Month: February 2020

Strategies Good Readers Use

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• Recognize that this is an unfamiliar word, and look at all the letters in order
• Search your mental word bank for similar letter patterns and the sounds associated with them
• Produce a pronunciation that matches that of a real word that you know
• Reread the sentence to cross-check your possible pronunciation with meaning, If meaning confirms pronunciation, continue reading. If not, they try again
• Look for familiar morphemes, and chunk the word by putting letters together that usually go together in the words you know

Guess the Covered Word

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1. Before class begins, write four or five sentences on the board that start with your students’ names, follow a similar word pattern, and end with words that vary in their initial sounds and word length.
2. Cover the last word in each sentence with a sticky note
3. Begin the activity by reading the first sentence and asking students to guess the covered word. Write down guess on the board next to the sentence.
4. Next, uncover all the letters up to the first vowel (make sure to tell the students that you did this). Erase guesses that do not begin with that group of letters. Have students give a few more guesses that would make sense. Write them on the board. Remind students that the word needs to begin with this letter/s and still make sense in the sentence.
5. Finally, uncover the whole word and see if any guesses were correct. Repeat this process with the remaining sentences.

This can also be used during science or social studies so that students don’t just relate this activity with reading.

Using Words You Know

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Help students learn to use the words they already know to decode and spell lots of other words.

1. Show students three to five words they know, and have these words pronounced and spelled.
2. Draw four columns, and head each column with one of these words.
3. Tell students that words that rhyme usually have the same spelling pattern.
4. Tell students that you are going to show them some new words and that they should write each one under the word with the same spelling pattern.
5. Explain to your students that thinking of rhyming words can help them spell. This time, do not show them the words but just say the word.
6. End this lesson by helping students verbalize that in English words that rhyme often have the same spelling pattern and that good readers and spellers do not sound out every letter but rather try to think of a rhyming word and read or spell the word using the pattern in the rhyming word.

Making Words

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As students manipulate letters to make words, they learn how making small changes, such as changing just one letter or moving two letters around, results in a completely new word. You can guide students to make these discoveries by carefully sequencing the words they are to make and giving them explicit guidance about how much change in needed.

Making Words lesson have three steps:

1. You make words. Begin with short, easy words and move to longer, more complex words. The last word is always the secret word – a word that is made using all of the letters. As the students make each word, a student who made it successfully goes up to a pocket chart and makes the word with big letters so all students can see it. Have students make 10-15 words, including the secret word.
2. Sort the words into patterns. This could include length of the word, the beginning letter, but every lesson should include sorting them by sorting words.
3. Transfer the words. Once the words are sorted by rhyming words, have the students use the rhyming words to spell some new words with these rhyming patterns.

Modeling How to Decode Big Words

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To decode and spell big words. your students must:

1. Have a mental store of big words that contain the spelling patterns common to big words
2. Chunk big words into pronounceable segments by comparing the parts of new big words to the big words they already know
3. Recognize and use common prefixes and suffixes

Modeling is the most direct way to demonstrate to your students what to do when they encounter a long, unfamiliar word. Modeling is simply thinking aloud about how you might go about figuring out an unfamiliar word.

The Nifty-Thrifty-Fifty

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The Nifty-Thrifty-Fifty words should be introduced gradually, and students should practice chanting and writing them until their spelling and decoding become automatic.

1. Display the words, arranged by first letter, someplace in the room
2. Explain to students that in English, many big words are just smaller words with prefixes and suffixes added to the word
3. Tell students that one way to practice words is to say the letters in them aloud in a rhythmic, chanting fashion
4. Once you have notices the composition for each word, helped the students see other words that work in a similar way, and cheered for each word, have the students write each word
5. When you have a few minutes, practice the words by chanting or writing
6. Once students can automatically, quickly, and correctly spell the words and explain to you how they are composed, it is time to help them see how these words can help them decode and spell other word. They use words they know and combine roots, suffixes, and prefixes to figure out how to spell lots of other words
7. Continue adding words gradually, going through the above procedures with all the words. Do not add words too quickly, and provide lots of practice with these words and the other words that can be decoded and spelled by combining parts of these words

Classroom Application

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I think rhyming words are one of the most important parts about becoming better readers and spellers because these words follow a pattern so I would teach a lot of rhyming activities even if it is just the students naming rhyming words as I write them down to show them the spelling pattern. I like the idea of teaching prefixes and suffixes and for the younger students I want to work with we might have to choose simple prefixes like “un” or “re” and suffixes like “able” and “ed” that they might come across more in their reading. Students will be reminded to use words that they already know.

Resource

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Cunningham, P. M. & Allington, R. L. (2011). Classrooms That Work: They Can All Read
and Write. (6th ed.). Boston: Pearson

Fluency

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The ability to read most words in context quickly and accurately and with appropriate expression. It is critical to reading comprehension because of the attention factor. Our brains can attend to a limited number of things at a time. If most of out attention is focused on decoding the words, there is little attention left for the comprehension part of reading – putting the words together and thinking about what they mean.

Ways to Help Struggling Readers

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Make sure all your students are spending some of their time reading easy text – text in which they are interested, and thus have background knowledge, and text in which they can recognize 98-99% of the words.

Read an “everyone book” aloud. An “everyone book” is a book that everyone can read and that would be easy for even your struggling readers.

Have magazines. With magazines, it is not essential to read every word or article but the students can read the ones that interest them. Those high-interest articles will be easier to read because they are usually on a topic on which your struggling reader has a lot of background knowledge and vocabulary.

Independent reading is a critical daily component of a balanced reading program and should be devoted to students choosing something to read themselves.

Provide struggling readers with a lot of easy reading opportunities and watch them become fluent readers.

Echo Reading

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Echo reading is the perfect way to model expressive oral reading because in echo reading, your voice is the first voice and your students are trying to make their voice sound like yours. Echo reading is usually done one sentence at a time and is fun to do when the text has different voices.

Choral Reading

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Choral reading can be used when reading plays and students will read different roles. Students take turns reading different characters and when the play is done, students get different roles. Struggling readers can be assigned easier roles first and can then hear examples of the other students reading the more detailed roles.

Rereading

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One of the major ways that we become fluent readers is to read something over several times. The first time, a lot of our attention is on identifying the words. The second time, we are able to read in phrases as our brains puts the phrases together into meaningful units. The third time, we read more rapidly, with good expression and in a seemingly effortless way.

Fluency Development Lessons

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The teacher chooses a short passage that is apt to be appealing to the students and reads the passage aloud several times, modeling fluent reading.

The teacher and the class do a choral reading of the poem. The poem is read chorally several times.

The children are paired and take turns reading the passage to each other. Each person reads the passage three times.

When the class gathers together again, the children can volunteer to read the passage aloud to everyone.

The children choose two or three words from the passage to ass to their personal word banks.

Children put one copy of the text in their poetry folder and are given a second copy to take home. They are encouraged to read the passage to whoever will listen.

The following day, the previous day’s passage is read again and then the whole cycle begins with a new passage. Once the class learns the routines the whole FDL can be completed in 15-20 minutes. FDLs are easy to do and enjoyed by both teachers and students.

Word Walls

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Word walls consist of tricky words and high-frequency words that will help the students to become more fluent readers. Words should be introduced gradually – no more than 5-6 a week. The words should be practiced before being put up on the wall. Students can practice these words by chanting them and writing them, fun games can also be played with these words.

Classroom Application

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Of course, I will have a word wall in my classroom. I will also include reading to self time with easy to read books, read alouds with “everyone books,” and I also love the idea of the FDLs.

Resource

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Cunningham, P. M. & Allington, R. L. (2011). Classrooms That Work: They Can All Read
and Write. (6th ed.). Boston: Pearson

Print Concept

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Print is what you read and write. Print includes letters, punctuation, and spaces between words and paragraphs, that translate into familiar spoken language. Also, learning the concepts that we read across the page from left-to-right and that we start at the front of a book and read towards the back.

Phonemic Awareness

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The ability to recognize that words are made up of a discrete set of sounds and to manipulate those sounds. A child’s level of phonemic awareness is highly related to their success in beginning to read. Language is made up of individual words, those words are made up of syllables, and those syllables are made up of phonemes. A 5-year-old may have a hard time telling you how many syllables a word in but will be able to clap out the beats in a word. Phonemic awareness is an oral skill. A child can hear rhyming words or that “baby” and “book” start with the same sound or that there are three sounds that make up the word “hat.”

Concrete Words

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Concrete words are words that children usually know because they are important to them. These words may include their name, brands that they see often, or mom and dad. If a child can learn how to learn words, and the few words they can read gives them confidence that you can learn more words.

Letter Names and Sounds

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The letter names and sounds children know come from the concrete words that they already know and can read and write. Many children learn some letter names and sounds through repeated readings of alphabet book and through making words with magnetic letters on the refrigerator.

Classroom Application

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I feel like this chapter was a great resource and how eye-opening it is to introduce students to literacy early in their lives. I would love to teach Pre-K or kindergarten one day so learning how to introduce students to the importance of reading and writing will be very helpful. I liked that one video where the teacher had a box of items and the students had to come and find something that started with the letter they were working on.

Additional Resources

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Listed are some additional resources about all the topics listed above as well as other helpful reading topics like fluency and comprehension. The most important thing to know is that the earlier you start reading to your child, the more successful they will be.

https://lincs.ed.gov/publications/html/parent_guides/birth_to_pre.html

Click to access report.pdf

Click to access PRFbooklet.pdf

Click to access PRFbooklet.pdf

Assessment of Reading

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Regularly assess how students are progressing towards meeting important goals and then adjust their instruction based on these assessments. Teachers can also do a status assessment early in the year to determine how the student feels about themselves as a reader. These same questions can be asked to the student halfway through the school year and at the end. The teacher can then have the student look at this and see the progress they made.

Read Alouds

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Teachers read-alouds have been shown to be one of the major motivators for students’ desire to read. Reading aloud to students is a simple and research-proven way to motivate students of all ages to become readers.

Teachers should read both fiction and non-fiction. Students need to know that all types of books are accepted in the classroom for students to read. Most students develop their reading habits between the ages of 8 and 11. The teacher should also read books from series or from authors that wrote multiple books. This way students can expand their reading by choosing the other books that have been read in class.

Read alouds can help English Language Learners too. Read alouds can be used to help develop vocabulary by asking students to define unfamiliar words or words that may be tricky to understand. The teacher can also choose some books from these students cultures too.

Independent Reading

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All students should read for at least 20 minutes a day from materials they have chosen. Tell students that in order to get better at anything, including reading they need to do these things:

1. Instruction
2. Practice Skills
3. Practice the Whole Thing

A timer can be set to monitor the amount of time that the students are reading. When the timer goes off let the students know that it is okay for them to take another minute to get to a good stopping spot. Once students have chose their spot for reading, they shouldn’t be moving around and should have enough materials to read for the whole time. Begin with 5-6 minutes and expand from there.

English Language Learners may need dictionaries to help them figure out unknown words. They may also read books from their home language too.

Getting Materials for the Classroom

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Teachers can get free books from book clubs when their students order books, asking parents to donate unwanted books, begging for books from friends or relatives, or looking through yard sales and thrift shops.

Libraries may either sell or donate used books or magazines. Bookstores may also give teachers deals on books or collect donations for classrooms of books. Teachers can also subscribe to popular children’s magazines at a low cost.

Teachers may also want to share books among other classrooms. This can be done by having crates of interesting books and rotating them every month to keep the students interested in reading.

Conferencing with Students

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Reading conferences need to be something that students look forward to and not dread. To do this, the teacher needs to think of it more like a conversation than an interview and let the students have responsibilities too. Some conversation starters may include:

• “Let’s see. What have you got for me today?”
• “Oh good, another book about ocean animals. I had no idea there were so many books about ocean animals!”
• “I see you have bookmarked two pages to share with me. Read these pages to me, and tell me why you chose them.”
• “I never knew there was so much to learn about animals in the ocean. I am so glad you bring such interesting books to share with me each week. You are turning me into an ocean animal expert!”
• “I can’t wait to see what you bring to share with me next week!”

The students are in charge of choosing a book or magazine they want to share and bookmark any parts that they want to discuss with the teacher. Each student will get about 3-4 minutes too share. The teacher will start by modeling what the conference will look like and eventually will be able to just hang up a poster to remind students of how they will work.

Making Time for Students to Share What They Read

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One way to start conversations about reading is to create a classroom book board. This will consist of 40-50 books with the titles written on the book board. Students can then rate these books after they read them by writing what they thought about the book on a piece of paper and pinning it by the book title. The teacher can take time once every few weeks to read these reviews and discuss with the students why they felt that way. The board can be changed once most students have read the books.

Another way to start the conversation is having a “Reader’s Chair” and having a few students share what they read about during independent reading. The student’s job is to sell the book to their peers.

One more way is to have “reading parties.” The students are randomly put into groups (the teacher could make this more structured too by assigning groups) to discuss books they have read and enjoyed. Because it is a party the teacher can provide snacks or students could bring something in to share. By making it fun the students will want to do it more often.

Classroom Application

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I love all of the ideas for having the students share books that they have read. I definitely want to make a book board and have “reading parties.” I also liked the idea of reading conferences which will help the teacher get a better look at what students like to read and will be able to assess students’ comprehension of what they are reading without them even noticing.

I would love to get the community involved by either asking members to donate books to the classroom or coming in to read with the students. This is a great way for students to build connections with members of their community.

Resources

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Cunningham, P. M. & Allington, R. L. (2011). Classrooms That Work: They Can All Read       

and Write. (6^th ed.). Boston: Pearson

From the following video you will learn some first steps to reading. The teacher in the video has students starting to recognize their own names and reading first letters and thinking of whose name it could be. She also has a letter of the week where the students can see the letter, hear the sound, and then think of words that start with that sound.

From the following video you will learn the 6 strategies for reading and figuring out words you don’t know. By showing this video to students, they might be able to easily remember the strategies and how to use them so when they get stuck while reading they will know what to do.

Reading First

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Reading First required states to assess student progress in reading and schools were penalized of they failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress. This program specified that by 2014 all children were expected to read on grade-level. Unfortunately, this important goal was not achieved by the costly and widely implemented Reading First initiative. Evaluators concluded that there was no consistent pattern of effects over time in the impact estimates for reading instruction in grade one or in reading comprehension in any grade and that there appeared to be a systematic decline in reading instruction impacts in grade two.

Classrooms with the Highest Gains

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Teachers in these classrooms did the following things:

• Emphasized higher-order meaning construction more than lower-order skills
• Maximized opportunities to read
• Integrated reading and writing with other subject areas
• Provided opportunities to discuss what was read

Basic Principles of Effective Instruction

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• Integrate skills teaching with reading and writing
• Use time wisely. Turn mundane moments into instructional events
• Use scaffolding and coaching
• Emphasize self-regulating and self-monitoring
• Incorporate reading and writing into other content areas
• Have high expectations
• Be an excellent classroom manager

The Most Effective Classrooms

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• Skills were explicitly taught and related to reading and writing
• Books were everywhere and used in a variety of ways
• Children did a lot of reading and writing throughout the day and for homework
• Teachers had high but realistic expectations and monitored progress regularly
• Self-regulation was modeled and expected
• Cross-curricular connections were made as children read and wrote
• Classrooms were caring, positive, cooperative environments where discipline issues were dealt with quickly and quietly
• Classroom management was excellent and teachers use a variety of grouping structures
• Classrooms has high student engagement
• Real conversations took place, between students and teachers

Effective Teachers

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• Had higher pupil engagement
• Provided more small-group instruction
• Provided more coaching to help children improve in word recognition
• Asked more higher-level comprehension questions
• Communicated more with parents
• Had children engage in more independent reading

What Do We Know About Effective Classrooms

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• Provides huge amounts of balanced, comprehensive instruction
• Do a lot of reading and writing
• Science and social studies are taught and integrated with reading and writing
• Teachers emphasize higher-level thinking skills
• Skills and strategies are explicitly taught and children are coached
• Teachers use a variety of formats to provide instruction
• A wide variety of materials are used
• Classrooms are well managed and have high levels of engagement

Common Core

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Developed after the Reading First initiative failed. Common Core Standards are developed for grades K-12 and are things students should be able to do by the end of that grade level. These standards are set up to get students college ready as soon as kindergarten.

Classroom Application

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I really enjoyed the first video shown above as I would like to teach Pre-K or Kindergarten. Having the students begin recognizing names and letters with their sounds is a huge first step to reading and writing. I also would like to use a combination of the strategies listed above especially scaffolding and coaching which is another thing that I think is very important at a young age. Teaching younger learners these skills, they will be able to pick up on newer skills more easily. I believe Common Core is something that is used in most schools and is something I would like to use to make sure students are performing at grade level or above before moving on to the next grade. I like how Common Core is more benchmarks than a timeline of exactly when students need to accomplish something. This way all students can learn at their own pace.