One of the best things about homeschooling a struggling reader is that you can give them exactly what many schools can't: one-on-one teaching, at their pace, every day. One of the hardest things is knowing where to start.
Here's the plan I'd follow.
Step 1: Find where the reading breaks down
"Struggling to read" can mean very different things. Before you buy a curriculum, figure out which skill is weak. Listen to your child read and notice:
- Can they hear and blend the sounds in spoken words? (Say /m/ /a/ /p/. Can they tell you "map"?)
- Do they know all their letter sounds?
- Can they sound out simple words like hot and sip?
- What about blends and digraphs (stop, ship), silent-e (bike), vowel teams (rain)?
- Do they read smoothly, or slowly and choppily?
- Can they tell you what they read?
The first place your child gets stuck is where instruction should start, even if it feels "too young" for their age. Filling the gap at the bottom is how the rest gets easier.
Step 2: Choose a structured approach
Look for a reading program that is:
- Explicit: it teaches each sound and pattern directly
- Systematic: skills come in a logical order, from simple to complex
- Cumulative: it reviews old skills while adding new ones
- Multisensory: kids see, hear, say and touch
These are the principles of structured literacy and Orton-Gillingham. Avoid programs built around guessing from pictures or memorizing long lists of whole words. (More on this in what is structured literacy.)
Step 3: Build a short daily routine
For most struggling readers, 20 to 30 minutes of focused reading instruction a day works better than an hour. A simple structure:
- Warm-up (3 min): sound games, like blending and segmenting out loud
- Review (5 min): letter sounds and patterns already learned
- New skill (5-10 min): teach one new pattern with letter tiles or writing in sand
- Read (5-10 min): a decodable book or passage that uses the patterns they know
- Dictation (3 min): you say a few words, they spell them
Then, separately, read aloud to them from a great book every day. That keeps vocabulary and love of stories growing while decoding catches up.
Step 4: Use the right books
For practice, use decodable books, which are written with the patterns your child has learned. For fun and read-alouds, use any book they love. (Here's the difference between decodable and leveled books.)
Step 5: Track progress simply
Keep a notebook. Write the date, the skill you worked on, and how it went. Every few weeks, time a one-minute read of a familiar passage. You'll see progress you'd otherwise miss, and you'll spot skills that need more time.
Step 6: Know when to get help
If you've been teaching consistently for a few months and your child is still not retaining letter sounds or patterns, consider an evaluation. Homeschooled children can usually still be evaluated for learning disabilities through your local public school district, or privately. Working with a reading specialist alongside your homeschool can also help.
You don't have to build it all yourself
The Discovery Reading Club is a library of reading games, hands-on activities and printables for K-5, organized by skill and built on structured literacy principles. Many homeschool families use it alongside their reading curriculum. Create a free account to look around, or start with my free 5-Day Reading Discovery Challenge.
Talk soon,
Candace
