21 Reading Strategies And Activities All Teachers Should Know

One of the most popular topics here on Top Notch Teaching is that of teaching children to read. It’s also an area that I’m passionate about.

We’ve published plenty of posts on the topic over the years but to help you find them we’ve pulled together 21 of the most popular reading strategies and activities and listed them below.

Free fluency activities

I’ve also put together a free reading fluency eBook for you. Many of the students you work with probably have difficulty with accurate and fluent reading. This free reading fluency eBook discusses what reading fluency is, why it’s important and provides some fluency teaching strategies that you can implement immediately. Fill in the form below so that I can email this to you.

Reading strategies, skills and planning

1. How To Teach Children To Read – This was the beginning of a fascinating journey for me and helped me to reassess my whole approach to teaching children to read.

2. Essential Reading Intervention For A Student With Dyslexia – Did you know that students with a learning difficulty, such as dyslexia, benefit most from a structured, explicit, systematic and multi-sensory intervention? Students with dyslexia will also not respond to standard reading instruction. This post is a practical example of an intervention approach I have used with a student.

3. A Little Known Way To Help Children Learn To Read Sooner – When I was in the classroom teaching I regularly found myself questioning my ability to be able to teach kids how to read, spell and write, especially students that had a particular learning need. Seems silly right? But you know what…..I don’t feel like that anymore, I really feel like I can help a child learn to read and improve his/her spelling and writing. Let me tell you a bit more about why.

4. How To Help A Student With Dyslexia Learn To Read – Here you’ll find many practical ideas and strategies to help students with a learning difficulty, such as dyslexia, learn to read and spell.

5. Teaching Through Errors – A practical example of how I teach through a student reading error.

6. Planning Structure – Here you’ll find a planning structure that will help to organise your reading session.

7. Reading Success – In this article I explain how to achieve reading success with a beginning reader.

8. 6 Practical Ideas To Help Students Improve the Skills Needed for Reading – I share with you some of the strategies that I use to improve the essential reading skills of segmenting and blending. These ideas are great for parents as well as teachers. Some of them are appropriate for younger children who are just learning about the sounds in language, while the other techniques are good for students who may be experiencing difficulties or who have missed being taught the skills needed for reading and spelling.

Reading resources, activities and games

Game: What sound next?

9. Long Vowel Sounds: Activities & Games – Are you teaching your kids about long vowel sounds? Do you need some new and fresh ideas to help you teach the long vowel sounds? Here you will find ideas for teaching the long vowel sounds.

10. Hands-On Reading and Spelling Ideas – Fun, hands-on reading and spelling ideas that can be used with decodable reading books.

11. Fun Phonics Games – Using phonics games to help teach reading and spelling is a great way to engage your students. Here are some phonics board games and cootie catchers.

12. Reading Fluency – Pick up some great ideas about how you can help your students to read more fluently.

13. Phonics Resources – This article shares ideas for storing phonics resources and a fun way to encourage accurate and fluent reading.

14. Free Phonics Printable – Here I’ve put together a printable that you can use with your students, that focuses on the letters: a, i, m, s and t. The printable gets your students to find, say, circle and trace the individual letters as well as find, say and trace words that use the target sounds.

15. Interactive Whiteboard Software and the iPad – In this article I discuss how I use the Sounds-Write interactive whiteboard software on my iPad.

16. Free Play Dough Mats – In this post you’ll find how you can use play dough to review words and download some free play dough mats.

17. Phonics Games – Using phonics games to help teach reading and spelling is a great way to engage your students, practice using skills they’ve learned as well as have some fun.

18. See How Easy It Is To Conduct A Print Walk – Here you’ll find ideas for some of the types of print you can have in your class as well as some mini tasks you could use as part of the print walk.

Reading books

These books are for beginning readers.

19. How To End The Reading Book Struggle (And Engage Your Students In Reading Again) Part One – Do you need some new ideas for books you can use to engage your students in reading? Then this post is just for you. Learn about an exciting range of phonics reading books.

20. How To End The Reading Book Struggle (And Engage Your Students In Reading Again) Part Two – This is the follow up post to the previous one. I delve a bit further into the books and show you some of the different series available as well as the workbooks and how I use them with my students.

21. Phonics Books – Here are some more books that are fantastic to use with your beginning readers as well as your older students who may be struggling with reading.

More reading resources

If you’re looking for a complete set of resources to help you with your teaching of reading and spelling then you might like to check out The Complete Phonics Kit. These resources provide you with games, ideas and activities to help you plan and implement your reading and spelling lessons.