All About Reading Sentence Strips...

Ruben is making progress with All About Reading Level 1.  He has mastered the initial letter sound of each consonant and short vowel as well as a couple of consonant teams.  He finished the first reader, Run, Bug, Run!.  It was such a blessing to see his face upon reading that last page.  

Ruben enjoys the program as well as anything we've done for reading so far.  I think his favorite is the word cards.  However, he really struggles with the Fluency Practice pages provided. 

This is hard for me to understand because he knows the letter sounds and can read the word cards individually, which have the same words as the Fluency Practice pages.  But when they're in a list or sentence form, it's hard for him.

After some thought, I decided to put the sentences from the practice pages on to index cards.  Ruben helped me write some of them.  We put one word on each card.  Then he laid out the cards in sentence order and was able to read them.

In my quest to be more efficient, I started making sentence strips using the sentences on the practice pages.  I type each sentence in a column format using a large font so that there are two words in a row going the width of the standard sheet of copy paper.  Then I print them on card stock and cut each row apart. Ruben can take each row of words and lay them out as a sentence strip.   

 

I've put them all in a large manilla envelope, labeled by lesson number.  He pulls out 2-3 strips each day, puts them in order, and reads them.  This seems to be going well and he is much less resistant to this approach.  I think he sees it as a game. 

Another bonus to the sentence strips is that he really has to read the words in order to get the sentence strips in proper sequence.  Sometimes, I find he memorizes stories rather than actually reading the words.  With this method, he needs to read the words in order for the sentence to make sense. 

What accommodations have you made with All About Reading?  Please post a comment below.  I'd love to hear your ideas!!