Phonemic awareness is a vital link to the success of every reader. Blending phonemes is a strategy that involves listening to a sequence of separately spoken sounds and then combining the sounds to form a whole word. Body Blending is an engaging technique for practicing blending phonemes with your early-level readers.

Place a hula hoop on the ground for each phoneme represented in a chosen word (e.g., met would have three hoops). Select the proper number of students to each “be a phoneme” in the word, and have each student stand in a hoop. Have one student begin by saying the first sound while simultaneously linking arms with the next student. The next student says the second sound.

Suggested teacher talk might be, “Think about the sounds you hear, and combine them to form a word.” Continue until all the students standing in the hoops have said their sounds and linked arms to form a word. Have all the linked students take one step forward out of their hula hoops and pronounce the entire word in unison.

Body blending is just one of over 140 exciting and engaging techniques available in the updated edition of Valerie Ellery's bestselling book, Creating Strategic Readers: Techniques for Developing Competency in Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension, Second Edition.

This revised and expanded edition includes 35 new techniques and an accompanying CD with a wide assortment of reproducibles and assessment forms

For more practical, classroom-tested techniques, download Chapter 5 of Creating Strategic Readers.

Free chapter: Vocabulary

Click below to listen to a podcast based on strategies from this book.

Free podcast: Class Acts: Phrasing for Fluency

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Creating Strategic Readers - Videos

See the strategies, teaching techniques, and teacher talk from Creating Strategic Readers demonstrated in everyday classrooms from kindergarten to grade 5. Ideal for school-based professional development, the videos include favorite techniques from the book, as well as the research base that underpins instruction.

Video clip: Teaching Techniques for the Primary Grades.

Video clip: Teaching Techniques for the Intermediate Grades.

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You can teach comprehension strategies and response to literature to young students—even those in preschool and the primary grades—through picture book read-alouds. Predicting is an easy comprehensive strategy to teach and an easy strategy for students to learn.

Teachers often teach predicting to young learners through activities like picture walks, where students explore the illustrations in a text to predict what the book may be about. But you can also use read-alouds as an opportunity to encourage students to respond to literature by evaluating the predictions they made. Realistic fiction is particularly suited to predicting and responding with its easy connections to students' own experiences and background knowledge.

Ezra Jack Keats's Caldecott Medal-winning book The Snowy Day is an excellent book for teaching predicting and responding to a text with your young learners. Hold up the book The Snowy Day and read aloud the title to the students. Ask students if they like snowy days and why or why not. Encourage them to discuss what sorts of things they do on snowy days. Read aloud the first page and then ask students “How does that page make you feel?” and allow for some student answers. Add, “Does it remind you of any of your experiences?” and encourage student answers.

Then say, “Think about the things you just said. Now let's make some predictions about what might happen next.” As students offer predictions, record them on chart paper. Continue reading aloud, stopping to ask students, “Have any of your predictions happened?” Lead the students in evaluating their predictions, reading down the list and checking each one. After evaluating all the predictions, ask students, “What do you think about the story so far?”

You can find the complete “Predicting and Responding Using The Snowy Day” activity when you download Chapter 10 of the long-awaited third edition of the bestselling Children's Literature in the Reading Program: An Invitation to Read. In this fully revised edition, you'll discover the creative teaching strategies and practical guidance you need to effectively incorporate high-quality literature into your busy classroom schedule so that your students can learn to read—and enjoy doing so.

Free chapter: Responding and Comprehending: Reading With Delight and Understanding

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Prior to the literature circle project, Yulia, described by classmates as the “quietest girl in the class,” rarely spoke out… In the instances when she was expected to read something in front of the class, Yulia would do so, but her whisperlike utterances went virtually unheard. During group projects, she would not assume any leadership roles, more often waiting to be given directions by other students before taking any action herself.

In terms of her reading, Yulia had strong decoding accuracy, but her comprehension was fairly low. Upon completing her first literature circle book, The Trouble With Tuck by Theodore Taylor, Yulia boldly took the lead role in organizing and presenting her group's final literature circle project. The group initially had trouble getting organized, so Yulia and another group member organized the drafts of their illustrations and wrote scripts for the accompanying narration.

When the time came for their videotaped presentation in front of the class, Yulia, in the role of lead narrator, began the group's presentation by reading her lines aloud in front of the class. While her narration did not boom across the room, the students were finally able to hear Yulia's voice.

You can use literature circles to create opportunities for “grand conversations” for your English-language learners (ELLs). “Yulia” was one of six ELLs who participated in a research project implementing literature circles into a culturally and linguistically diverse fourth-grade classroom. Literature circles proved to be instrumental in the growth of students' reading and communicative confidence. Students found their voices not only during grand conversations about books but also in other classroom activities.

Using literature circles is just one of the ideas for improving the literacy skills of ELLs discussed in the new book, One Classroom, Many Learners: Best Practices for Today's Multilingual Classrooms. This comprehensive volume provides important and timely information about how to best teach literacy to ELLs.

To read more about Yulia and her classmates and their improvement through literature circles, download Chapter 4 of One Classroom, Many Learners.

Free chapter: Creating Opportunities for “Grand Conversations” Among ELLs With Literature Circles

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Reading aloud to youngsters is key to their future reading success. But with more that 50,000 children's books in print, how do you know the best books to share with your young learners? Literature specialist Nancy A. Anderson has selected and described 200 best-selling picture books in What Should I Read Aloud?: A Guide to 200 Best-Selling Picture Books. The book includes guidance on how best to share books with young children and how you can help them to learn to read by doing so. Chapters are organized by suggested age levels, featuring literature for children from birth to age 8.

To learn about the best books for infants to ages 1-2, download Chapter 3 of What Should I Read Aloud?

Free chapter: Best-Selling Books for Infants and Children Ages 1–2

To hear Emily Manning and her book club of moms and teachers discuss What Should I Read Aloud?, listen to the newest Chatting About Books podcast from readwritethink.org.

Free podcast: Episode 18–What Should I Read Aloud?

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