Let’s talk a bit about teaching our French primary students important French reading skills (not guessing skills!!) today.
Remember this blog post from last year, where I talked about my vowel sound blending books and routine? Those books have been such a hit with my students! I know they’ve been a hit with many of yours, as well.
After I taught my students those books last year, they needed more to help take their French reading skills to the next level. I also had a lot of requests for son composé books to be done in the same way.
(In fact, I got a request for those books just last week. But the books have actually been created and posted to TPT since July!)
So, I figured I’d better make a quick blog post about the son composé books as well. I want to be sure that anyone looking for them can find them. They can really make a difference when teaching reading skills to your French students! :)
As I said, these books are kind of a “next step” for students once they have learned to read the Vowel Sound Blending Books (and I mean READ — as in, decode — not just memorize! If your students can’t blend yet, wait until they can before using these ones).
Each of the stories contain common sight words, and tons of words containing the target sound. Other son composés that students would have learned via previous stories are underlined. Silent letters are written in gray, so students remember not to pronounce them.
And, there is definitely more to this resource than just the stories! Read on to see what all you’ll find inside.
French reading skills – blending cards (digital and print)
These cards are one of my favorite parts of the resource!
Each story includes digital and print blending cards. Words are broken down into each individual sound, with dots underneath each one. Students touch each dot, say each sound, and then blend them together to make a word.
This helps them remember what to do when they come to a new/unknown word in one of their books; look at ALL the sounds in the word and blend them together, left to right (not guess!).
There are also black & white versions of the cards, so students can colour the target sound in red themselves and bring home for more practice.
French reading skills – sight word warm ups
Students will need to know a certain number of sight words to read each story. Some of these words may contain sounds students haven’t learned yet.
To ensure students’ reading success with the story, each book presents sight words at the beginning for students to review before reading. A variety of sounds are also presented for review.
The story (digital/print/teacher version)
Each resource contains three versions of a story that focuses on the target sound; a digital version (in colour), a full-page version for the teacher to print if they wish, and two-per-page student versions.
You can use all of some of these versions of the story; be sure to check out the vowel sound books blog post for some ideas for your routine!
French sentence building cards
Each story also contains sentence building cards. Students can build and read a variety of sentences featuring words from the story and/or other words that contain the target sound.
Conclusion
These blending books have helped my French students SO much when it comes to learning REAL reading and decoding skills (and how to not guess!).
They have also allowed us to not miss a beat when switching between in person and online learning. Knowing that I always have something that I can teach no matter where we are located has been so reassuring to me!
I LOVE seeing my students learn to decode, and watching their confidence grow when attacking new words.
If you want to see a sample from one of the blending books resources (Dion et le lion, for the sound « on »), you can download the student version of the book Dion et le lion for free! Check out the story out and see if it will be a good fit for you and your students!
To grab your copy, just CLICK HERE, enter your first name & email address, hit the pink button, and I’ll send it your way.
Happy reading!
