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Home » Reading Ideas » Learning to Read » Martian Fingers

Martian Fingers

October 3, 2011 •

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Young children move from “pretend” reading where they make up the story by looking at the pictures or remembering details from countless read-alouds by someone else to actually reading the words on the page.  Generally, this happens at the end of kindergarten or beginning of first grade.  Of course, all children develop at different rates, so this stage may happen earlier or later than this time.  One of the greatest pleasures I had as a first grade teacher was seeing students unlock this lettering code.

Tracking print as a child is learning to read helps them to attend to the print.  Tracking involves the child pointing to each word as it is being read.  I’ve found that using a martian finger is a fun way to encourage this strategy for beginning readers.  Young readers put the martian finger on their pointer finger and use it to help them track as they read.  During the Halloween season, I’ve found a package of these fingers at the dollar stores.  They can also be found at Oriental Trading Company.  As I was flipping through the latest OTC catalog I also discovered snake head finger puppets which could be fun.

Tracking print is a short stage that we start to discourage once the text on the page increases to three sentences or so.  At that point, we want children to start to track with just their eyes to help build reading fluency.

Scour the dollar stores and see what little gadgets you can pick up to encourage your young reader.

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Filed Under: All categories, Learning to Read, Reading Fun Tagged With: martian fingers, pointing while reading, tracking print

About Jodie Rodriguez

Jodie Rodriguez is a mom of two young boys and an early childhood/elementary educator with over 20 years of experience. Jodie's passion is helping parents, teachers, librarians and anyone else interested in nurturing and reaching ALL of our youngest growing readers.

Comments

  1. Sarah says

    October 9, 2011 at 1:29 pm

    I love this! And I recognize that book too…ahhh DRA testing!

Trackbacks

  1. Reading Pointers - Growing Book by Book says:
    July 22, 2013 at 6:05 am

    […] Beginning readers who need to track (point to each word as they read) can use a pointer instead of their finger.  Shorter pointers work best for this job.  I also have written about tracking using martian fingers that you can check out here. […]

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