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Have questions or comments or looking for more resources?

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Have questions or comments or looking for more resources?

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Email: kdsmith@iu12.org

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This can be used to guide anyone assisting in Kid Writing

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Phonics anchor charts and blends charts are a great way to teach difficult concepts to beginning readers. Keep them around the classroom, and your students will be able to use them independently for increased confidence and learning!

Here are 20 blends and phonics anchor charts we love.

Source: 1 and 2 With Mr. Su

Students will love putting words to the test both with a silent e on the end and without. Have students hold up a floating e so they recognize both words.

2. Hard and Soft C

Source: Mrs. Jones's Class

The different sounds made by the letter C can definitely be tricky to understand. You might have your students help you create this anchor chart, coming up with words that fall into both categories.

3. Row Your Boat

Source: Shining and Sparkling in First Grade

We like how this anchor chart puts vowel digraphs that make the same sound side by side.

4. Explaining Consonant Blends

Source: Consonant Blends/The Inspired Apple

When you work on consonant blends, have students compare each letter's sound individually. Then have them pay close attention to what happens when they blend together.

5. Beginning Blends

Source: The Mall-ard Kindergarten Marquee

The best part of this chart is that you can add blends as you introduce them in class.

6. Double E Tree

Take one single concept, like the double e, and come up with every single word that it applies to.

7. Vowel Pairs

Use this anchor chart to help define the rule, and then encourage your students to come up with their own examples to add.

8. Recipes for Blends

Source: Smitten With First

A cute analogy that will encourage students to try different letters together, creating and testing their own word "recipes" too.

9. It's Owl Right

Source: Mrs. Jump's Class

This cute owl chart shows students the many words that contain an "ow" sound, whether it's spelled "ow" or "ou."

10. The Many Ways to Spell the Long A Sound

Source: Hello Literacy

One of the trickiest things about phonics for students to learn is how the same sound can be spelled lots of different ways. It helps to see side-by-side examples, like in this anchor chart that describes the different spellings of the long A sound.

11. Bring in the Blender

Source: Tales of a Teacherista

Put the current blends you are studying "in the blender." Cute!

12. The H Brothers

We love how this anchor chart creatively shows the different sounds digraphs containing the letter H make.

13. The Bandit Y

Source: First Grade Fresh

Try this anchor chart to help your kids learn how tricky Y can be!

14. Pairs, Digraphs, and Diphthongs

Source: Mrs. Gillespie's Thoughts

What are the differences between these vowel pairs, anyway?

15. Sounds of G

Source: Glitzy in 1st Grade

Is it a hard G? Is it a soft G? Students will easily learn the difference between the two and get great examples too.

16. Ow vs. Oa

This chart shows the differences between words that contain a long O sound. We like how the beginning and ending blends are highlighted too.

17. Phonics Charts for Every Digraph

Source: The Inspired Apple

We love the idea of creating different phonics charts for each digraph you are studying and adding words as you learn them.

18. Lesson From a Pirate

Source: Mrs. A's Kindergarten

Get your pirate voice ready because you're definitely going to want to use it when you go over words with "ar" in them.

19. Long I Storytelling

Source: Tied Up With String

It's fun to write a class story or poem using a certain sound as many times as possible.

Practice saying "Bossy R" words with your students. It really helps them to hear it said out loud.

Love these phonics charts? Check out our anchor charts archive for even more subjects and grades!

Plus, watch this video to see these phonics charts up close!

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20 Perfect Anchor Charts To Teach Phonics and Blends

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Phonics anchor charts and blends charts are a great way to teach difficult concepts to beginning readers. Keep them around the classroom, and your students will be able to use them independently for increased confidence and learning! Here are 20 blends and phonics anchor charts we love.

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Directions for Using Kid Writing Notebooks

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Directions for Using Kid Writing Notebooks

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As an educator, you have probably already heard of phonics. But chances are that no one has ever sat down with you to explain exactly what phonics instruction is. That's where we come in - with the help of phonics expert Wiley Blevins, we have compiled the basic information that you need to know before teaching phonics.

What is phonics?

Phonics involves the relationship between sounds and their spellings. The goal of phonics instruction is to teach students the most common sound-spelling relationships so that they can decode, or sound out, words. This decoding ability is a crucial element in reading success.

Why is phonics instruction important?

Most poor readers tend to rely so heavily on one reading strategy, such as the use of context and picture clues, that they exclude other strategies that might be more appropriate. To become skilled, fluent readers, children need to have a repertoire of strategies to draw on. These strategies include using a knowledge of sound-spelling relationships - in other words, an understanding of phonics. In addition, research has shown that skilled readers attend to almost every word in a sentence and process the letters that compose each of these words.

Therefore, phonics instruction plays a key role in helping students comprehend text. It helps the student map sounds onto spellings, thus enabling them to decode words. Decoding words aids in the development of word recognition, which in turn increases reading fluency. Reading fluency improves reading comprehension because as students are no longer struggling with decoding words, they can concentrate on making meaning from the text.

In addition, phonics instruction improves spelling ability because it emphasizes spelling patterns that become familiar from reading. Studies show that half of all English words can be spelled with phonics rules that relate to one letter to one sound.

How should you structure phonics instruction?

Phonics instruction should be explicit rather than implicit. Implicit instruction relies on readers "discovering" clues about sound-spelling relationships; good readers can do this, but poor readers are not likely to do so. Explicit instruction is the most effective type of phonics instruction, especially for children at risk for reading difficulties.

A good phonics lesson begins with an explicit explanation of the sound-spelling being taught along with guided opportunities for students to blend, or sound out, words using the new sound-spelling. These exercises should be followed by guided and independent reading practice in text that contains words with the new sound-spelling. This portion of phonics instruction is key. Therefore, phonics instruction should focus on applying learned sound-spelling relationships to actual reading, with smaller amounts of time spent on the initial task of learning phonics rules. That way, you can plan phonics lessons that are appropriate for all students, even if some have higher levels of phonics mastery than others.

How is phonics different from phonemic awareness?

Phonics involves the relationship between sounds and written symbols, whereas phonemic awareness involves sounds in spoken words. Therefore, phonics instruction focuses on teaching sound-spelling relationships and is associated with print. Most phonemic awareness tasks are oral.

Despite these different focuses, phonics instruction and phonemic awareness instruction are connected. In fact, phonemic awareness is necessary for phonics instruction to be effective. Before students can use a knowledge of sound-spelling relationships to decode written words, they must understand that words (whether written or spoken) are made up of sounds. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that a word is made up of a series of discrete sounds. Without this insight, phonics instruction will not make sense to students.

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As an educator, you have probably already heard of phonics. But chances are that no one has ever sat down with you to explain exactly what phonics instruction is. That's where we come in - with the help of phonics expert Wiley Blevins, we have compiled the basic information that you need to know before teaching phonics.

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http://www.waysandhow.com Tips on how to teach kids phonics. Phonics is an effective way of teaching kids how to read, decode and eventually write English words. Note, however, that the art of teaching phonics is designed not only for younger kids, but also for bigger ones. Here're how to teach kids phonics.

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Why third grade is a pivotal year for reading | Amplify

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Third grade is often considered the moment in a student's life when she makes the transition from "learning to read" to "reading to learn" - a make-or-break period for academic success. Teachers have long prepared young students for this critical time by focusing on early-reading milestones from kindergarten through third grade.

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Why Writing Matters - National Writing Project

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Chapter Three presents evidence from national assessments about what improves student writing. What are the most promising strategies and classroom practices? Can writing support learning in a content-heavy area such as science or math? It explores how writing across the curriculum can be used to support a high level of learning and the need to incorporate critical thinking and inquiry strategies in writing tasks.

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It takes advance planning and creativity to design exciting and effective learning centers. But the payoff comes as soon as you see students' faces light up when you announce, "Center Time."

These teacher-tested tips will help you set up dynamic areas for independent learning.

Begin with one learning center in an area of personal strength or in an area especially interesting to you and your students.

Tie centers into your curriculum: the content or skills can change to match what you are studying in a particular subject area.

Make sure your learning centers have clear objectives, simple directions, and, if appropriate, samples of the type of work or activity students will be creating there.

Create a storage system of boxes, file folders, or large envelopes. Label all of the materials in each storage container.

Include a variety of activities to engage different types of learners - avoid providing only paper-and-pencil tasks. Students should also have opportunities to draw, color, cut, glue, match, listen, fasten, tie, select, compare, classify, outline, assemble, rearrange, etc.

Remember that many students respond to inviting environments such as cozy corners, attractive decorations, and special touches from students (a mural painted on a cardboard room divider, for example). Area rugs and netting or sheer fabric also help set off an area and make it appealing.

Remember the needs of your second-language learners.

Model expected behaviors and introduce learning objectives when you open the center and as needed throughout the year.

Invite students to contribute to your centers with personal collections or related artifacts and items.

Allow for some student choice. Simply rotating students doesn't allow them to practice self-direction and responsibility.

Set a time schedule for using the centers.

Designate a special place to display student work.

Invite donations and ideas from parents.

Watch the centers in action to determine which seem most engaging and successful and which need fine-tuning.

Periodically add new activities/centers to maintain student interest, but be realistic about how often to do so. Weekly is too often.

Take photos of the center to help you set them up the next time around.

Need Some Ideas?

No matter what content area you're teaching, there's usually a way to design a center around it. Here are a few possibilities:

A writing center, stocked with different types of paper, model fiction or nonfiction pieces, story starters, grammar tip sheets, word lists, and editing pencils

A book box on a table filled with reading materials about a particular subject or theme, or organized by author or genre

An art cart with materials and instruction for making mobiles, dioramas, cartoon strips, crayon rubbings, and friendship cards - all tied to the curriculum

A math path, where students find math games, activities, and manipulatives stored in a large box

A full-length mirror where kindergarteners try on costumes, masks, hats, or silly glasses and role-play

A comfy seat in a quiet corner designated for independent reading

This article was adapted from Learning to Teach...Not Just for Beginners: The Essential Guide for All Teachers by Linda Shalaway (© 2005, Scholastic).

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The New Teacher's Guide to Setting Up Learning Centers | Scholastic

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It takes advance planning and creativity to design exciting and effective learning centers. But the payoff comes as soon as you see students' faces light up when you announce, "Center Time." These teacher-tested tips will help you set up dynamic areas for independent learning.

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Learning Center - Differentiating Classroom Instruction

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http://bit.ly/op7wSc (Click on the preceding link for the Fall Math and Literacy Centers that are mentioned in this video). Organizing classroom learning centers can be difficult. The key is to be consistent so that students know what to expect with each new center.

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References

Click the "References" link above to hide these references.

Daniels, H., & Bizar, M. (1998). Methods that matter: Six structures for best practice classrooms. York, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

Fountas, I., & Pinnell, G. (1996). Guided reading: Good first teaching for all children (grades K-2). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Fountas, I., & Pinnell, G. (2000). Guiding readers and writers grades 3-6: Teaching comprehension, genre, and content literacy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Morrow, L. (1997). Literacy center: Context for reading and writing. York, ME: Stenhouse

Morrow, L. (2003). Organizing and managing the language arts block: A professional development guide. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Prevatte, L. (2007). Middle school literacy centers. Gainesville, FL: Maupin House.

Stone, S. J., (1996). Promoting literacy through centers {Electronic version}. Childhood Education, 72, 240-242.

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Click the "References" link above to hide these references. Daniels, H., & Bizar, M. (1998). Methods that matter: Six structures for best practice classrooms. York, ME: Stenhouse Publishers. Fountas, I., & Pinnell, G. (1996). Guided reading: Good first teaching for all children (grades K-2). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Fountas, I., & Pinnell, G.

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Writing as a Tool for Learning - The Work of the Philadelphia Writing Project

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The Philadelphia Writing Project working in collaboration with the Frances E. Willard and Philip H. Sheridan Elementary School communities offered a Kid Writing program during the 2015-2016 school year that emphasized teacher professional development in tandem with opportunities for parents to actively support the writing of kindergarten and first grade students at home and at school.

Our work is grounded in Kid Writing: A Systematic Approach to Phonics, Journals and Writing Workshop, written by two PhilWP TCs, Eileen G. Feldgus and Isabell Cardonick. This work was made possible with the generous support of the William Penn Foundation.

To learn more about Kid Writing, contact the Philadelphia Writing Project at 215-898- 1919 or email philwp@gse.upenn.edu.

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Video 1

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KID WRITING PD - Video 1 - Drawing Your Story

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Video 2
3:44 Starts the stretching section

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Video 3

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KID WRITING PD - Video 3 - Adult Writing

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Video 4

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Video 5

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KID WRITING PD - Video 5 - K and 1 Mini Lessons

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Video 6

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KID WRITING PD - Video 6 - Modeled Writing

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Video 7

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KID WRITING PD - Video 7 - Interactive Guided Writing

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Video 8

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KID WRITING PD - Video 8 - Classroom Environment

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Feel free to download and use any of these images for your own Kid Crowns!

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Share news of your Kid Writing successes...ask a question...let us know you've been here.

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In a landmark study two Canadian researchers in developmental psychology, Gene Ouellette and Monique Sénéchal (2017), have mapped the powerful beginning reading-writing connection, moved us closer to being successful teachers of reading in first grade, and cleared up decades of confusion. It's important because reading scores in first grade have flatlined for decades-especially in the United States. This study can move us forward.

As far back as 1982 Marie Clay, the late world-renowned expert in developmental and clinical child psychology who founded Reading Recovery, issued a call for educators to find the writing connection in learning to read (Clay, 1982). Could teachers and parents capitalize on the potential for beginning writing to complement learning to read? Should we be encouraging pencil and paper activity from the very beginning?

Ouellette and Sénéchal have mapped out the way. Counterintuitively, it turns out that allowing and encouraging children's early "invented spelling"-a much maligned and controversial practice in some quarters-is the key.
What is Invented Spelling?
Before children become conventional readers and spellers at the very beginnings of learning to read-often in preschool, kindergarten, or the beginning of first grade-they use self-directed and spontaneous attempts to represent words in print. If teachers and parents engage beginners in pencil and paper activity by having them draw their picture and write their story or information, beginners will naturally over time "invent" spellings. The emerging spellings demonstrate what the child knows about the sounds in words, along with how he or she thinks letters represent these sounds. As I have written before, one can literally "see" the child's development-that is, monitor the child's progress in the process of breaking the complex English code-by looking at his or her spelling (Gentry, 2006, 2000). This doesn't vitiate the need for teaching correct spellings beginning as early as kindergarten. But what researchers, including myself, and exemplary teachers have found over the last 30+ years of research and practice is that the act of inventing a spelling greatly increases the child's chances of breaking the code and learning to read by the end of first grade.

When inventing a spelling, the child is engaged in mental reflection and practice with words, not just memorizing. This strategy strengthens neuronal pathways so as the reader/writer becomes more sophisticated with invented spelling, she or he is developing a repertoire of more and more correctly spelled words at the same time. These words are stored in the word form area of the brain where the child can retrieve them automatically as sight words for reading and eventually as correctly spelled words for writing.

Well-educated, exemplary beginning reading teachers know how to provide a conventional model enabling the inventive speller to fluently read back his or her own writing in conventional English without stifling the child's creativity or desire to make meaning (Feldgus, Cardonick, & Gentry, 2017). Having the child read back his or her own writing in conventional English written by the teacher integrates the child's invented spelling into a reading and fluency lesson.

The human brain generally gets better at whatever it practices-including invented spelling. Reflection about how to spell a word allows the child to actively practice making decisions, rather than passively memorizing. This active practice likely results in synaptic changes in the child's brain by strengthening neuronal pathways for long term-retention of spellings to be retrieved for reading and writing.

Eventually a parent or teacher can read what the child has invented. For example, can you read these kindergarten samples?

R U DF?

I KN RIT!

MI MOTR BOT GOZ FST.

REKO WINT UNDR DA CUVRS.

1 NIT I WZ N MI BAD AN DA TUTH FARI CAM!*

*(Are you deaf?) (I can write!) (My motorboat goes fast.) (Rico went under the covers.) (One night I was in my bed and the tooth fairy came.)

Importantly, invented spelling outcomes and likely neural development happen in developmental phases (Ehri. 1987; Ehri & Wilce,1987; Gentry 2006, 2000). Over time, a word such as eagle that a child might wish to write will be presented first as random letters, then as E or EG, then as EGL, then as EGUL, and eventually, given teacher scaffolding and appropriate spelling instruction, as eagle. Lady will likely follow from random letters to L, to LAD with LA for /lā/ and the letter name D for /dē/, to LADE, which is spelled in chunks such as LA for the /lā/ chunk and DE for the /dē/ chunk.

Here are lady samples from the 2017 study:

With explicit grade-by-grade spelling instruction, along with vigorous reading and writing, the child will master lady and plant it in his or her brain for eternity. This representation of the spelling lady in the brain will literally be "re-presented" in the person's mind when the reader needs to match the print on the page to recognize the word for reading or when the writer needs to spell the word for writing. It takes about 250 milliseconds for the spelling representation to connect to sound and meaning in the brain and pop up in the mind's eye automatically.

When early invented spelling is modeled by a knowledgeable beginning reading teacher and taught in five developmental evidenced-based phases followed by proper feedback along with research-based grade by grade systematic and explicit spelling instruction, children build a dictionary of words in their brains that they can easily retrieve for reading and writing. Thus, both reading and writing words-decoding and encoding respectively-become automatic, leaving the child's brain free for making meaning. It's the key to comprehension (along with vocabulary and background knowledge). It is this automaticity in retrieving words that allows us to think about what we are reading or writing.

Over the years detractors, albeit with good intentions, have touted invented spelling as being nonacademic, harmful to traditional values, and a deterrent to conventional spelling. They think it's best to teach accurate spelling as soon as possible. The Ouellette and Sénéchal study has set the record straight.

The researchers report that "...fears that allowing children to 'invent' their own spelling may prevent them from learning conventionally correct spelling can be alleviated." Rather, the researchers point out, it appears to be just the opposite. The meticulously designed and methodically sound study found "a direct path from kindergarten invented spelling to Grade 1 conventional spelling." Ouellette and Sénéchal state, "invented spelling attempts do not set children on a path where they will not learn to spell correctly."

Ouellette and Sénéchal conclude that invented spelling is engaging and analytical and it facilitates literacy growth. It integrates phonological and orthographic growth. In their words it is "...developmentally appropriate and falls naturally within a child's zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1962); children are not being asked to memorize or reproduce a spelling that may be beyond their current level of development but rather they are creating a spelling that reflects, and potentially increases, their current knowledge" (2017, p. 86).

In the final analysis, here's what's most important: Ouellette and Sénéchal found a direct line from invented spelling leading to improved reading scores at the end of first grade. In their carefully crafted longitudinal study, they found invented spelling to be "a unique predictor of growth in early reading skills, over and above children's alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness." Now that's a huge finding! For two decades we have been perseverating on phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge alone.

The end of first grade is when the child's reading brain should work essentially like yours and mine, allowing the child to read easy chapter books and informational texts independently, proficiently, and fluently with joy and comprehension. It's when beginning literacy learners have enough brain power and spellings stored in their brains to write joyfully and expressively albeit with a few misspellings. If we add grade-by-grade explicit spelling instruction-along with vocabulary, background knowledge, and motivation-it's when children are on the way to academic success, career readiness, and personal fulfillment.

Don't underestimate the importance of the 2017 Ouellette and Sénéchal study or of two important studies that preceded it (Ouellette and Sénéchal, 2013, 2008). I've been heralding this message for more than thirty years: invented spelling paves the way to literacy.

Dr. J. Richard Gentry is the author of Raising Confident Readers, How to Teach Your Child to Read and Write-From Baby to Age 7. Follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and find out more information about his work on his website.

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Landmark Study Finds Better Path to Reading Success

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This study proves what exemplary teachers have been doing correctly for years.