Why these cards
Margot's September mClass check put her in the yellow overall and red in decoding. Ms. Melanie confirmed these sets match the mClass lessons and the Orton-Gillingham work she does in class.
Decoding is the skill of turning letters into sounds and blending them. It is the one skill that unlocks the rest, and it responds fast to short daily practice.
The 5-minute routine
- Set 0 for 60 seconds. Sounds, not letter names.
- One word set, about 12 cards. Tap the sounds, sweep, say it fast.
- Tricky card comes back once at the end. Missed twice: you read it, she repeats, move on.
- Stop at 5 minutes.
The sets
- 0 Sounds: single letters and digraphs. Vowels first. Every session.
- 1 Short vowels: word chains, one sound changes per card. Start here for a week.
- 2 Digraphs: sh, ch, th, ck, wh. Two letters, one sound.
- 3 Beginning blends: st, bl, tr, spr. Two sounds, both said.
- 4 Ending blends: -mp, -nd, -st, -lk. Ends get dropped a lot.
- 5 Silent e: pairs like cap / cape. Talk about what the e did.
- 6 Nonsense words: what DIBELS tests. No guessing from memory.
- 7 Heart words: there, one, color. Look, say, spell aloud. Never sound out.
The 1-minute tests
Sight words is like the mClass Word Reading Fluency task: high-frequency words, read fast, score is words correct per minute.
Nonsense words is like Nonsense Word Fluency: made-up VC and CVC words. mClass reports two numbers. CLS counts every correct letter sound, even if she does not blend. WRC counts whole words read correctly. The app makes a fresh random list each time so she cannot memorise it.
These are practice versions, one word at a time on a phone. The real test uses rows of words on paper, so treat the numbers as a trend, not an exact match to the school score.
Reading at bedtime
Her oral reading accuracy is 84%. Below about 95%, a book is too hard to learn from. For bedtime, pick books that feel almost too easy. Save the hard ones for you to read aloud to her.
Add to the home screen
iPhone: Share ⬆️ → "Add to Home Screen". It opens full-screen like an app. Scores stay on each phone; use "Move data between phones" on the Scores page to sync.