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Level C - Homes

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Make a copy to plan as a small group.

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Interactive Read Aloud Planning

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Components of Balanced Literacy with Links EKC

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Videos for Narrative Interactive "Read" Alouds

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There is an easy way to improve your child's chances at school. It will entertain and delight him. It will strengthen the bonds between him and you. And it is virtually free.

Sound too good to be true? Actually, it isn't. The magical method: taking time to read aloud to your child.

In an era of high-stakes testing and education reforms and revolutions, research has repeatedly proved that one simple parenting technique is among the most effective. Children who are read aloud to by parents get a head start in language and literacy skills and go to school better prepared.

"Reading aloud to young children, particularly in an engaging manner, promotes emerging literacy and language development and supports the relationship between child and parent," concluded a 2008 review in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

In other words, reading that bedtime story may not only entertain and soothe Johnny, it may also develop his vocabulary, improve his ability to learn to read, and - perhaps most important - foster a lifelong love of books and reading.

Developing that passion for reading is crucial, according to Jim Trelease, author of the best-seller, "The Read-Aloud Handbook." "Every time we read to a child, we're sending a 'pleasure' message to the child's brain," he writes in the "Handbook." "You could even call it a commercial, conditioning the child to associate books and print with pleasure."

This reading "commercial" is critical when competition for a child's attention is so fierce. Between television, movies, the internet, video games and myriad after-school activities, the pleasures of sitting down with a book are often overlooked. In addition, negative experiences with reading - whether frustrations in learning to read or tedious "skill and drill" school assignments - can further turn children off from reading.

That can have long-term consequences. As Mr. Trelease succinctly puts it in his handbook, "Students who read the most, read the best, achieve the most, and stay in school the longest. Conversely, those who don't read much, cannot get better at it."

Reading aloud is, according to the landmark 1985 report "Becoming a Nation of Readers," "the single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading."

Despite this advice, however, some educators and many parents don't read aloud to children from a young age and thus fail to nurture avid and skilled readers. Indeed, this is especially true for children in low-income families. According to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, only 48 percent of families below the poverty level read to their preschoolers each day, compared with 64 percent of families whose incomes were at or above the poverty level. Children from low-income families are also less likely to have exposure to print materials.

Groups such as Reach Out and Read (ROR), however, are working to combat this problem. The Boston-based non-profit extols the virtues of reading aloud to parents when children go to their check-ups at the pediatrician's or family physician's office. The group also helps provide reading materials for families of lesser means. And ROR has been remarkably successful: "Studies which examined language in young children found an association between the ROR intervention and statistically significant improvements in preschool language scores, a good predictor of later literacy success," its website reports.

The good news for families is that this sage piece of parenting wisdom is easy to follow. Reading aloud to your child requires only a book - free, with a library card - and your willingness to spend a little quality time with your child. And while the sacrifices to read aloud are few, the benefits are many: Your child may learn to read better, think better, imagine more richly, and become a passionate and lifelong reader. More than these long-term benefits, however, are some more immediate: The pleasures of spending time with your child and sharing the enjoyment of a good book.

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There is an easy way to improve your child's chances at school. It will entertain and delight him. It will strengthen the bonds between him and you. And it is virtually free. Sound too good to be true? Actually, it isn't. The magical method: taking time to read aloud to your child.

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The following post was written by Pam Allyn and is part of an ongoing monthly series from the NCTE Standing Committee on Global Citizenship.

"The fire of literacy is created by the emotional sparks between a child, a book, and the person reading. It isn't achieved by the book alone, nor by the child alone, nor by the adult who's reading aloud-it's the relationship winding between all three, bringing them together in easy harmony."

-Mem Fox

The academic reasons to read aloud are profound: building comprehension skills by modeling a deepening engagement with text, building fluency as the child listens to the smoothness of a mentor reader, building vocabulary and grammar skills as the child marinates in literary language. But the benefits of the read-aloud extend far beyond improvements in reading ability. They also have a powerful impact on the child's social and emotional development and the ineffable benefits to the child's human spirit.

What does the read-aloud do to benefit the child's spirit? The read-aloud:

1. Builds empathy and understanding

Reading aloud gives children a lens through which to understand the experiences of others. The characters who become dear to us collectively in the warm embrace of the read-aloud are characters who, through the voice of the reader, become alive to our children. They are in the room with us. We can witness the other side of a story or the internal struggle of a beloved character. Authors such as Mo Willems, Charlotte Zolotow, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Kwame Alexander all create a tenderly reverberating world of empathy and compassion, of knowledge building, of how we are all human in this great big complex world we live in.

2. Scaffolds cultural engagement

A story in literary or informational form is honoring the experiences and lives of a whole world of people living in a variety of cultural and linguistic contexts. The read-aloud is powerful when it can be a way to bridge divides and also to illuminate differences that are compelling and wonderful to the listener. Let us select books to read aloud that represent a wide range of characters and cultures, languages and dialects. Host a virtual read-aloud to share across cultures. Don't worry if everyone doesn't understand every word. Hearing stories read aloud from different cultures and languages gives a child the powerful sense of all the diversity in the world. Great writers give us exquisite examples of how the world is full of colors and sizes and sounds that all add up to our humanity, and great writers also write specifically from their own cultural perspectives and language to share the details that make us profoundly and beautifully different. Beyond all else is the fact that reading aloud is a powerful complement to the oral tradition around story sharing.

The sound of the human voice passing along stories has a deep tradition across many cultures, and the presence of the read-aloud in our classroom is a way to honor that.

3. Cultivates the power of deep listening

Reading aloud builds listening skills in an unparalleled way. These skills extend far beyond the world of reading. Research of children's reading habits conducted by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research found that reading aloud to kids every day will put them a year ahead of kids who are not read aloud to daily, regardless of socioeconomic circumstances. Listening deeply means we are not only encouraging answers in response to preordained questions, but also that we are encouraging listening to the sound of an author who conveys his or her particular style, that we are listening to the unique dialogue characters speak, that we are listening to tone and rhythm and the sheer delight of literary sound.

4. Creates excitement for the beauty of vocabulary and grammar

Reading a Walt Whitman poem to a group of fourth graders is a powerful immersion in complex grammar and vocabulary. They don't have to understand every word or even most lines to soak up the sophistication of his text. The cadence and intention of his ideas carry them along as a boat carrying its passengers, riding the high seas boldly and bravely.

As I Walk These Broad, Majestic Days

As I walk these broad, majestic days of peace,

(For the war, the struggle of blood finish'd, wherein, O terrific Ideal!

Against vast odds, having gloriously won,

Now thou stridest on-yet perhaps in time toward denser wars,

Perhaps to engage in time in still more dreadful contests, dangers,

Longer campaigns and crises, labors beyond all others;)

-As I walk solitary, unattended,

Around me I hear that eclat of the world-politics, produce,

The announcements of recognized things-science,

The approved growth of cities, and the spread of inventions.

There are certainly complex words and phrases in this poem, but the overall theme and the soaring rhythm and even a small amount of background knowledge will give our students the thrill of a lifetime. Your voice conveying that excitement and fearlessness is what helps them to tackle difficult grammar and vocabulary in their own independent reading lives.

5. Fuels happiness

Happiness really matters. Ask any parent what they most want for their child and happiness is one of the top two answers (good health is the other). Yet when we talk about school and about teaching, we talk about outcomes to the exclusion of happiness. We talk about test scores and formative results of portfolios and improvements, all of which most certainly matter, but at the end of the day, for me as a mother and as an educator, the smile matters most. I think we truly underestimate the importance of happiness in school. I have sometimes said that the only assessment we actually need would be to ask children: "Were you happy in school today?" Their response would tell us everything we need to know, from the quality of the teaching to the quality of the physical environment to the interaction of peers.

The read-aloud fuels pure happiness. When done in a comfortable setting with a wonderful book, the entire community is lifted up, and the children are energized, excited, included, and joyous. All the conditions for great learning are met.

P.S. Visit my organization litworld.org to find out how you can join us for World Read-Aloud Day!

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Why Is the Read-Aloud a Life-Changing Form of Civic Learning? - NCTE

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The following post was written by Pam Allyn and is part of an ongoing monthly series from the NCTE Standing Committee on Global Citizenship . "The fire of literacy is created by the emotional sparks between a child, a book, and the person reading.

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Gots:
Wants:

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Got: A deeper understanding of the power of read alouds and how I might make instructional/logistical decisions around that.

Want: Best strategies for young learners in the diff components of balanced literacy, especially those that might, for inevitable reasons, be put on the back burner.

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Got: a deeper understanding of the power of read alouds and how I might make instructional/logistical decisions because of that.

Want: best practices for teaching young learners in all components of BL, especially those that might, for inevitable reasons, be put on the back burner. Also, virtual strategies to engage learners in literacy.

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Spelling Stages - Determining  Instructional Focus

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Spelling Stages - Determining  Instructional Focus

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Spelling Stages - Determining Instructional Focus

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Isolated Lessons and Across Lit. Components

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Whole Class Word Study: K-2 Planning for Transfer

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Got: The importance of read alouds being used in class. You GOTsta make the time for it.
Want: How to prioritize the different components.

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Jeff Anderson & Whitney La Rocca

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Great resource to understandings and planning for phonics

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If you're not sure how phonics fits within your daily instruction, or crave a more effective process for teaching phonics, Heidi Anne Mesmer is here to help. In Letter Lessons and First Words, Heidi Anne provides a research-based vision of what lively, engaging phonics instruction can look like, along with practical, classroom-tested tools to make it happen in your classroom.

Heidi Anne provides a one-stop shop for phonics instruction, including a clear scope and sequence of what to teach, a quick assessment to differentiate instruction, a simple lesson framework, and three activity-filled units matching key developmental milestones.

More than twenty classroom videos bring the content to life, showing children working with letters, words, and books at various stages of learning. Additional resources include:

A "know the code" chapter explaining English spelling (and online glossary)

Answers to common questions

Guidance about choosing books for readers at different stages

new info about how children cognitively store words and why inductive tension is important.

Isn't it time to re-imagine how you teach phonics? Letter Lessons and First Words will show you the way toward joyful instruction for today's classrooms.

Read Heidi Anne's Blog post Developmentally Responsive Phonics Instruction: A Research-Based Approach

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Research-based strategies for lively, engaging phonics instruction with young children. - Heinemann

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A New Model for Teaching High-Frequency Words

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Integrating high-frequency words into phonics lessons allows students to make sense of spelling patterns for these words. To do this, high-frequency words need to be categorized according to whether they are spelled entirely regularly or not. This article describes how to "rethink" teaching of high-frequency words.

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Got: Importance of read alouds and   reminder of how much they support students in all areas of reading.
Want: Chapter book read alouds... What structure do you use?

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Got: Grammar - the process affirmed what we do with mentor sentences but with some improvements (focus phrase and compare/contrast step)

Want: What do you do with those students fluent in English and can easily read levels beyond our grade level with great comprehension however they are horrible spellers.

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Got: Looking at teaching grammar the same way we should look at student behavior: positive traits first.

Want: How to balance what to focus on for Word Study when there's a wide range of abilities in your class.

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Got: I am going to get together with my team and talk about how we incorporate vocab in a fun and engaging way.

Want: How can we work with our kids who can read at grade level, but can't speak about what they read without scaffolds and supports?

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Got: Word study is an integral part of literacy and requires an understanding of the grade level components.

Want: Learn strategies to integrate reading and writing so that we can spend more time on word work and phonological awareness.

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Got: A much better understanding of the process of using mentor sentences.

Want: To learn more about how I can integrate host country language into my instruction.

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Shared Reading Possibilities with Lower Level Texts

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Shared Reading Possibilities with Lower Level Texts

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Shared Reading Possiblities with Nonfiction - Homes (C/D)

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Examining the Why, What and How of each...

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Got: New strategy to teach grammar conventions this is inquiry based.

Want: How to maximize small group time when working with kids who are already extending.

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Practical examples of Shared and Interactive Writing

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Conferring Toolkits: Class Stories, Shared Writing and Interactive Writing

I like to keep my writing toolkits pretty plain and simple. I don't want a lot of extraneous stuff in there cluttering up my folders. So, in order for something to make it into my toolkit, it has to be helpful for a lot of kids, for a lot of reasons.

That's why I find class stories, shared writing and interactive writing to be indispensable tools for conferring.

In case you aren't already familiar with the power of writing together, you can read an older post about shared writing, here. And another post about oral storytelling here. For even more, you should read Interactive Writing, by Andrea McCarrier, Gay Su Pinnell, and Irene Fountas.

Whether it's storytelling, or shared writing, or interactive writing, any piece of writing that your whole class created together is going to be extremely helpful to have at your fingertips while you are moving about the classroom conferring.

I used to do all my shared writing and interactive writing on very large chart paper, so that I could easily display it on the walls and kids would be able to read it from their spots around the room. I still do this-but I've been doing lots of shared and interactive writing lately using regular sized copy paper on a document camera. I can still tape the smaller pieces to a larger chart-sized paper to display the whole story-and I can make photocopies of the work to carry around with me more easily.

Here are a few ways that I use shared writing and interactive writing as part of my conferring toolkit:

Tip #1: When your whole class knows a story, you can easily pull it out during a conference to work on revision. For example, check out this story, written together with kindergarteners (they told me the words, I drew the pictures and wrote).

The original story needed some work, don't you think? In a conference with one child, I taught her about making a beginning that really sounds like storytelling. We used interactive writing: she wrote the word wall words for the new beginning, and I wrote the other words:

In later one-one conferences, the story wound up getting put in a different order, and a new ending was added. Copies of this story still live in my narrative conferring toolkit, and I use it often for adding labels, adding dialogue, and many other teaching points.

Tip #2: When the text is familiar, it makes a great piece to have kids add to or work on during a conference as practice with a new strategy, before transferring the strategy to their own writing.

In a first grade classroom, we started this poem as a group one very warm day in April (the heat in the building wouldn't turn off even though it was 70 degrees outside!).

Then, when I taught a small group that they could use repetition, we did this:

Of course, none of the kids were writing about being hot in their own poems-that is certainly not the point! No! But they did all work on using repetition and comparisons. I added both group poems to my poetry toolkit, to use with future kids - as great mentors for using comparisons, punctuation (or not), and repetition.

Tip #3: I often will manipulate the class writing to intentionally leave parts out, so that you can add those parts in conferring or small group work. Like in this persuasive letter that a group of third graders worked on (telling me their ideas, with me scribing:

Notice the ending is somewhat weak? That was intentional on my part. The kids told it to me that way, and I left it. I anticipated that endings/conclusions in persuasive writing would be something to focus later on in the unit, especially in small groups and conferring, so I decided not to write a strong ending the first time around. I made copies of the letter and stuck them in my conferring toolkit so that whenever I meet with a kid or two and want to teach different ways to write endings/conclusions, we could practice on this letter.

*****

Don't forget to stay with us all week long as we share what's inside our conferring toolkits!

On Monday, May 11, we hope you'll join us for our twitter chat. Just use #TWTBlog to participate in the conversation!

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Conferring Toolkits: Class Stories, Shared Writing and Interactive Writing

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I like to keep my writing toolkits pretty plain and simple. I don't want a lot of extraneous stuff in there cluttering up my folders. So, in order for something to make it into my toolkit, it has to be helpful for a lot of kids, for a lot of reasons.

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Guiding Questions:

-What experience can I anticipate setting the context for this work?

-How might this look in my classroom?

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Great chapter on Next Generation Shared Reading

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Who's Doing the Work?: How to Say Less So Readers Can Do More

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Amazon.com: Who's Doing the Work?: How to Say Less So Readers Can Do More (9781625310750): Burkins, Jan, Yaris, Kim: Books

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Got: Interactive writing doesn't always have to look the same and should be tailored to meet the class.

Want: Bringing out the joy in editing and getting students to accept edits as an invitation to learn and not a sign of defeat!

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Helpful: Seeing the possibility of more interactive writing on the classroom walls.

Wonderings: More strategies to ensure that students with a wide range of abilities can access a shared reading/writing lesson equally.

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Got: Shared and Interactive writings can look very, very different and can go beyond the literacy block to reinforce literacy skills within content areas.

Want: What should be our Big Rocks when thinking about BL? A classroom will surely benefit from all of them but with a shortage of time, what are the pieces that we should ALWAYS or mostly prioritize?

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Got: Interactive shared reading can be done with kids with whiteboards. Also, loved being reminded how powerful shared reading is.

Want: Time. How. Help.

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-Think of a typical convention that presents as a need for your students.

-Design a text that can be interactively edited by students. (digital or in demo notebook)

-Consider if this would be whole class or small group.

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Interactive Editing Ideas - Google Jamboard

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Student Friendly Cards to support readers

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Whole Class Word Study: K-2 Planning for Transfer

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Level Bands AB - KLM

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Text Complexity K-2 Tool for Supporting Readers.pdf