Check it out!

It is that time of year once again. The mad dash to the school year finish line. In the midst of all the madness, I created a new Pinterest board titled Let's Teach Reading! Click here to check it out.

Have a happy Monday!

P.S. I got the above photo from the best free photo resource I have yet found online. 
It is called Morgue File.  

Make Tracking Fun!

Early readers can experience great difficulty when attempting to track words through the pages of a book. I have several readers right now who are pros at reading sight words off of the card, but when all the words are strung together in a sentence the words become unrecognizable. I use a variety of interventions for students with this issue, but the first one I try is introducing the child to a fun reading tool I call the reading tracker. Students often get very bored when asked to point and follow each word with their finger. However, students are less hesitant to use this all-important early literacy skill when given a fun tool. As you can see in the picture above, the Dollar Tree is my friend! I have found magnifying glasses, rulers with a magnified strip, skeleton hands, zip ties, paint brushes, little critters, a variety of magic wands, and even crazy straws! The rocket and open book trackers I simple made by taking small bulletin board icons (again from Dollar Tree) and slicing a reading window into the center with an Exacto knife. That alone is usually sufficient, but I was overly ambitious that day and also glued a tiny zip tie to the back for added tracking appeal. Young children are motivated by the easiest (and thankfully cheapest) little doodads. Anything to bring visual appeal and interest to the learning scene, right? So, go raid your Dollar Tree today! 

Happy Wednesday!

Connecting Sounds Through Signs

Today's classroom is an intriguing mixture of abilities, learning preferences, sensory needs, and communication styles. At this time of the school year, it can be hard to get such a diversity of students continuously excited about isolating the beginning, middle and end sounds in words. How can I continue to meet all the unique needs of my students while teaching an often ho-hum (although vital) foundational skill? 

In our class, we have taken turns, chorused together, shouted, whispered, and squawked our answers to phonemic isolation questions. We have written our answers on whiteboards as well as in the air with our finger. We have even answered by sliding our fingers through piles of shaving cream on our desks. But still, questions such as, "What is the beginning sound in jet?" or "What is the middle sound in sun?" have produced decreasing amounts of enthusiasm from my learners. 

So, I was excited to discover (quite by accident) that my Kinders are once again eager to isolate phonemes when they can connect the sound with the corresponding letter from the American Sign Language alphabet. The kids think it is great fun to be able to communicate with their hands and no speech. Several of them seemed mystified by the idea that hands could convey so much in place of the spoken word. Thus, we are happily addressing various learning, sensory, and communication needs while simultaneously hitting key Kindergarten learning goals ~ including exploring the diverse populations around us. Woohoo! I am glad this learning train is picking up the speed it needs to make it to the end of this year.

Happy Monday!

P.S. When first introducing this skill, I would focus on isolating only 2 sounds at a time. For example, teach students how to make the c and d signs then sharing only words with that initial phoneme. My students have now built up such a repertoire of sign letters that I can generally present words with 4 or 5 different phonemes at a time. 

Spell it out!

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A reading strategy that I have found highly effective for my students who have the tendency to read words backwards or to transpose letters within a word is what I have dubbed as the Spell It Out strategy. When a student comes to a word he is struggling to decode, I have him go back to the beginning of the word and spell each letter out loud to make sure that what his eyes and brain are seeing match up. I most often use this strategy with students in grades 2 and up, but could use it with younger students as well. 

To make the strategy more fun, I sometimes encourage students to point to each letter with a mini wand or an alien finger or other such interesting tool I have picked up from the Dollar Store. 

Happy Saturday!

Just a quick hello...

... before I crash into bed with a killer cold. Oh the joys of this germy season! 

I wanted to share a reading strategy I have been finding helpful for building students' oral reading fluency. In Kindergarten, since the books have 1 or 2 lines per page, I have been having my students read an entire two-page spread individually while everyone else follows along in their own books with their eyes and fingers. Then, we discuss what was read well or what needed improvement (vocal intonation often being the stressed skill here). Next, we all put our fingers back to the place our last reader read and reread the page spread all together choral-reading style. Reading continues with the students in clockwise rotation. 

I am sure I am not the first to try this spin on choral reading and round robins, but I struck upon it last week and wanted to capture the idea while it was still freshly on my mind.

May the germs steer clear of you this season!

Free Early Literacy Apps for iPad

Sentence Magic
What I love about this app is that it has simple CVC words my Kindergartners can decode at this time of the school year. Sentence Magic has the option of using the picture hint or just focusing on the letters only, so I can easily incorporate it into a lesson about using context clues or phonemic awareness and decoding. Word hints and word blending helpers can be turned on or off. There are sentence building activities as well as sentence reading activities in which you can elect to have two or three words per sentence depending on the student's level of readiness. I additionally appreciate how the consonants and vowels are different colors. All in all, Sentence Magic is very customizable and highly user friendly.  

KinderSpell
This app features a variety of pictures with which younger students will be familiar. The goal is for students to be able to drag the blue letters onto the matching grey square in order to make the word. As students get better at letter matching, the "hint" button can be turned off so that the grey tiles no longer have letter hints. Thus, the app moves from letter recognition to the important phonemic awareness skill of hearing sounds in words. Since it is free, there are not that many words in the app, so be sure not to leave it on your students' menus for long or the benefits and excitement will soon fade. 

Letter Quiz
This app features four different activities for students. In the picture above, students are given a letter to find and the student has to then tap the correct, matching letter. There are also letter tracing activities, upper and lower case matching activities, and upper/lowercase flashcards that feature real life pictures for added letter association reinforcement. The free version only works with letters A-H, but the full version can be bought for just $1.99.

Magic Reading: Reading Skill 1
I love this app! It reinforces many of the phonemic awareness concepts young readers need to master by the end of Kindergarten. It is also a helpful app for older students in need of remediation. The picture above is from the Blending activity. Tap the separate sound boxes along the bottom of the screen to hear a word in parts (example, /c/ /u/ /p/). The student then blends the sounds to make a word. Students can check if they put together the correct word by tapping the large box at top which flips over to reveal the picture while a voice says the word for the picture they were blending. There are also reading and segmenting activities on this app as well. Each of the 3 skill builders center around CVC words, but the user can choose if she wants to focus on short a, e, i, o, or u words. There is also a "shuffle" option which will use all five consonants in random order. I use this app to make my reading groups more interactive, but also like how the self-checking features make this a great fit for students' independent use as well. 

PhonicsRead: Phonics and Reading with McGuffey lite
This app is meant to be used independently by students for remediation and reinforcement of reading concepts. There are slots for up to 10 different usernames. Lessons start with basic letter/sound recognition and first sound fluency. The screenshot above asked the student to touch the /n/ as in "nest." Each time a student taps a correct answer, a small animation pops up in celebration. There are many different animations to keep the students motivated to see what will happen next. The "teacher" voice on the program is very calm and clear, so my students easily understand what each activity is asking them to do. There are customizable options for individual student use. Each lesson has several different parts and covers fluency and comprehension topics as well as word attack skills. 

Word Wizard
This app is set up as a game which allows for 1 or 2 players. Students are to get their rocket ship from space back to Earth by selecting the picture that matches the correct CVC word. When a match is made, the rocket ship moves ahead one star closer to Earth. My students find this app to be especially fun. 

FirstWords Sampler
Tap the picture to hear the word then drag the sounds in the correct order to the letter boxes. I think my kiddos could play this game all day long!

FirstWords Valentine
Put out by the same company as the previous app, this game works much the same way as FirstWords Sampler, but this time features Valentine themed words. Perfect for this time of the year!

I love using technology within the learning environment and so do my students! Today, I hope I was able to introduce you to some new apps to try with your students. And the best part is, they are all free!

Happy Sunday!

Say hello to Thinkport

      Recently, I had the privilege of partaking in a peer-led professional discussion group. My district took a slightly different approach to professional development this school year by allotting some of our PD time to shared study and discussion centering around research-based teaching strategies. At the end of each nine-week grading period, students get a two-hour delay so that all teachers K-12 can have shared planning and discussion time. Before attending, all peers are given a reading assignment (this year we are focusing on the revised edition of Marzano's original study Classroom Instruction That Works). The discussion is facilitated by one peer who has exhibited an affinity for the particular strategy or topic of the quarter. The format is very casual allowing for plenty of open discussion and sharing of ideas, knowledge, and resources. 

It was during our last group time that I was introduced to the beyond fabulous Web resource of Thinkport.org. I was amazed by the wealth of free, quality lesson ideas, classroom tools, and professional development videos that I discovered. I have shared a few of my particular favorites down below.

Reading Strategies
This link connects to a menu (on the right-hand side of the page) of twelve powerful reading strategies. Clicking one of the strategies allows you to explore the strategy through a video, gives examples of when and how to implement the strategy, and offers helpful hotlinks with materials that can be used during group times in order to further support the strategy. If your curiosity was not satisfied enough, then there are also additional links at the bottom of the page for other articles highlighting the effectiveness of the strategy.  

Reading Across the Curriculum Video
The reading strategies featured in this module are the ones recommended by the National Reading Panel. I appreciated how this video series stressed the importance of being able to read informational text. Reading is truly the key to academic success. From my experience, if a student only has difficulty in math, then all other subject areas are usually on track. However, students who struggle in reading quite often struggle in all academic areas as critical thinking and reading skills are so pervasive in science, social studies, and even math now. 

Graphic Organizers Galore!
This link has pages and pages of graphic organizers for free and ready use in your classroom. Each one opens in a new window for easy printing capabilities. However, I usually prefer to project mine onto the whiteboard and use this larger-than-life version to get kids excited about interactive writing. There is just something about writing on a whiteboard that never ceases to engage my early learners. 

I hope these links are as big a blessing to your classroom and personal practice as they have been to mine.

Happy Wednesday!

Let's Redefine....

Comics draw boys in to reading: Study

... our ideas of what "reading" truly consists. I agree with this article that boys are very interested in reading, but that chapter books do often seem to have themes which are more appealing to girls overall. Just because boys are not checking out as many chapter books, though, does not mean they are not reading. We need to remember to shift our ideas to include websites, sports articles and magazines, as well as comics and graphic novels.

Make it FUN!

These are just a few of the many items I have found at the local dollar store to spice up the act of following along with other readers during reading group. Many of my students loath using their index finger because "That is for babies." So, I had to get them invested in tracking without them feeling belittled. The ruler at the top actually has a magnifying strip in the middle which has been great for some of my students who struggle with visual impairments.