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6 Components of Reading - Training Powerpoint Slides

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6 Components of Reading - Training Powerpoint Slides

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small group reading instruction at middle school - Bing video

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Small Group Instruction Doug Fisher Small Group Instruction Tracking Form Research for Small Group Instruction Middle School Small Group Games For Small Group Math Instruction Primary Small Group Instruction 2nd Grade Small Group Instruction Middle School Reading Groups Small Group Instruction Lower Elementary Small Group Instruction Video 4 Small Group Instructor

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Being able to talk and express your thoughts clearly is vital in life. Yet, too many students are graduating without sufficient experience with group discussions, or arguing their ideas effectively, and they are finding themselves unprepared for the communication demands of college and their careers.

How can we prepare our students for these rigors?

To lay a better foundation for this learning, we can do a few things: we can value oral language development, we can value communication of ideas over grammatical correctness, and we can value oral language as a powerful way to learn and remember content.

Here are three strategies to help develop oral language skills.

Strategy One: Adapt Activities to Include Authentic Talk

Adapting current activities to include more authentic, original, and extended discussions gives students opportunities to contribute more than one sentence to a conversation. Sometimes, we miss the opportunity to encourage language development. For example, many teachers use some form of a jigsaw activity, in which students get into expert groups, read a text, and answer questions or fill in charts. They then go to mixed home groups to share their information. Yet, often what happens is this: students just read aloud what another student has copied from a resource -- and opportunities for oral language development are lost.

To improve this strategy, you can have the experts engage in a discussion of what to put, in their own words, onto paper. Then, they can rehearse what they'll say - covering their papers to avoid reading aloud. Then in home groups, you can have each person glance at their notes, cover them again, and share with the group members, who listen and take notes. You can even ask students to try to speak in paragraphs, starting with a general claim or topic sentence, and then support it with evidence sentences. For example, in this video, notice how the talk evolves as students prepare their ideas for sharing.

Strategy Two: Use Activities that Develop Strong Language

Use activities that allow students to develop a "stronger and clearer" answer, as they talk to different partners successively in an activity. Instead of the all-too-common whole class discussion, with the teacher asking questions and a few students answering, ask a question and have students talk to three different partners. Or have students talk in different groups (see this 1-3-6 activity video).

A crucial aspect of this strategy is that students shouldn't say the same thing each time; rather, they need to build on the language and ideas of previous partner(s) to improve, expand, clarify, and support their evolving answer each time they share it.

Example Activities (from Zwiers, O'Hara, Pritchard, 2014):

Interview Grid: Students talk with one different partner each time, making their answers stronger and clearer each time, taking minimal, if any, notes on the chart. Note that this activity can also work using inner-outer conversation circles, such as the one in this Debrief Circles video.

Opinion Formation Cards: Students receive a quotation from the text (before it's read) that includes evidence for one side or the other of an issue. Students share their quotations and their evolving opinions, with reasons and evidence for them.

Opinion Continuum: Students share where they fall on the continuum of a two-sided issue and why. At the end, they share if they shifted at all along the continuum based on their conversations with partners.

Strategy Three: Use Strong Discussion Prompts

Try to use discussion prompts that foster evaluation in some way. Evaluation is usually needed for ranking, prioritizing, and choosing. For example, if you ask for evidence of a theme or a claim, many students just find the first three remotely evidence-y things they can, and stop there. But if you prompt students to rank the evidence from strongest to weakest, or to find the most influential cause of some war, you can often get deeper thinking and better conversation.

For instance, I was talking with a teacher who was asking this question, "How did the Civil War affect the families in the South?" I encouraged her to simply add "most affect" to force students to evaluate and discuss their opinions. When students evaluate, their ideas often differ. And if you allow them time to argue and negotiate the ideas, lots of learning can happen.

Jeff Zwiers is a senior researcher at Stanford University, working on the Understanding Language project and focusing on research and professional development projects that emphasize oral language development. His most recent book (co-authored with Susan O'Hara and Robert Pritchard) is Common Core Standards in Diverse Classrooms: Essential Practices for Developing Academic Language and Literacy. He can be reached at jzwiers@stanford.edu.
Understanding Language aims to heighten educator awareness of the critical role that language plays in the new Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards, and to improve education for English Language Learners.

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Key Strategies for Developing Oral Language

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Being able to talk and express your thoughts clearly is vital in life. Yet, too many students are graduating without sufficient experience with group discussions, or arguing their ideas effectively, and they are finding themselves unprepared for the communication demands of college and their careers. How can we prepare our students for these rigors?

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You might also want to watch the Reading Rockets interview with Mary Amato, where she shares her strategies for teaching writing.

August 1, 2018

Here's what happened when I worked with some first graders at Potomac Elementary School (PES) in Potomac, Maryland.

Our subjects were math and science. Teachers Ms. Siegel and Mrs. Li gave me a list of topics that first graders study. I chose a different topic with each class: Magnets, Soil, and Measurement.

First we did brainstorming to write down all the things about the topic that we know. Sometimes questions would arise and we had to do research to make sure we were correct. Then we used our brainstorm to write a rough draft. We had to experiment with different rhymes and rhythms to make sure the song made sense and sounded good to our ears. We had to recognize a pattern in our first verse and then apply that pattern to the rest of the verses. We decided that a good song has magnetic properties-it sticks to your brain!

Besides learning a lot about songwriting and writing original songs, we also learned about collaboration and about democracy (we had to vote on different ideas throughout the process).

I loved seeing how, at PES, kids are encouraged to respectfully disagree. As we wrote our rough drafts, sometimes a statement would be made about the science by one student, and another student would challenge the accuracy of the statement. This prompted us to stop the songwriting process and do a little research to determine accuracy before we continued. Bravo!

Since this residency was a part of the science block, I also introduced a question: can we make musical instruments out of magnets? What about soil or sand? We experimented to get results. Which kind of particle of sand do you think would be the loudest in a shaker? Course or fine?

Listen to the students' songs

When you listen to the songs, pay attention to the pattern, the rhymes, the rhythm, and the meaning.

You Need Me

Download You Need Me song lyrics and chords. Sing and play along with the song.

What parents can do at home

1. Continue the folk song tradition of taking a song you already know and changing the words. This is a great activity for car rides! As our warm-up, we took a folk song that uses math and changed the words to make it a little more challenging. Substituting new words for old words in a folk song is a great way to encourage songwriting. When you substitute words, you have to make sense and you have to remember the new ones. It takes focus and concentration!
50 bottles of juice on the shelf.
50 bottles of juice.
Take ten down and pass them around
40 bottles of juice on the shelf. 2. When you are listening to a song with your kids, ask:

Is there rhyme?

What's the pattern of the song?

What's the rhythm of the song?

What's the emotion of the song?

Does the rhythm and melody fit the emotion/meaning?

What's the main idea of the song?

Is there a chorus (a part that repeats)?

Is there repetition?

Is there a surprise?

3. If your child writes a song for fun at home, encourage him or her. As first graders, they might write silly songs. Their songs might not even make complete sense. That is okay. Please don't try to make your child's song perfect. Comment on something positive about the song. Does it have rhyme? Does it have rhythm? At this age, experimentation, play, and fluidity are important.
4. Add a ritual of making up songs together or singing songs that you know before dinner, while you're cooking, when you're stuck in traffic.
5. Sing and play the original songs above! I'll have a new series of chapter books about a songwriting club in an elementary school: News from Me, Lucy McGee (2018) and Sing With Me, Lucy McGee (2019). The books come with songs that are perfect for elementary school students.
Happy reading and keep singing!

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Mary Amato writes fiction for children and teaches workshops around the country, live and via Skype. Learn more at Mary Amato's official website. You might also want to watch the Reading Rockets interview with Mary Amato, where she shares her strategies for teaching writing.

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Adapted from Adler, C.R. (Ed). 2001. Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read, pp. 49-54. National Institute for Literacy. Retrieved Nov. 1, 2007, from http://www.nifl.gov/partnershipforreading/publications/reading_first1text.html.

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Seven Strategies to Teach Students Text Comprehension

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Comprehension strategies are conscious plans - sets of steps that good readers use to make sense of text. Comprehension strategy instruction helps students become purposeful, active readers who are in control of their own reading comprehension. These seven strategies have research-based evidence for improving text comprehension.

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Resources | Florida Center for Reading Research

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Roll a Word Phonics Dry Erase Activity - Fantastic Fun & Learning

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By · This content may contain affiliate links. In our domino math activity I shared how we love to use dry erase markers to get a lot of practice on specific skills without going through a ton of paper. But dry erase activities aren't just for math, there are a ton of ways to use them for reading instruction too.

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Learning to read can be quite an overwhelming task for small children. In fact, if you think about it, it's astounding that children are even capable of learning to read in such a short amount of time. However, before they begin to read print, they must have an adequate foundational understanding of how sounds in words work. That is where phonemic awareness comes into play.

What is phonemic awareness?

In easy-to-understand terms, phonemic awareness is the ability to identify, think about, and manipulate sounds in spoken speech. This is NOT the same as phonics. Phonemic awareness is actually a critical skill that is a precursor to reading letters. That's why phonemic awareness instruction should NEVER involve print. If you find yourself working with letters or printed words, then you have skipped a step and crossed the line into phonics. This is a very important point. Research tells us that it's essential to focus on phonemic awareness in the classroom before reading can begin. We want to ensure that children have a solid understanding of the sounds of speech before we start phonics instruction.

Nowadays, we are facing an added difficulty, though. In today's early-childhood classrooms, teachers are feeling an ever-increasing pressure to get their students reading. It is easy to lose sight of the developmental process and try to skip steps in order to get our kids reading books as soon as possible. There is just one problem: skipping steps is not going to work. Children's progress in reading will be limited if they haven't learned to think about the sounds in words.

As early childhood teachers, we need to remember that we can't skip past phonemic awareness skills. We can't just barge ahead in the hope that all of our students have arrived in our classroom complete with the full-blown skills of thinking about and manipulating sounds in their minds. On the other hand, we also can't afford to spend a lot of time doing phonemic-awareness instruction. I am happy to tell you the good news that we don't have to! Phonemic awareness instruction can and should be done in small pockets of time throughout the school day. In fact, oral language and phonemic awareness can often be taught and reinforced in as little as five to ten minutes per day.

Here are five quick, easy, and fun phonemic awareness activities that are perfect for the beginning of the school year in any early childhood classroom. Yes, you heard me correctly - that word was F-U-N. I know fun has become an undesirable notion in many schools today. But I assure you that these activities will be fun and that your students really will learn about our amazing language! I have also included activities that require little or no preparation - things you can do on the fly! Although these activities don't cover the full range of phonemic awareness skills needed to produce great readers, they are still fantastic activities to begin any school year!

Listening

The ability to listen closely is a key ingredient of phonemic awareness. This is the part of instruction that is skipped most often, because teachers assume that young children know how to listen. They may not! Furthermore, if they don't, they're not ignoring you. It's just that they don't understand what "listen closely" means. They have to be taught.

The Listening Game.

One of the first phonemic-awareness activities I do with my students, even as soon as the first day, is to bring their attention to noises. After lunch, we come back to the classroom and all the children lie quietly on the floor. It's not naptime, but it's a great time to unwind, which is important for young children. As we lie there quietly for five to ten minutes, we listen for sounds. We all stay perfectly still and quiet. We become "sound spotters." We don't use our eyes - we use our ears. There are always sounds and weird noises you can hear in a school building. We may hear the air conditioner, doors closing, teachers talking, stomachs growling. The possibilities are endless! Your part is to talk about the sounds you and the children hear. Use a little teacher enthusiasm and exaggeration to get the kids interested in this activity. The key phrase is, "Who can spot a sound with their ears?"

"Moo-Moo," Where Are You?

I love playing this game with my class. The kids have a ball, too. In fact, they simply think we are playing.

How to play: All the children sit in a circle. One child lies down in the middle of the circle and covers his or her eyes. The teacher chooses another child to go somewhere in the room and pretend to be a cow by making a "moo-moo" sound. The child in the middle of the circle - with eyes still covered - points in the direction of the animal sound. This game is great because it gets children to listen closely for sounds and for where the sounds are coming from. It also prepares their ears to listen more closely to sounds in words. When the child in the middle correctly identifies the sound and direction, he or she gets to go next and make a different animal sound.

Rhyming

Rhyming is such a great phonemic awareness activity! Most children easily grasp the concept of rhyme. Some need a little help, though. Using word-play with rhyming helps children notice that sounds in our language have meaning and follow certain patterns. Again, this is a precursor skill to seeing sound patterns reproduced in print - as a phonemic awareness practice, it is purely auditory.

The absolute best way to introduce rhyming to your students is by reading lots of fun rhyming books, poems, and songs. Act silly and have fun! The more fun you have with the rhymes, the more the kids will notice the rhymes and enjoy the activities. Exaggerate the silliness of the rhyme. The poem "Down By the Bay" and the book "Silly Sally" are perfect examples of how rhyme can be super fun!

In My Box

This game is great to use after your students have at least some understanding of how rhyming works. That means you have already read lots of rhyming books, poems, and songs and played with those rhyming words.

How to play: Get a small box and place some pictures in it with pairs of familiar words that rhyme (like box/socks, cat/hat, or chair/bear). Use enough pictures so that everyone in your class has a turn. Sit in a circle with your students. Start with a child you know is strong in rhyming. Hold the box and choose a picture. If the picture shows a cat, say "In my box, there's a cat". Call on him or her to come up with a rhyming word. The child might say, "In my box, there's a hat" (or some other rhyming word). After he or she answers with a rhyming word, hand him or her the box. Now he or she gets to choose a card and continue the play.

Syllables

Working with and noticing syllables within words is important, because it makes students aware of how words can be split up into smaller parts, according to their sounds. Our ultimate goal is to work on individual phonemes (vowels or consonants), but children must first learn the concept of "parts of words." It's easier for young children to start with larger parts of words and then work their way down to the smaller, discrete individual sounds of phonemes. We are building a bridge from hearing words to hearing phonemes.

Bippity Boppity Bumble Bee

This is such a fun game. You get the kids clapping out names, first. As they get used to the game, you can start using other words with more syllables.

How to play: Sit in a circle with your students. I have a little stuffed bee that the kids love to hold. You could also use a printable bumble bee. The teacher begins the chant and walks around to a child:

Teacher: "Bippity Boppity Bumble Bee, Will You Say Your Name For Me?"

The child responds, "Jennifer."

Teacher: " Let's all say it." And the class says her name out loud, while clapping once for each syllable.

Teacher: "Let's all whisper it." And the class whispers her name, while quiet-clapping the syllables again, once per syllable.

Teacher and class: "Bippity Boppity Bumble Bee, Thank You For Saying Your Name For Me!"

Repeat with another student and his/her name. As students become familiar with the game, you can allow students to take on the "teacher" role.

Old MacDonald

Here is another great game that you can use to give the students practice in listening to syllables and putting them together into words. It follows the pattern of the song, Old MacDonald. By the time I use this activity with my class, we have read and sung Old MacDonald hundreds of times, so the song is well-known to the students.

How to play: The teacher begins by telling the students they are going to learn a new game - it's a different version of Old MacDonald, and it's kind of a silly version. The teacher begins singing, "Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O. And on that farm he had a /ti/ /ger/, E-I-E-I-O". Of course, the kids think the introduction of the tiger is wildly funny, but notice what they have actually done: Without being told, they have mentally combined the syllables /ti/ and /ger/ to realize what the animal was! It's huge! Then I show the children a picture of a tiger and they feel proud that they figured out the animal - and they think it's too funny! Again it's lots of fun, and they really think we are just playing a game.

The most important thing to keep in mind as an early childhood teacher is that phonemic awareness can be such a fun time! It shouldn't be long drawn-out lessons. All you need is five-to-ten-minute pockets of time each day. Phonemic awareness activities are also great to use during transition times throughout the day. I often use the ten minutes before lunch, and sometimes during group restroom breaks, to practice and reinforce listening and oral language skills. And the payoff is big! If you give phonemic awareness the attention it deserves, your students will be richly rewarded when it's time for them to start reading!

So now you know some of my secrets - the teaching games I use myself! I've had success with them, so I'm sure that if you make them your own, not only will you have fun with them in your classroom, but your students, too, will have an easier time with reading and go further faster!

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5 Quick, Easy, and Fun Phonemic Awareness Activities

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Learning to read can be quite an overwhelming task for small children. In fact, if you think about it, it's astounding that children are even capable of learning to read in such a short amount of time. However, before they begin to read print, they must have an adequate foundational understanding of how sounds in words work.

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Effective Instruction for Adolescent Struggling 

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small group vocabulary instruction at middle school - Bing video

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Small Group Instruction Doug Fisher Small Group Instruction Tracking Form Research for Small Group Instruction Middle School Small Group Games For Small Group Math Instruction Primary Small Group Instruction 2nd Grade Small Group Instruction Middle School Reading Groups Small Group Instruction Lower Elementary Small Group Instruction Video 4 Small Group Instructor

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Games and Circle Time Activites that Build Receptive and Expressive Language

These activites can build children's vocabulary, increase their communication skills and prepare them to adapt what they know about oral language as they explore written language.

Storytelling

You don't need a book to promote reading readiness and a love of stories!

Action Stories

Children love actively participating in these narratives, chants, and games.

Fingerplays

As children combine these chants and songs with actions, they establish firm links between language, its use, and its meaning.

Finger Puppet Books and Puppets

Puppets offer children wonderful opportunities to explore the meaning of concepts,story plots, and characters, facilitating future reading comprehension.

Songs for Young Children

Music provides a most enjoyable way to build language facility.

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Oral Language Activites that Develop Reading Readiness

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Games and Circle Time Activites that Build Receptive and Expressive Language These activites can build children's vocabulary, increase their communication skills and prepare them to adapt what they know about oral language as they explore written language. Storytelling You don't need a book to promote reading readiness and a love of stories!

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What is reader's theater? It's a way to involve students in reading aloud. In reader's theater, students "perform" by reading scripts created from grade-level books or stories. Usually they do so without costumes or props.

Reader's theater is a strategy that combines reading practice and performing. Its goal is to enhance students' reading skills and confidence by having them practice reading with a purpose. Reader's theater gives students a real reason to read aloud.

"I love the active involvement in this approach," said Susan Finney, a retired educator and author who gives seminars about improving reading instruction. "It's hard for a child to be a passive observer when you have a script in your hands."

Reader's theater motivates reluctant readers and provides fluent readers the opportunity to explore genre and characterization.

"The first reader's theater scripts I saw were shared with me by a veteran first-grade teacher," Finney explained. "She would send small groups of her beginning readers around the school to perform in different classrooms. It was a brilliant idea. The children never knew that they were being tricked into re-reading - a key factor in developing fluency."

Re-reading to develop fluency

"A great deal of fluency research reiterates the need for repeated reading," said Finney. "Without fluency, there is little comprehension. The value of reader's theater is increased tenfold when used as a strategy for increasing understanding of what is being read."

Dr. Peggy Sharp, a former classroom teacher and library media specialist, noted, "Reader's theater is a wonderful technique for helping readers learn to read aloud with expression. I especially like to perform reader's theater without props so the readers learn that the expression in their voices needs to provide much of the drama of the story."

Said Judy Freeman, a children's literature consultant, "If you're searching for a way to get your children reading aloud with comprehension, expression, fluency, and joy, reader's theater is a miracle. Hand out a photocopied play script, assign a part to each child, and have them simply read the script aloud and act it out. That's it. And then magic happens."

What reader's theater looks like

Freeman's "magic" occurs when the students get to be on stage - even if that stage is the floor of the classroom or library. Shy kids blossom, and students develop a strong sense of community.

"Some of our students are hams - they just don't know it until they get up in front of the group," Finney observed. "In reader's theater, there is no risk, because there's no memorization required. There's enough opportunity for practice, so struggling readers are not put on the spot."

Finney offered the following pointers for teachers new to reader's theater:

Choose only scripts that are fun to do with lots of good dialogue. Boring scripts are no better than boring stories.

Start slowly and spend the time necessary so students feel comfortable in the performance mode. Provide opportunities for students to practice. Students do not memorize their parts; they always read from their scripts.

A stage is unnecessary. Students simply stand or sit in a semicircle.

Model each character's part and match roles to readers.

Combine parts if there are too many, and cut out scenes and characters that aren't important. Scripts are not sacrosanct. Change them if they work better another way.

Work with small groups, not with the whole class, whenever possible.

Provide instructional support for new vocabulary and for understanding the different characters.

Choosing a script

In her own classroom, Finney found that reader's theater was most successful when her students were "crazy about the script." She hunts for texts that have fun characters, clear plots, and comfortable language.

"I look for scripts that have lots of natural dialogue," concurred Peggy Sharp. "I also look for scripts in which each speaker does not have too many lines at once. Reader's theater is more effective when one person is not reading too many lines while the others wait."

Scripts for reader's theater can be purchased, although many teachers choose to create their own out of an existing children's book or chapter. When looking for material to adapt into a play, look for peppy dialogue, a little action, laugh-out-loud parts, lively narration, and enough roles for all students.

Sharp suggests the following:

Begin with very easy scripts. It is important at the start that students do not have to think about how to read the words.

Select scripts that involve many readers. I prefer the ones that give more readers fewer words.

Short scripts are best in the beginning. Students need to learn to listen to the reader's theater script just as much as they need to learn to read the script.

Provide each reader with a separate script, highlighting his or her part with yellow (or another appropriate color). I like to put the scripts in folders for a more "professional" look.

Give the readers the opportunity to read the script to themselves silently, and to read their parts to themselves aloud.

If the script is adapted from a children's book, Freeman suggests that teachers read it aloud first so students can enjoy it and can listen to expression and phrasing. Then scripts can be distributed, and students can practice sounding out difficult words and getting a sense of their lines.

"Always perform a reader's theater script at least twice," she advised. "The first time, the children will be struggling with words and their meanings, and with making sense of the play. The second time, they'll be able to focus on enjoying the performance and their parts in it. You can, if you wish, carry it further, adding props, costumes, and scenery; memorizing lines; or even putting on the play for other groups. You don't have to, though. It's the process that's important here, not a finished product."

Educational publisher Lois Walker believes that a good script can transcend reading levels. She explained, "A sensitive teacher who knows the capabilities and reading levels of his or her students will be careful to assign the proper reading parts to the proper readers so everyone can have fun and succeed."

Freeman added, "Reader's theater allows children the luxury of lingering over a story; acting it out many times so they come to understand all of its nuances. Too often, children read a story and only understand it at its most superficial literal level. With reader's theater, they're not just reading a story; they're living it."

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Reader's Theater: Giving Students a Reason to Read Aloud

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What is reader's theater? It's a way to involve students in reading aloud. In reader's theater, students "perform" by reading scripts created from grade-level books or stories. Usually they do so without costumes or props. Reader's theater is a strategy that combines reading practice and performing.

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Improve your students' reading comprehension with ReadWorks. Access thousands of high-quality, free K-12 articles, and create online assignments with them for your students.

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Wonder Word Journal
Draw it, Define it, Write a Sentence, and Say it (use it in conversation with others at least 5 times.)

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K-1

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There are several ways to match books to readers - by reader interest, by reading level, and by the phonics feature(s) a particular child is learning. Careful pairing of reading with phonics study gives children a chance to apply what they are learning about letters and sounds to the reading of words and stories. Because the goal of phonics instruction is to help children use the alphabetic system to read and spell words, it's important to provide students with this practice.

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Matching Books to Phonics Features | Classroom Strategy | Reading Rockets

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There are several ways to match books to readers - by reader interest, by reading level, and by the phonics feature(s) a particular child is learning. Careful pairing of reading with phonics study gives children a chance to apply what they are learning about letters and sounds to the reading of words and stories.

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This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Your young learners will love this set of simple board games that build phonemic awareness!
Phonemic awareness.
What does it mean, anyway?

It's a scary-sounding phrase, but it's really not that complicated. It has to do with hearing and manipulating sounds in words. While some phonemic awareness activities may be used alongside letters, most of them don't.

If you ask a child to tell you the beginning sound of sandwich, and s/he says sssss, that's great! Isolating beginning sounds is one key component of phonemic awareness - and it's exactly what we're going to focus on with this set of games.

We have six children, and our oldest four developed phonemic awareness without a lot of intentionality on my part. I read to them often, and we did a variety of early learning activities - but I didn't have to explicitly teach phonemic awareness. For all of them (now 10, 9, 7, and 5) phonemic awareness just cam e.

This hasn't been true of my Three (almost four). Thankfully, she's catching on with the playful activities and games that I've been sharing over the past few months.

Print and cut apart the dot cards at the end of the file.

Grab playing pieces.

Take turns moving along the board by drawing a dot card and moving that number of spaces.

When you land on a space, say the picture's name and its beginning sound.

How to play the games
When my Three landed on a picture, she often stretched that initial sound instead of isolating it. For example, "Milk. Mmmmmilk." Or "Sandwich. Ssssandwich." Fine by me! My goal was for her to hear and identify that beginning sound - and she was doing it!

Sometimes she was frustrated and didn't want to try. Tiger was hard for her. Can you guess why?

It's because /t/ is not a continuous sound. Mmmmmmm and Sssssss were the other two sounds featured in the first game and were much easier.

When she hit a roadblock, she told me to do it. So I did.

"Hmm... is it /m/? Mmm, mmm, miger! No? Is it /g/? /G/, /g/, geiger?" After I was a little silly she was ready to get back in the game.

I chose to use those dot cards because my Three isn't real quick at knowing the dots on a die yet. Another reason is that it's a short game board. If your learner rolls a six three times, the game is over!

The dot cards gave her just enough turns without a single game overwhelming her.

After we played one game, she was willing to play one more. Each game adds a new letter's sound and bumps one sound off. So for example, the first game featured the sounds of m, s, and t. The second game features the sounds of s, t, and a.

I would say that she isolated (or stretched) the beginning sound correctly about 75% of the time. By the time we were finishing (after about 5-10 minutes), she was tired and gave up quickly. Ax (pictured above) was too hard.

So what do you think? Will these work for your learners? I hope you enjoy the 25 free games you can get in the download. These games come in color, but feel free to print in grayscale if you'd like.

BUILD A STRONG READING FOUNDATION

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If you have learners who struggle to isolate beginning sounds, these free phonemic awareness games are the perfect fit! Use them in preschool or kindergarten. Use them in literacy centers or small groups. #phonemicawareness #preschool #kindergarten

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Teaching students how to show appreciation for peers' contributions.

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Sarah Brown Wessling shares how she uses snaps instead of claps in her classroom.

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Choral Reading, Partner Talk, Author's Purpose, Genre, Incorporating Writing in the Small Group Instruction

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Choral Reading, Partner Talk, Author's Purpose, Genre, Incorporating Writing in the Small Group Instruction

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small group vocabulary instruction at middle school - Bing video

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Small Group Instruction Doug Fisher Small Group Instruction Tracking Form Research for Small Group Instruction Middle School Small Group Games For Small Group Math Instruction Primary Small Group Instruction 2nd Grade Small Group Instruction Middle School Reading Groups Small Group Instruction Lower Elementary Small Group Instruction Video 4 Small Group Instructor

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Discussion strategies

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ELA.SL.5.1a

Common core State Standards

ELA: English Language Arts

SL: Speaking and Listening Standards K-5

5: 5th Grade

1a:
Engage effectively in a range of collaborative
discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led)
with diverse partners on grade 5 topics and
texts, building on others' ideas and expressing
their own clearly.

a. Come to discussions prepared, having read
or studied required material; explicitly draw
on that preparation and other information
known about the topic to explore ideas under
discussion.

b. Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions and
carry out assigned roles.

c. Pose and respond to specific questions by
making comments that contribute to the
discussion and elaborate on the remarks of
others.

d. Review the key ideas expressed and draw
conclusions in light of information and
knowledge gained from the discussions.

Download Common Core State Standards (PDF 1.2 MB)

Thought starters

1. How does this strategy enrich discussion?

2. What is the difference between the Post-it strategy and traditional note-taking?

3. How could you use this strategy to encourage reluctant students to participate?

School Details

Stevenson Elementary School
14220 Ne 8th St
Bellevue WA 98007

Data Provided By:

Teachers

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Post-its: Little Notes for Big Discussions

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Fifth grade teacher Stacy Brewer has her students use Post-its to take notes on a text in preparation for class discussion. Stacy explains how this strategy helps students remember what stood out to them when reading. After taking notes with Post-its, students come together to discuss the text.

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Extending Readers Theatre: A Powerful and Purposeful Match with Podcasting

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Extending Readers Theatre: A Powerful and Purposeful Match with Podcasting

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newsela.com

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Newsela | The wealthy charter planes, but the poor settle for any ride in Irma exodus

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BACKGROUND
Direct instruction of vocabulary can help students learn enough words to become better readers, and becoming a better reader can in turn help students learn even more vocabulary. So how do we teach students to learn or acquire new vocabulary? Research suggests that vocabulary instruction should include the following components: definitional and contextual information about a word; multiple exposures to a word in different contexts; and encouragement of students' active participation in their own learning of the new words.1 Here are 15 vocabulary activities that you can integrate into your classroom starting tomorrow!

1. Stahl, 30; Texas Reading Initiative, 20.

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Phonics Instruction: the Value of a Multi-sensory Approach

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Phonics instruction lends itself to multi-sensory teaching techniques, because these techniques can be used to focus children's attention on the sequence of letters in printed words. As such, including manipulatives, gestures, and speaking and auditory cues increases students' acquisition of phonics skills. An added benefit is that multisensory techniques are quite motivating and engaging to many children.

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How Now Brown Cow: Phonological Awareness Activities

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Phonemic awareness training is essential for students who are at risk for reading difficulties. This article describes the components of phonemic awareness and provides activities that special educators can use to provide this training to at risk students.

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A Two Minute Overview of Oral Language Development

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A Two Minute Overview of Oral Language Development

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Effective Strategies for teaching Oral Language Development

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7 Must-Have Resources to Improve Reading Fluency Right Now

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Help your students improve their reading fluency with sight word practice pages, phonics activities, poetry, and plays available from Scholastic.

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Discussion Questions/Comprehension Questions

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I recently had the opportunity to teach summer school, and two of my sixth-grade students barely read at a first-grade level. This was very challenging for me, and I struggled to find the right way to address their need for phonics and comprehension instruction. Little by little, however, I began to find some simple strategies that worked for them, such as turning activities into a game. We began to make some progress, and I discovered some new ways to help older students build a stronger foundation of basic reading skills.

Before reviewing those strategies, however, it is helpful to understand where the difficulty lies when teaching phonics to older students.

Challenges

Teaching phonics to middle and high school English language learners (ELLs) poses the following challenges:

There is good news, however. Despite these challenges, there are a number of strategies which can be effective for older ELLs. Give some of these a try! You can also find more research-based strategies and information for adolescents in Key Literacy Component: Decoding by the National Institute for Literacy (featured on our sister site, AdLit.org).

Basic Strategies: Build a Foundation

Enlist extra support: ELLs in 4th grade and above who need further instruction on phonics will be most helped by intensive intervention. Ideally, they should attend a reading remediation class or receive special support to continue phonics instruction from a reading specialist. If such support is unavailable for your students, ask your school's reading specialist and principal for help finding a research-based supplemental or intervention program that you can use with the student.

Use hands-on activities to help teach letter-sound relationships: This can include using manipulatives such as counters, sound boxes, magnetic letters, or Scrabble tiles. Students may also be interested in creating their own materials on the computer or through an art project. Month-by-Month Phonics for Upper Grades: A Second Chance for Struggling Readers and Students Learning English also offers a number of ideas for incorporating phonics activities into the curriculum.

Provide targeted support for students whose native language is non-alphabetic: Language skills transfer from one language to another; students literate in their native language will already have background knowledge of how reading works.

If their native language is non-alphabetic, however, students may need extra practice in the following areas:

Direction: Students may not be accustomed to reading from left to right and top to bottom.

Letter-sound recognition: Students may need extra practice on matching sounds and letters, particularly if they are used to a system of characters that symbolize words rather than sounds.

Use an alphabet chant: If older students need to review their alphabetic skills, look for a jazz or hip-hop alphabet chant that students will find entertaining and engaging. There are many examples online and on YouTube.

Have students write for sound: Say a short sentence that includes one or more words that include the target phonics feature(s). Ask students to listen carefully and then write what they heard. This activity trains students to listen for the individual sounds in words and represent them phonetically in their writing.

Work in small groups: If students are past the age at which phonemic awareness and phonological skill-building have been addressed (typically kindergarten through first or second grade), attend to these skills one-on-one or in small groups with developmentally appropriate and engaging activities. Ask your school's reading specialist for help finding appropriate activities and materials.

Help students make a connection between their first language and English: For students with stronger native language literacy skills (especially in languages related to English like Spanish), help them understand that the process of sounding out words is the same across languages. Explain some letters may make the same or similar sounds in both languages. Knowing this can help Spanish-dominant students, for example, as they learn to decode words in English. Make sure they are aware of cognates as well!

Teach phonics in context: Use authentic text and/or vocabulary words that are known to the ELLs. Using relevant literature and content material you can introduce and reinforce:

letter recognition

beginning and ending sounds

blends

rhyming words

silent letters

homonyms

Integrate phonics and content instruction: When possible, collaborate with the reading specialist and content-area teachers to integrate phonics instruction into content and classroom lessons and texts, as well as into academic vocabulary instruction.

Make it a game: Try activities as simple as looking for a particular sound on the page, or reciting words and having students hold up a sign with the correct sound on it after each word. You may also want to try short games of Scrabble, Hangman, and Memory. These are quick activities but they can effectively reinforce the targeted phonetic concept.

Look for high-low reading materials: "High interest/low readability" texts are books that are written on a first to third grade reading level but treat themes and topics that are of interest to students of middle school or high school age. You can find a number of suggestions in the following resources; many of the books listed may be available in your school's library or in your local public library.

Use poetry, jazz chants, and songs: Find poems, chants, and songs that relate to students' interests, or ask them to bring some of their favorites in that can be included in the lesson. Recite the text aloud, and then give students time to practice reading aloud as well.

Integrate phonics instruction with word study: Teach students how to identify word parts, break words down into syllables, and use word families. Use content-area words for this exercise that students are likely to find in their academic work.

Final Thoughts

While it may seem to be the most expedient solution, it is not appropriate to put an older ELL student in a lower grade - for example, 1st grade - in order to get the appropriate reading instruction. This can be very humiliating for the student and cause behaviors that would be detrimental to learning.

By keeping activities age-appropriate and fun, and by tying instruction to the academic content that middle and high school students need to master, you will give your students the opportunity they need to start making progress as readers and writers. It will be challenging, but the extra effort it takes to engage them may be the key that unlocks the door to their future.

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Phonics Instruction for Middle and High School ELLs

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I recently had the opportunity to teach summer school, and two of my sixth-grade students barely read at a first-grade level. This was very challenging for me, and I struggled to find the right way to address their need for phonics and comprehension instruction.

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Education

By McQuiston, Kathleen O'Shea, Doris; McCollin, Michelle

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS FROM culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds frequently struggle with the literacy demands of middle and high school curricula. Many students with severe impairments do not have basic phonological awareness and decoding skills. To improve the reading achievement of these students and promote their success in content-area classes, teachers must apply best practices supported by reading research to help these students close the gap between themselves and their normally achieving peers. Teachers who use direct and explicit instructional strategies that are both developmentally appropriate and culturally and linguistically responsive are most likely to be effective with students of diverse backgrounds. It is critical that the intervention match the student's level of reading development. Opportunities to improve phonological awareness and decoding skills will assist these students in building reading fluency, developing vocabulary knowledge, and enhancing comprehension. Phonological awareness refers to an individual's ability to hear and manipulate the sound structure of language. It involves both an understanding of syllable and rhyme and sensitivity to the individual sounds of language, or phonemes (McCollin & O'Shea, 2005). Students with reading problems frequently struggle with these skills and can benefit from instruction in this area. In concert with direct and explicit instruction in phonological awareness skills, teachers of very poor readers will need to teach them decoding and word-attack skills.

Research has demonstrated both cognitive and affective benefits of learning contexts that are responsive to students' familiar home and community experiences (Ball, 2000; Godina, 2003; Ladson- Billings, 1995). Effective practices include affirmation of ethnic identity, curricular emphasis on students' cultural heritage, and classroom structures that promote peer-to-peer interaction and sharing of knowledge (Boykin & Bailey, 2000; Foster, Lewis, & Onafowora, 2003; Lee, 2001). One way for educators to place diverse students, their histories, and their experiences at the center of the learning process is to use culturally relevant materials, including multicultural literature and content-area texts with multicultural themes and applications. Another way is to give students opportunities to view themselves as sources of knowledge and valued members of the learning community. Last, a climate of respect for cultural and linguistic diversity provides a motivating context for literacy learning (Cummins, 1986). Culturally responsive instruction is not merely a matter of focusing on holidays or ethnic foods. Rather, it is instruction integrated into the daily activities of the classroom (McCollin & O'Shea, 2005).

Improving Phonological Awareness

For students who lack phonological awareness, teachers should provide explicit instruction, focusing on only one or two phonemic awareness skills, such as segmenting and blending, at a time. After beginning with auditory phonemic activities, teachers can link sounds to letters and provide opportunities for students to apply their phonological awareness when reading and writing. As with other students who display difficulties with phonological awareness, students from culturally and liguistically diverse backgrounds can benefit from systematic instruction in identifying and manipulating the sounds of spoken language (Vaughn, Bos, & Schumm, 2005). Effective instructional strategies that target phonological awareness can improve literacy learning. In addition, by using culturally relevant materials and approaches that build on students' cultural funds of knowledge, educators can increase student learning and engagement.

Develop Students' Facility With the Sounds of Language Through Hip-Hop Music

Hip-hop music developed from an oral tradition and is therefore an ideal medium through which students can exercise auditory discrimination skills. Hip-hop uses alliteration, rhyme, and near rhyme-all of which educators can use in teaching students to discriminate and manipulate phonemes. Hip-hop is a vital part of youth culture, particularly for students of diverse ethnic heritage. Although educators have sometimes perceived hip-hop music as inappropriate for instruction, it offers unique opportunities. (However, teachers should preview lyrics before playing music in their classes; some hip-hop songs contain language or messages that may be offensive.) For example, in one activity, teachers and students can examine the study of rhyme and near rhyme in popular hip-hop lyrics. Then, teachers can ask each student to write two poems or raps: one that only uses perfect rhyme and one that uses at least four instances of near rhyme. Students can share the poems or raps in class the next day, comparing the effects of perfect and near rhyme.

Play Word Games With Culturally Specific Language

Students can create alliteration, rhymes, and other wordplay with language that is familiar to them. For example, students can use sociorelevant vocabulary: "Miguel misses mangoes Monday." Teachers can easily incorporate these activities into daily routines. For example, when students are ready to be dismissed, the teacher may ask that all students whose names end in "t" close their books and prepare to leave. Or the teacher might start a game by designating a starting sound (e.g., "b"), having the class decide where they would like to go (e.g., Trinidad), and saying, for example, "I'm going on a trip to Trinidad, and I'm going to take [an item that begins with the starting sound "b"] a ball." Each student has to repeat the sentence, with its growing list of items that have been named, and must modify the sentence by adding an item beginning with the starting sound. For example, a student may recite, "I'm going on a trip to Trinidad, and I'm going to take a ball, a bat, a burrito, and a banjo." Students will naturally think of items that are culturally familiar to them.

In addition, tongue twisters may present to students an enjoyable challenge. This one is particularly difficult: "The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick." The teacher may divide the class into small groups that can create their own tongue twisters, which they present to the class. Spoonerisms can also be fun. For example, students could correct phrases such as "pweet sotato" (sweet potato), "chilled grease" (grilled cheese), and "chish and fips" (fish and chips). Teachers can use sentences, too: "You're hitting on my sat" (You're sitting on my hat). Again, teachers can encourage students to use culturally familiar examples.

Use the Power of the Arts: Music, Visual Arts, Drama, Dance, Movement

Teachers can make segmentation of phonemes more fun by using the rhythm of a particular ethnic instrument or beat. For example, teachers can ask students to tap an African drum for each sound in the word "dragon." Teachers can also incorporate movement activities, each representing a phoneme, whereby students perform the material in some way, reinforcing learning through multisensory approaches.

Use Multicultural Poetry to Teach Phonological Awareness

Gwendolyn Brooks' poems "The Bean Eaters" and "The Pool Players" appeal to young adults and contain various literary devices that support phonological-awareness learning (Brooks, 2006). Playing an audio recording of the author reading the poems would be a unique way to present this material. Students could invent their own poems that are similar to those. Also, teachers could introduce students to counting syllables through the reading and writing of haiku.

The explicit understanding of a word's sound structure is critical for the efficient decoding of printed words and the ability to form connections between sounds and letters when spelling. Students need solid phonological awareness for decoding instruction to be effective.

Improving Decoding and Word Identification Skills

Some secondary students may need extensive decoding instruction. For these students, the teacher must begin with the basic phonetic rules of English. The use of decodable books is an effective way for students to gain practice decoding words in text. When culturally relevant decodable texts are not available, it may be necessary for the teacher to encourage students to discuss ways in which they can relate the decodable text to their own experiences. For example, when a student reads "a cat sat on the mat," he might relate it to the Spanish folk song "El senor don Gato ." Another student might be able to relate it to the Korean folk tale "The Dog and the Cat." For some students, more challenging word and sentence study-including study of rimes, roots, affixes, and sentence construction-would be appropriate. Teachers can engage more capable readers by providing instruction in strategic word-attack skills, including syllabication and morphemic analysis of words. Whenever possible, teachers should emphasize culturally relevant reading material to practice word- attack skills.

Mapping Phonemes to Graphemes

Students' mapping phonemes to graphemes on a chart is excellent practice in building decoding skills (Grace, 2005; Moats, 2005). Diagramming the sound-letter relationship is an effective method for helping students to understand the often-confusing relations between phonemes (the sounds that we hear in a word) and graphemes (the letters that represent those sounds). Students who are unable to transfer their phonological awareness to print can learn to map words while diagramming the sound-letter relationship. Using Onset and Rime

Goswami and Bryant (1990) suggested that the linguistic units of onset and rime may be crucial in explaining the link between rhyming and reading. Onset is the word's initial consonant or consonant clusters, and rime is the vowel of a syllable plus any consonants that might follow. For example, in the word "pat," p is the onset and at is the rime. In the word "splat," spl is the onset and at is the rime. Children who recognize onsets and rimes can learn to make analogies between spelling patterns in words to help them read new words. For example, a child who can read table can more easily learn to read stable, cable, gable, and fable . Adams (1990) concluded that teachers' use of analogy is an effective method for teaching students to decode.

Teaching Strategies for Decoding Multisyllabic Words

As they move through the grades, students are confronted by multisyllabic words, such as polymorphous, habitat, and undesirable. Secondary students need to develop the ability to read orthographic chunks to help them decode these words. Teachers can model and do think-alouds to support students in blending practice to improve their ability to read longer words. Lenz and Hughes (1990) offered the mnemonic DISSECT to help secondary-level students decode unknown words. The steps are:

Discover the context.

Isolate the prefix.

Separate the suffix.

Say the stem.

Examine the stem.

Check with someone.

Try the dictionary.

Educators can teach students this strategy, and students can practice it while reading culturally relevant texts at their instructional level.

Teaching Syllabication

Teaching syllabication begins with teachers' helping students to recognize what a syllable is and how to count the syllables in words. Students can learn the six common syllable-spelling patterns in order from the simplest patterns (closed syllables and open syllables) to more difficult patterns (e.g., r-controlled diagraphs, vowel diagraphs). For each syllable type, students can look for examples in culturally relevant texts. In another activity, the teacher can divide words that were selected from upcoming reading texts into syllables, write each syllable on a note card, and display the syllables in jumbled order. Students would work in pairs to arrange the syllables to form the word. Another variation would have the teacher write 20 multisyllabic words from an upcoming story. Students would work with a partner to draw an arc under each syllable as they read aloud each word. Last, students would code each syllable type; alternatively, students could code a specific syllable type. For example, they could circle all the consonant- plus-le syllables or underline all closed syllables. Teachers can use stories with multicultural themes and topics to motivate students.

Providing Instruction in Patterns of Morphologic Elements

Students can learn and practice morphology, which explains word origins and development in terms of roots, prefixes, and word families, in both reading and writing. For example, students can keep a word family notebook with entries such as suggest, suggestibility, suggested, suggestion , suggestible, and suggestive. English language learners could be encouraged to relate English morphological elements to those in their native language through cognates.

Conclusion

Students who have failed to read well are capable of learning to read when teachers offer them (a) sufficient time and intensity for interventions and (b) appropriate instructional practices. When secondary students of diverse backgrounds struggle with reading, teachers need to provide systematic and explicit instruction in foundational skills with sensitivity to the cultural and linguistic experiences of those students. Teachers can create classroom structures that provide more socially interactive environments that tap into the cultural and linguistic resources within students' communities to connect school literacy practices with the students' own histories and experiences. Use of culturally relevant materials and methods is one way of engaging students of diverse backgrounds, motivating them to continue the hard work necessary to close the gap between themselves and their normally achieving peers.

REFERENCES

Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Ball, A. (2000). Empowering pedagogies that enhance the learning of multicultural students. Teachers College Record, 102, 1006-1034.

Boykin, A. W., & Bailey, C. (2000). The role of cultural factors in school relevant cognitive functioning: Synthesis of findings on cultural contexts, cultural orientations and individual differences (Report No. 42). Washington, DC: Howard University, Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk.

Brooks, G. (2006). Essential Brooks [CD]. New York: Caedmon.

Cummins, J. (1986). Empowering minority students: A framework for intervention. Harvard Educational Review, 56, 18-36.

Foster, M., Lewis, J., & Onafowora, L. (2003). Anthropology, culture, and research on teaching and learning: Applying what we have learned to improve practice. Teachers College Record, 105, 261- 277.

Godina, H. (2003). Mesocentrism and students of Mexican background: A community intervention for culturally relevant instruction. Journal of Latinos and Education, 2, 141-157.

Goswami, U., & Bryant, P. E. (1990). Phonological skills and learning to read. London: Erlbaum.

Grace, K. (2005). Phonics and spelling through phoneme-grapheme mapping. Longmont, CO: Sopris West Educational Services.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). But that's just good teaching! The case for culturally relevant pedagogy. Theory Into Practice, 34, 159- 165.

Lee, C. (2001). Is October Brown Chinese? A cultural modeling activity system for underachieving students. American Educational Research Journal, 38, 97-142.

Lenz, B. K., & Hughes, C. A. (1990). A word identification strategy for adolescents with learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 23, 149-163.

McCollin, M., & O'Shea, D. J. (2005). Increasing reading achievement of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Preventing School Failure, 50(1), 41-44.

Moats, L. C. (2005). Language essentials for teachers of reading and spelling (LETRS). Longmont, CO: Sopris West Educational Services.

Vaughn, S., Bos, C. S., & Schumm, J. S. (2005). Teaching exceptional, diverse, and at-risk students in the general education classroom (3rd ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Kathleen McQuiston is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Instruction and Learning at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research interests are struggling readers, culturally relevant instruction for students with disabilities, and bilingual special education. Doris O'Shea is a professor in the Department of Special Education at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests are instructional strategies, legal issues in special education, and teachers' work with diverse families. Michelle McCollin is a professor in the Department of Special Education at Slippery Rock University. Her research interests are culturally relevant instruction and reading strategies. Bob Algozzine, column editor, is a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and is director of the Behavior and Reading Improvement Center at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His research interests are effective teaching, schoolwide positive behavior support, and improving basic early literacy skills. Copyright (c) 2008 Heldref Publications

Copyright Heldref Publications Winter 2008

(c) 2008 Preventing School Failure. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.

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Improving Phonological Awareness and Decoding Skills of High School Students From Diverse Backgrounds

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Education By McQuiston, Kathleen O'Shea, Doris; McCollin, Michelle HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS FROM culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds frequently struggle with the literacy demands of middle and high school curricula. Many students with severe impairments do not have basic phonological awareness and decoding skills.

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Fluency: Instructional Guidelines and Student Activities

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After you model how to read the text, you must have the students reread it. By doing this, the students are engaging in repeated reading. Usually, having students read a text four times is sufficient to improve fluency. Remember, however, that instructional time is limited, and it is the actual time that students are actively engaged in reading that produces reading gains.

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Rhyming Words in Poetry

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Language Arts

This planning checklist for a choral reading lesson uses the poem "One Sister for Sale" by Shel Silverstein. See example ›

This PDF includes dozens of poems for shared, choral, paired, and echo reading. See example ›

The website below offers teachers several poetry options conducive to the Choral Reading strategy along with some interesting tips on reading and language development. See example ›

The example of choral reading found on this site uses the children's book James and the Giant Peach. See example ›

Science

This lesson plan includes examples of choral reading activities that correspond to introductory science concepts. See example ›

Social Studies

This website includes a script for the choral reading of the children's book Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain. See example ›

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Choral reading is reading aloud in unison with a whole class or group of students. Choral reading helps build students' fluency, self-confidence, and motivation. Because students are reading aloud together, students who may ordinarily feel self-conscious or nervous about reading aloud have built-in support.

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Story Maps

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Story Maps | Classroom Strategy | Reading Rockets

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Story maps use graphic organizers to help students learn the elements of a book or story. The most basic story maps focus on the beginning, middle, and end of the story. More advanced organizers focus more on plot or character traits.

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Guided reading is best accomplished with reading passages of 50-200 words. These may be pages from any textbook or library book. However, it is important that the reading material be easy enough for the student to read with few or no errors.

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I had a black and white picture of a poor miner's room on the overhead projector. In the picture the walls were covered with cardboard and the room was sparsely furnished. I was doing professional development for teachers and I did not give them any background information about the picture. I asked for some opinions about what they saw, then I asked the teachers, "Do you think a man or a woman lives here?" In unison they responded, "A man!" That was very interesting to me so I asked a follow-up question, "What makes you say that?" Although the response had been unanimous, the reasoning was varied. One teacher said, "You can tell it's a man's room because there aren't any decorations - a woman would put something nice in there even if she were poor." Another teacher said, "That rocking chair doesn't look very feminine." When I asked for more detail she said, "It looks big, and there is no cushion or anything on it." Yet another teacher answered, "I think if it were a woman's room there would be something to remind her of family - either a picture or there would be children's items in the room." The teachers had noticed details that I hadn't and had also drawn on their own beliefs to bring a deeper perspective to the picture.

This is the Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) method. It is a very simple activity designed to build students' background knowledge and develop thinking skills that use detail to enhance understanding. Many educators have used this method as a precursor to working on a literary passage because the thinking skills used to analyze artwork can be transferred to literature as well. The Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) method was created by Abigail Housen, a cognitive psychologist in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. VTS is targeted at developing creativity and thinking skills. It also presents a very effective method for tapping into students' background knowledge.

Method

1. The teacher selects an interesting picture or painting, one that relates to the topic of the story to be read, in this case the picture above.

2. A copy of this picture is placed on the overhead projector. There are many sources of pictures on the Internet, including museum and library websites. (See the Hot Links section).

3. The students are asked, "Please look at the picture silently for a minute and think about what you see. What's going on in the picture?"

4. After a minute the teacher opens up the question to the room, "What do you see in the picture?" The students' responses often start out with the obvious - "There's a man walking a dog and another man riding a bike. The picture looks old. I think it was taken in a city."

5. When a student offers a qualitative statement, the teacher asks for more information. "You said the picture looks old. What makes you say that?"

The students justify their answers by providing evidence from the picture. They may say, "It's in black and white, and the cars in the back all look like they were made a long time ago."

6. Next the teacher asks students to share differing opinions and provide justification. One student may say, "The man on the bike is wearing a suit. I think he is going to work on his bike because he doesn't have a car." The teacher then asks, "Does everyone agree? Is that why this man is riding his bike in a suit?" Another student might say, "I don't think so. I think he just likes riding his bike. Maybe they didn't make clothes for riding a bike then."

7. The discussion goes on until students have shared all they can about the picture.

8. The teacher summarizes what the students said. "So, after looking at this picture we think that, maybe relatives - who lived a long time ago. We can tell this because of what they are wearing and because the picture is black and white."

9. For the next activity, the teacher can either have the students write a few sentences about what they discovered, or read a text related to the picture.

Reading

Let's say students are reading about New York in the 1900s. The teacher points out that the same creativity and way of thinking that the students used to look at the picture will be used to understand the reading.

When students share about their reading, the teacher asks the same kind of VTS questions about the text. "What is happening? How do you know that?" The teacher makes a point of showing the students how sharing their ideas about the story are the same as when they discussed the picture earlier.

Writing

A variation of VTS was offered as a Bright Idea from Gemma De Vita, a teacher from Fulton County Schools in Atlanta, Georgia. In her Picture Description activity, she makes copies of an interesting picture and has the students glue it to a page in their notebook. The students write three to six sentences or questions about the picture and then share them. This allows the students to have a picture book with their own notes to remind them of what they are learning and thinking. Gemma says she likes to use the Picture Description activity in her classroom because, "Once I thought maybe I would try another strategy to introduce a selection, and my students asked where the picture was. They said they love doing Picture Preview and would I please do it more. They said, 'It's fun!' It also helps with all Language Arts domains: Speaking, Listening, Writing, and Reading. Students can also work at their own levels and challenge themselves as they hear higher level questions that they can use as models after their next reading selection. It also helps them compose questions, which they often need practice with."

The Visual Thinking Strategies method offers an easy, interactive and non-threatening way to get students thinking. There are no right or wrong answers, and anything that students believe can be justified by details in the picture. This opens up students' minds to the fact that, even in reading, people come away with different impressions and thoughts. These should be shared and discussed to further develop understanding for everyone. To me - this is the richest lesson of all!
Picture Description
Here you can find a short picture description lesson that highlights relevant grammar structures and provides lists of words that are useful for talking and writing about pictures.
National Geographic Photography
This site offers many intriguing photos, including a photo of the day, news photos, photo gallery, and short video clips. These can be useful for supporting content instruction, fostering dialogue with emerging English speakers, and creating writing prompts.
Minneapolis Institute of Arts: Art Adventures
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts' Art Adventure program is an example of a collaborative effort between the museum and the public schools. The program's volunteers visit classrooms with art posters related to a specific theme, such as animals or celebrations. The site offers samples of some of the posters used.

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Visual Thinking Strategies for Improved Comprehension

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I had a black and white picture of a poor miner's room on the overhead projector. In the picture the walls were covered with cardboard and the room was sparsely furnished. I was doing professional development for teachers and I did not give them any background information about the picture.

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Access this information by scanning the QR Code Below or enter the url in your browser:   padlet.com/clplus/reading

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Access this information by scanning the QR Code Below or enter the url in your browser:   padlet.com/clplus/reading

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How Do Kids Learn to Read? What the Science Says - Education Week