Reading in Color

Reading in Color is a series of fourteen animated slide shows designed for parents and teachers to use to introduce beginning readers to sounding out. Sounding out is a way of learning to read that builds on what children know even before they can read. They know the sounds of many many words, and they know what the letters of the alphabet look like. Learning to read by sounding out simply means learning how word sounds and letters match up.

The slide shows use the case and color of letters to provide visual clues to the sounds they make in specific words. Each of the first twelve slide shows introduces words that use a particular vowel sound, together with a variety of consonants. These are followed by two short stories – Hennie and Felix, and the Unicorn’s Tale. Once children have learned how sounding out works in the first twelve slide shows. they will be able to read the stories by sounding out the words.

The slide shows are designed to be presented to children interactively at first. They can watch the videos on their own later to review what they have learned.

The slideshows are available here in both video and Microsoft Powerpoint format. Parents and teachers can present the slide shows interactively using the video format by muting the audio to provide their own narration, and by clicking pause and resume to move through the animations at their own pace.