Strategies to Help Kids Learn to Read

I found both the Learning to Read and Write: Developmentally Appropriate Practices for Young Children and the Letting go of "Letter of the Week" articles to be very informative, but the one that caught my attention the most was the Letting go of "Letter of the Week" article. I remember being in Kindergarten and getting the letter of the week. We would do activities and have homework that associated with the certain letter of the week. Personally, I learned to read just fine using that method but I can also remember many kids in my class struggling with reading. I thought it was very interesting that both kindergarten teachers in the article used phonics strategies such as looking at the first letter, looking at the last letter, and trying to see if kids recognized chunks in the word. When the teachers used the different strategies it had fantastic results! I feel like this method should be used more often in the classroom instead of sounding out a word letter by letter. I also thought it was very creative that they used student's names to help them recognize letters. After reading the article it seems like learning the letters in the student's names helped the students more than anything. I also liked the fact that both kindergarten teachers gave the children a lot of positive reinforcement when it came to reading. For example, on the first day of school the teacher helped them figure out that they could already read! I believe positive reinforcement is the key to help children learn to read and to help them have a desire to read later on in life.