You don’t need to be an expert in the Science of Reading to give learners a strong start in literacy. With IXL English Language Arts, teachers and parents can feel confident they’re teaching young children to read using a proven process that has the Science of Reading methodology built in. IXL’s early literacy video tutorials are especially helpful as part of this process!
IXL’s early literacy curriculum has been tied to the Science of Reading, a research-based methodology for effectively teaching early literacy, from the very beginning. You only need to look at the research to see IXL’s positive effect on early readers.
What’s more, IXL’s library of ELA video tutorials makes it easy to incorporate the Science of Reading’s methodology. Even for educators well versed in Science of Reading principles, IXL’s video tutorials are great tools for lesson support.
How do IXL’s video tutorials cover early literacy fundamentals? Let’s take a look.
Phonics
Phonics is a method of teaching literacy by getting learners to associate sounds with letters or groups of letters. Decades of research indicate that it’s an essential piece of early literacy instruction. That research also shows that phonics instruction has to be explicit to be effective. In other words, learners need to be directly taught the rules and associations between letters and sounds.
IXL has a comprehensive phonics program that covers all major phonics concepts, including advanced concepts such as diphthongs, multisyllabic words, vowel teams, and more. The video tutorials that accompany phonics skills feature that crucial explicit instruction, with Wyzant tutors breaking down phonics concepts and demonstrating them in a way that’s both clear and engaging.
Storytelling and animated characters help learners remember phonics rules. In the video for the IXL skill Choose the silent e word that matches the picture, viewers learn about letters living in a town. The letters march through the streets making their sounds; a magic letter e can change the sounds that the vowels make. It’s paced carefully with explicit instruction, walking through question examples from the skill.
Phonemic awareness
Words are made up of sounds called phonemes, and phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate those sounds. Good phonemic awareness is a predictor of strong reading skills later on, so explicit phonemic awareness instruction directly impacts reading achievement.
You can see an example of a phonemic awareness skill with Which two words start with the same sound?, which lets students practice sound matching and teaches them to identify the beginning sounds in words. The video tutorial for this skill shows a tutor modeling how to make these beginning sounds, and encourages learners to think about what their mouths are doing when they speak to help them identify sounds.
Sight words
Reading fluency is the speed and accuracy of decoding words, as well as the ability to read them with expression. For children to read fluently, they need to be able to quickly recognize words. One way IXL helps learners build fluency is with sight word skills, which give them practice recognizing high-frequency words.
The video tutorials for sight word skills explicitly teach watchers how to decode each word in the skill. For instance, someone practicing the skill Read sight words set 2: are, green, on, please, they can watch a video tutorial featuring a tutor going through the featured words one by one, breaking down the sounds in each word and how to blend those sounds together.
In class or at home, with IXL you can be confident you’re giving young learners the research-backed reading practice they need! Explore more of our PK-3 reading foundations videos here.
