Word Work, the Reading Recovery Way -- Pt.3

It's about time, teachers, for another post about Word Word, the Reading Recovery Way. As a Reading Recovery teacher and literacy specialist, I have spent years collecting data and analyzing techniques to determine what works best for teaching my reluctant readers how to be successful.  These posts represent the sum total of my learning to date.  The steps I am offering have proven very successful with my students, and, hopefully, will bring you the same results.

Once your student has mastered the majority of her letters, begin working on high frequency words that she KNOWS.  To this end, I place a group of letters on the white board that make a word she knows.  

I start with 2 letter words.  This allows the student to learn the task quickly and easily.  At the board, I push the letter set to the center and tell her these letters make a word she knows.  I ask her to make that word.  Once that is accomplished, I ask her to "say it slowly and run your finger under it to check the sounds."  You may have to demonstrate this procedure.

The next step is to use 3 letter words that she knows.

Naturally, that is followed by 4 letter words.

This procedure continues until the task is completed easily.  I do not, typically, progress to 5, or more, letter words.  My goal is to have her manipulate the letters quickly and self-check that the letter sequence matches the sound sequence.  

These tasks are easily adapted to small group instruction.  In deference to time constraints, I place my letter sets in snack size zipper bags ahead of time.  As the students gain facility with the task, I up the ante by giving different words to each student.  We all know how "helpful" first graders can be to each other.  This step allows each student to be more independent.

   

 

Word Work, the Reading Recovery Way - Pt. 2

It's about time, teachers, for Part 2 of Word Work, the Reading Recovery Way.  If you missed my 1st post, you can read it here.

Let me start with an aside:  In America, we typically work on all of the upper case letters first.  As I understand it, our British friends commence with lower case letters.  I say,  "Well done, Brits," because when you introduce proper nouns, it is much easier to instill the need for capitalizing the first letter.  This is as opposed to us Yankees trying to "unlearn" writing every word with a capital letter.  Just food for thought...

Regardless of the letter case you tackle first, you will eventually reach the time when your student must differentiate between upper and lower case letters.  In a sorting activity, that means you will include both cases of known letters.  

Ask the student to sort by letter first.

When she demonstrates automaticity with this sort, proceed to sorting by 2 characteristics:  letter & case.

Up the ante by adding more letters to the pool.

Again sort by letter first.

Then sort by 2 characteristics again.

Before you start working with actual words, conduct other characteristic sorts.  For example, find all the letters that have humps; letters with sticks; letters that start like c.

Go forth & sort!  Then come back for more Word Work, the Reading Recovery Way.

Be sure you check out my facebook page for the grammar gaffe of the day.

Word Work, the Reading Recovery Way

Since completing training as a Reading Recovery™ teacher in 2000, I have been fascinated watching reluctant readers learn how words work. That is, how they can use known words to learn unknown words. In RR we call it "word work," but it is quite different than the "word work" associated with programs like Words Their Way™.

Over the course of my RR and reading intervention teaching, I have sought to find a sequence of skill lessons that would best assist my students in learning to coordinate 2 items of knowledge:

1. linking sound sequence with letter sequence 
2. linking letter sequence with sound sequence

That doesn't sound that hard, does it? But with the lowest 20% of first graders, it can be herculean!

In RR, word work is NOT about learning words. Rather, it is about learning how words work. The idea is much like the parable of the fisherman: give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for life. We all need to teach our students to "fish" in order to ensure lifelong success. Which leads me to the next important point: the child must accomplish as much of the word work task independently as he can handle. Before RR training, I admit that I spoon fed my firsties too often. One of the hardest lessons any teacher learns is to wait. for. the. child. to. respond. 

In RR, teachers are constantly evaluating both the student's work and the teacher's work. To that end, I have come to understand that if the word work done early in the lesson did not go well, then it must be repeated in the same lesson. If the task went well, however, you repeat the task with similar words (or letters). 

Key to the child's success is spending enough time on each task to ensure that he has learned the task. We do a great disservice to our students when we push on without giving them the time to truly learn the foundation skills. Similarly, enough time must be spent on the task to assess the learning. There is a difference between learning the task and actually learning. Confused? Let me give an example: 

Let’s say your student knows the upper case letters L and B. Using the vertical plane white board, you place a pool of magnetic upper case Ls and Bs.

Ask your student to find all the Ls, pushing them quickly into a pile. Repeat with the Bs. Demonstrate the speed you desire, if necessary. Because you are working with known letters, this activity constitutes learning the task. You will repeat this activity with known letters until you are convinced the child understands the task.

Now it’s time to introduce an unknown letter, N. On the white board, you place a pool of 12 - 15 letters - - several of each of the known letters and 3-5 of the new letter.

Instruct the child to find all of the Ls, just as he has done in the past. When that is completed, ask him to find all of the Bs, again forming a pile using the procedure already learned. Finally, direct him to find all of the Ns, showing him an N, if necessary. When he can reliably find the Ns without assistance, he has demonstrated learning. 

Push the child to act quickly, but do not proceed to the next activity until you are sure the child understands the task at hand. An activity of this type should take 3 minutes OR LESS! Remember that 6 year olds have very short attention spans that are enhanced by opportunities to move. That is why, if you have ever witnessed a RR lesson, the child gets up and moves to the vertical plane white board to do this portion of the lesson.

Just  a note to all my OCD friends:  Resist having the child line the letters up in neat rows.  You are seeking instant recognition and speed of reaction; NOT neatness and regimentation!

This is the first post in a series about Word Work, the Reading Recovery™ Way.  Come back soon for the next step.

USING POETRY IN THE CLASSROOM -- Part 6-- POETRY LEARNING CENTERS

It's about time, teachers,... that I continue this blog.  I was interrupted by the birth of my grandson, Olin Robert.  :)  He's perfect and I'm utterly smitten!

When I am establishing my poetry center, I model everything I expect to my class during our morning meeting.  Hence, together we will rebuild the poem using the sentence strips and the pocket chart.  Together we will circle the word wall words on our individual copies.  Together we will make a list of all the words that end with -ing.  You get the picture.  

I use task cards at my poetry center.  They describe what the students are to do that day. For example: 

Students will circle the rhyming words on their individual copies.  Typically, this task will be one that I demonstrated on last week's poem.

Using a grease pencil or a Vis-a-vis marker, I fill in the box with whatever letter or blend we are studying at the time.  I provide a POETRY RECORDING SHEET for students to use.  However, blank or lined paper could suffice.

As my students' capabilities grow, so do the requirements of the task cards.

These task cards are appropriate for emergent readers.  I have also used them with reluctant, older readers.  

For students with advanced reading & writing skills, I start with more difficult tasks and build from there.

For upper grade and/or advanced students, the task cards require more.

In my next post, I'll describe POETRY LEARNING CENTERS that focus on poetic structures, elements, and writing.

If you like my poetry task cards, you can find them at my TN Shop or in my TpT Store.

POETRY LITERACY CENTERS -- Part 5

It’s about time, teachers, that we covered poetry literacy centers.  I {heart} centers that have high interest for the kids and low effort for me.  That doesn’t happen overnight, but you can start to establish a poetry center and train you students to use it.  Then all you have to do is swap the poems and a few supplies.

Poems placed at the center must be familiar to the children.  You are just inviting problems if you post an unfamiliar poem.  Through shared reading, your students should have a clear understanding of the poem’s meaning or essence.  During those reads, ensure that your students understand the vocabulary and have sufficient background knowledge.  Ideally, the poem will be one that everyone can read independently.  If that is not possible, and I don’t believe it always IS possible, have a system whereby those who can’t read it can readily find a helper.

Poems placed at the center are in several forms:  individual copies for the students’ anthologies, an enlarged or poster version, and sentence strips with the poem copied on them.  A pocket chart is available for the latter.  Whisper phones are there, as well.

Have supplies available at the center so that students need not travel back to their desks to fetch them.  You will likely need scissors, pencils, erasers, crayons, colored pencils, and/or markers.  I also place a 3 hole punch at my center for students to use since we collect our poetry in 3 ring binders.

There are myriad activities for students to pursue.  As you can well imagine, the activities available at any one time, are limited and variable.  Following is an eclectic list of those activities:

          Read the poem with a buddy (EEKK)        
          Find rhyming words & highlight them

          Illustrate the poem

          Find patterns in the poem

          Identify word wall words in the poem & highlight or make a list

          Highlight words that are hard or tricky

          Complete a poetry Cloze exercise (fill in the missing words)

          Make a bookmark based on the poem

          Read with expression/read the punctuation

          Build poems from sentence strips

Create poetry with magnetic poem kits

          Memorize a poem

Perform a poem

Another set of activities at the poetry center is based on language arts skills.  The poetry center can reinforce skills currently under study or review some previously taught.  Some skill lessons to consider include:

          Rhyming words
          Onsets and rimes

          High frequency words

          Spelling list words

Vowel sounds   

Digraphs

Blends and clusters

Base words

Prefixes and suffixes

Punctuation

Rules of grammar

Parts of speech

Homonyms, synonyms, antonyms, homophones

For higher performing students in the early grades, as well as students in middle and upper grades, additional activities may focus on the craft of poetry.  Such activities include:

          Make text innovations
          Compose a poem

          Identify elements of a poem

          Explore figurative language

          Compare 2 poems using a Venn diagram or a T-chart

          Write a response to the poem

          Conduct an author study on the poet

In my next post, I will explore some of the activities in more depth.

You may also be interested in:

All of these products are available in my TpT Store or my TN Shop.

March Poetry Freebie

It's about time, teachers . . . to add some March poetry to your students' portfolios.  My series of Poetry Possibilities on TpT now includes March themed poetry.  

Here is a free preview:

These poems each come with a teaching point and an eclectic collection of mini-lessons and activities.  The readability of the poems makes them appropriate to both primary and intermediate classrooms.  The skill lessons allow for remediation of older students or differentiation for younger ones.  Concepts and skills included in this 33 page unit are described here:

Stop by my TpT store to check out Poetry Possibilities for March.  I think you will like them.

Poetry Possibilities -- February

Do you love poetry but struggle with how to use it in your teaching?  Do you eschew poetry lessons because your schedule is too tightly packed to allow "frivolities?"  Did you know that reading poetry is the #1 way to improve reading fluency?  What you need is a plan that allows you to include poetry in your teaching while maximizing skill building and efficiently using your precious instructional time.  You can find such plans in my series, Poetry Possibilities.

Poetry Possibilities -- February is a collection of 17 poems covering Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day, Presidents' Day, and the 100th Day of School.  Each poem is accompanied by a set of Possibilities for your teaching pleasure.  For example, the following poem about Valentine's Day is included in the unit:

The Poetry Possibilities that accompany this poem are:

As you can see, it is possible to use poetry in your teaching every day.  You can incorporate it into centers, guided reading lessons, art activities, movement activities, music, math, social studies, science, etc.  If you like this preview of the product, you can find it here.

I hope you don't think I forgot about Black History Month.  In fact, I created a product, Black History Month Poetry Possibilities with 14 poems about Black Americans of note.  

You can also find a FREE Poetry Possibilities product, Poetry Possibilities -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which can, of course, be used in your Black History Month studies.  There are 3 poems about MLK, Jr. in this product.

You may also be interested in Poetry Possibilities for Winter.  It has 20 poems about winter topics with teaching points and possibilities.

I am hoping to have Poetry Possibilities for March up soon.  Until then, please remember to make the world a better place by teaching with poetry.

Groundhog Day 3.0

One of the things I love to do with my students is immerse them in poetry because it offers so many teaching possibilities. Naturally you can focus on poetic structures and poetic devices.   But have you ever used poetry to teach reading skills? Because poetry is usually short and the message concise, it's a perfect venue for studying vowel sounds, contractions, punctuation, parts of speech, syllables, rimes, inflections, ....  The  possibilities are almost endless.  It's always good practice to relate these skills to what is being read.  Practicing skills in isolation may transfer to reading skill building; then again it may not.  

Each poem has reading skills already built into it.  All you have to do is look at it with a "reading skills eye."  Thus, if the poem is replete with a particular consonant blend, use it in a guided reading lesson about that blend.  If the poem has a sprinkling of contractions, devise a review lesson about contractions using the poem.  As an example, look at the following poem, noting that it has several compound words in it.

Due to the structure of a poem, it is easier for young children to locate the compound words.  If you reproduced this poem on sentence strips for use in a pocket chart, that would facilitate  identifying the compound words as a group.  With a little magic and masking tape, you could make the compound words come apart.  Alternately, you might focus on the punctuation and how it helps the reader to read with expression.  Or, you might choose to conduct a mini-lesson on the inflections -ing and -ed.

As a reading specialist, I highly recommend using poems for guided reading lessons and review lessons.  It has always been a favorite activity of my remedial students if for no other reason than they had less text to conquer.

While wearing my other hat, enrichment specialist, I developed Poetry Possibilities for my colleagues with teaching points identified for them.  For example, the Possibilities  for the above poem include:

As item #3 indicates, poetry can also be a launchpad for differentiating instruction.  Gifted and talented students deserve and require our attention, but it can be quite taxing to provide extensions for them.  I have dedicated most of my career to creating challenges for G/T children.  Most of my products on TpT reflect that commitment.  I hope you will go here to check out my critical and creative thinking products.

If you are interested in more seasonal poems with teaching points and skill suggestions, visit my TpT store here for February poems and possibilities.  You may also be interested in Black History Month Poetry Possibilities.  Just a word of caution: reading poetry is principally about creating enthusiasm for reading.  Take care not to defeat that goal by always turning poetry reading into a skill drill.

                        

Black History Month

It's about time, teachers, to get ready for Black History Month; a month to celebrate the accomplishments of Black Americans who have done so much to make our lives better.

Assigning your students to report on noteworthy people is fine, but, let's face it, a little boring.   Couple that with the time constraints we all face for prescribed curricula, and you have a common conundrum: how can I blend what I WANT to do with what I HAVE to do?  In the case of Black History Month, I find that poetry is a perfect way to solve it.   For example, the following poem gives you the heart of Matthew Henson.

But just reading a poem doesn't seem worthy of the study of Black History. So, I try to incorporate required curricula with some creativity. I call it Poetry Possibilities, just to remind myself that I don't have to do EVERYTHING every year. Rather, I can choose what is most appropriate to this year's class, and what appeals to me at this time. Honestly, sometimes I do all of the listed ideas; sometimes I just copy the poem and share it with my class.

As you can see, one of the things I could assign my students to do is design a postage stamp just for Matthew Henson. I was impressed to learn that there are more than 60 U.S. stamps honoring black Americans. Check it out for yourself at: 

http://library.thinkquest.org/10320/Stamps.htm. 

For Black History Month, I have collected 14 poems, which means you can use 1 poem per day for nearly 3 weeks. Each is accompanied by a teaching point covering a variety of skills, including: types of poetry, poetic devices, poetic structures, choral reading, text innovations, creative writing, and a host of reading skills. Because I am committed to differentiated instruction, I have included enrichment opportunities and research topics. You will also find graphic organizers, art projects, and book links.

This is just one piece of my Black History Month poetry unit, Black History Month Poetry Possibilities. This unit has a cousin unit that is absolutely FREE, called Poetry Possibilities -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I hope they help to make your Black History study more enjoyable.