“Signs Your Child Might Need Reading Intervention (and What You Can Do About It)”

"It's all Greek to me!"

Wondering if your child might need extra support with reading? Here’s a quick guide to what I look for during baseline assessments and how you can help at home:

1️⃣ Phonemic Awareness – The Building Block of ReadingI first check if your child can:

• Break words into smaller sounds

• Identify and produce rhymes

• Blend and segment sounds orally

If these skills aren’t mastered, it can make learning to read much harder.

2️⃣ Letter Sounds & PhonicsNext, I see if they can match letters to their sounds. Knowing letter names isn’t necessary yet — what matters is the sound each letter makes. From there, your child can start blending sounds to read simple words (CVC words like cat, bat) and eventually learn sight words — words that don’t follow typical phonetic rules.

3️⃣ Signs to Look ForIf your child struggles to:

• Identify letter sounds or vowel sounds

• Link sounds together to read words…it may be time to target extra support.

4️⃣ Fun Ways to Practice at Home

• Rhyming games: Help your child hear matching sounds at the end of words.

• Modified Scrabble: Focus on a word family (like -at) — swap letters to make cat, bat, hat.

• Sight word modeling: Build a word wall with common non-phonetic words for your child to reference.

5️⃣ Seek GuidanceAlways reach out to your child’s teacher or a reading specialist to identify areas that need support. A little targeted help goes a long way!

✨ Small, fun exercises build confidence and make reading enjoyable. You’ve got this!