I am super excited to kick off my 10 day series this year! This series will be a follow up to my previous posts in my Teaching your Child to read Series. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out my Letter of the Week Series, print concepts and reading behavior ideas and sight word series for tons of freebies and great information!!
The very first reading strategy in this series can be seen both at school and at home. At home it takes an entirely different form.
At home eagle eyes are special adaptations developed over centuries of evolving children. This amazing ability includes: Being to detect Mom from anywhere on Earth, seeing through walls when a sibling has something that doesn’t belong to them and the uncanny ability to spot toys in the trash can from miles away.
But…as annoying as eagle eyes may be, they certainly have their place in the classroom.
Haha! Really, what is Eagle Eye?
Eagle Eye is a beginning reading strategy that teaches young readers to use their eyes to scan the picture for clues when they encounter difficult words.
This strategy reminds them that they should look closely at what the picture shows, and determine what is going on in the story.
This is always the very first strategy I introduce. I usually introduce this while covering print concepts, and often while we are still covering some letters. However, you can introduce it at any point in your instruction.
I’ve created posters to go along with each of these strategies. You can grab my Eagle Eye poster here or by clicking on the image below.
Why is it important?
Eagle Eye is one of the most powerful tools a beginning reader can have in their toolbox. I mean, think about it…
Children’s books are almost certainly covered with pictures, right? Well these illustrations aren’t just pretty. They also provide the reader with context and help to tell the story. Those cutesy little pictures hold major clues to decoding unfamiliar words.
Just a close look at the illustrations can often provide the the context necessary to decode an unfamiliar word.
This strategy is also useful in more than one way! It also supports building strong comprehension skills by helping teach children to make predictions. Better yet, it helps them begin to understand the sequence of story telling.
How to introduce it
To introduce this strategy, we first do a quick little lesson on bald eagles. I’ve found children, including my own, don’t typically have a lot of background knowledge about eagles. So we quickly visit the Easy Science for Kids site, and explore their page on Bald Eagles.
We focus on how bald eagles have excellent eyesight, and I explain that to use this reading strategy you’ll need excellent eyesight. To make it a little more fun, we play with magnifying glasses for the first week or so. When we come to a word we can’t figure out, we use our magnifying glass to look at the picture.
How to practice it
Practicing this strategy is essential, as it will be one of the most heavily relied up strategies for your child for quite some time. Picture clues are a safety net for children as they work to attain stronger phonemic related strategies.
Luckily, I’ve got plenty of ways to practice!
To help out my fellow busy Moms and teachers I’ve created this post full of instructional ideas for this strategy.
In addition to the free strategies included in this post I’ve also created an amazing supplementary unit with all of the bulk of these activities already done for you. These are offered in my TPT store for the ultra economical price of just $2.75.
Be sure to check it out! Save your time and get the resources completely done for you all while supporting a Work at Home Mom!
I’m working on creating printables for each of the strategies and will be updating those posts as I finish. I also plan to offer an uber affordable bundle once they are all done, so stay tuned!
Until then, check out the super helpful instructional techniques shared below!
Additional Ideas
- Wordless books
Wordless books are an excellent way to promote the use of pictorial clues.
Before reading, we look carefully at the pictures once without saying anything. Then we start over and begin to tell the story based on the pictures. We have a lot of fun with it. So much so that it’s sometimes done multiple times with different stories each time!
I love David Wiesner books for this activity. He has lots of great wordless books that really spark imagination. The illustrations are so detailed, and can be interpreted so many different ways!
- Picture Walks
Picture walks have been around forever.
Chances are, your elementary teachers had you doing picture walks in your own classes.
The reason they have stood the test of time is simply due to the fact that they work. A picture walk is a preview of the book before reading. To do this, your child will need to look at each page in the book and discuss what they see and what they think is going on. By the end of the book they will have a general idea of what is going to happen. They will also have an entire bank of words to draw from when they encounter a word they do not know.
When introducing a picture walk to your child, you will need to first model it for them. Flip through the pages and describe what you see aloud. After be sure to discuss your thoughts and predictions as to what may happen in the book.
- Level A/B Books
Level A & B books are the best books for children to practice independently. Their repetitive language builds confidence in young readers, and the words that change in the repetition are usually easily decoded with pictorial clues. These books quickly help children gain self confidence while simultaneously teaching them to look carefully at the pictures for clues.
- Write about/Dictate Sentences
Another fun activity you can do with your child is have them look at pictures and create a sentence or short story to go with the picture. I like to find fun ads in magazines to do this activity. My daughter is just learning to write, so instead of her writing, I have her dictate the sentences to me. She later reads them back to help promote fluency.
- Use sticky notes to cover words as you read
Sticky notes have a thousand purposes in our home, but this is one of my favorites. It is also extremely easy to set up.All you have to do is place some sticky notes over words in the book that your child will be able to figure out using picture clues.
I start this by covering the whole word, but we later moving to showing the first letter to teach them also to rely on their phonemic strategies.
Recommended Books
Below are some of my favorite books to use while teaching this strategy. Don’t forget to check out Amazon’s used books. You can sometimes score some awesome deals that way.
For your convenience, this post contains affiliate links. If you purchase from these links I may make a small commission at no cost to you.
Don’t forget, you can grab these resources completely done for you at an incredible price in my TPT Store.
Additionally, I’ve created posts for each and every Reading Strategy, including free printables and posters! Be sure to check out the entire series here.
And don’t forget to follow me on Pinterest, where I’m pinning all kinds of great ideas for instruction!
