• Where did the story take place?
• Retell the story using beginning, middle and end. 
• What was the problem in the story?
• What was the solution in the story?
• Were there any unknown words?
• How would you have changed the ending?
• What was your favorite part of the story?
• Which character was your favorite?
• Name something new you learned.
• What questions do you still have?

Comprehension and vocabulary go hand in hand. With a stronger vocabulary bank students will naturally comprehend better. By reading a story and discussing it, you are building a child’s vocabulary bank. Remember that vocabulary and comprehension are just as important as phonics skill building in a homeschool reading curriculum. 

Sight Word Lists

You may hear many terms for this such as snap words, heart words, high frequency words or sight words. Sight words are words that are read often in the English language. These words can either be decoded using phonics skills or words that are not as easily decoded and should be memorized. It is crucial to spend time teaching sight words for reading success. Upwards of 40% of words in text are considered sight words. The more sight words one acquires, the more fluently they can read. A homeschool reading curriculum wouldn’t be complete without teaching and practicing sight words.

My teaching reading by phonics story

My first teaching job was in Kindergarten. Realizing the district was understaffed in Kindergarten, I was hired a month into the school year. I had never taught before, or spent any time in Kindergarten besides when I was a Kindergarten student myself. No one walked me through how to use the reading curriculum. On top of it all, I was given a less-than-ideal reading curriculum. I didn’t know the curriculum was sub-par, let alone how to teach a child to read. 

The reading curriculum didn’t focus on phonemic awareness. The phonics portion was memorizing letters and then blending them to read while also using a lot of picture support. Looking back now I can easily see why this was not an ideal scenario. How are we to ask students to blend letters without building their phonemic awareness ability? Is this why so many students could sound out words but struggled to blend words? 

Fast Forward to Now

A few years later that district adopted a new reading curriculum. It was rich with phonemic awareness and building the components of reading mentioned above. I quickly fell in love with teaching reading because I knew the why and how of phonics. My journey to learn and grow as a reading teacher went into overdrive. My mission is to break down reading for others in digestible chunks that make sense and can be taught with ease. Yes, teaching reading and phonics is complex, but it doesn’t have to be difficult or a burden. This blog post walks you through the components of reading. Let me walk you through how to incorporate all of this into your daily homeschool reading curriculum instruction. Click the image below to begin this beautiful journey of teaching your child to read at home.

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