What to do when you finish Wild Reading Level 1

Congratulations on finishing Wild Reading Level 1!

I am currently working hard to finish Wild Reading Level 2 for you! I expect to release it in June 2022!

In the meantime, if you have finished Level 1 early and are wondering what to do while waiting for Level 2’s release, here are some suggestions!

1. Assess your child’s mastery of the word families and sounds. Download the assessment HERE!
2. Continue having your child practice reading words with short vowels, blends, and digraphs.
3. You may wish to introduce more advanced skills while waiting. These will be introduced/reviewed in Wild Reading Level 2. If you introduce them now you may be able to skip or progress faster through those skills. 
   1. Less common blends (at the beginning and end of words) Blends at the beginning of words such as: sw as in swim, sc as in scan, Blends at the end of words: -nd as in sand, -lt as in wilt, -nt as in tent, -lp as in help, -mp as in camp 
   2. Practice reading words with blends and digraphs at the beginning and end of words. Examples: stamp, crisp, slept, plant, trust
   3. Review open syllables words such as be, no, sky, by, me (open syllables will be an important tool when decoding larger words in Level 2)
   4. Three letter blends/ digraph-blends (these are covered in week two of Level 2) spl as in splash, squ as in squish, spr as in spring, str as in string, shr as in shrink, -nch as in lunch, -lch as in gulch. 
   5. Practice handwriting. Writing demands increase in Wild Reading 2! Students will be writing a sentence or more most days (and more by the end of the year). Of course there is lots of room to adjust to your individual child’s needs. But as a general benchmark, it is best if children are able to fluently write letters. If you have not introduced lowercase letters, do that now. I personally like the simplicity of the Handwriting Without Tears program. You can use whatever program or style you wish! 

Here are some decodable readers that work well for practice after Level 1!

Bob Books Advancing Beginners Set 2

Bob Books Animal stories – these books introduce a few new words written on the inside cover of the book. Sometimes they are sight words and sometimes they are words that were needed in the story like Heron. Always point out the sounds they know in these words and talk about the sounds that are unexpected to support their orthographic mapping of these words. I do not suggest using books 11 and 12 in this set. They have too many new words and vowel combinations that children will be taught later in the phonics sequence.

Recipe for Reading Alphabet Readers Set 1 – The second set of these readers will be used in Level 2 of Wild Reading. Set 1 would work well for review. These are available from Rainbow Resources (not an affiliate link).

Activities

You can reuse any activities from Wild Reading Level 1 for practicing and reviewing skills!

Word lists

Open syllable words

An open syllable continues a single vowel sound that is not followed by another letter. Often these syllables are combined with other syllable types such as closed syllables as in the words hippo (/po/ is the open syllable) or bison (/bi/ is the open syllable). We will go over syllables and syllable types in-depth Level 2. The following words are a single open syllable.

I hope this post helps those of you that are finishing up Wild Reading Level 1!

If you are wanting to add in some writing practice before moving on to Level 2, check out our three writing units in the shop! Topics include writing animal or plant All About Books, Sit Spots, and Seasonal Poetry!

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