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Tool 10 Part 3 Topic 1d - Common Practices

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A proven path to educational equity and excellence

The PLC at Work ® process is increasingly recognized as the most powerful strategy for sustained, substantive school improvement.

When a school or district functions as a PLC, educators within the organization embrace high levels of learning for all students as both the reason the organization exists and the fundamental responsibility of those who work within it.

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Ready to build a thriving PLC where teams are empowered to drive continuous improvement? Take the first step by downloading our free white paper, The Three Cornerstones of Coaching PLC Teams

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PLC at Work®: Become a Thriving Professional Learning Community

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Create and sustain a professional learning community where key practices and strategies are embedded in the culture of your school or district. With help from our PLC at Work™ experts, you will create a comprehensive learning infrastructure to address priorities and build collective capacity for continuous improvement.

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I really had a lot of "Aha" moments when working through this module, particularly the emphasis on the 300 Million word gap. It just really solidified in my mind that I should be more intentional in my work with teachers in regards to vocabulary instruction.

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Tool 7 — Dr. Marilyn Jager Adams, Ph.D. (Fluency)

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Tool 7 Part 5 Topic 1 - Summary of Reading Fluency

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Tool 2 Part 4 Topic 1 - The Language Rich Classroom

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Progression in OracyThis document provides access to a helpful rubric and framework that describes the conversation behaviors we want to help our students cultivate. Click here to learn all about them.

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Progression in OracyThis document provides access to a helpful rubric and framework that describes the conversation behaviors we want to help our students cultivate. Click here to learn all about them.

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This document provides access to a helpful rubric and framework that describes the conversation behaviors we want to help our students cultivate. Click here to learn all about them.

This document provides access to a helpful rubric and framework that describes the conversation behaviors we want to help our students cultivate. Click here to learn all about them.

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Oracy in the Classroom: Strategies for Effective Talk

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Oracy in the Classroom: Strategies for Effective Talk

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School 21 develops confident students who can articulate their thoughts and learning with strategies like discussion guidelines and roles and structured talk tasks. This article describes how the school makes it work. Click here to learn more.

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Strategies for developing confident speakers who can share their thoughts and learning.

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Why the Art of Speaking Should Be Taught Alongside Math and Literacy

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Why the Art of Speaking Should Be Taught Alongside Math and Literacy

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These videos show students in shared conversations, partner and small group conversations. I know you will be impressed and motivated by the oral language skills that have been cultivated in this school! Click here to watch.

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Classrooms in the U.S. often focus most attention on literacy and math, largely because those skills are considered foundational and are tested. However most people will also need to communicate their thoughts and ideas to other people through oral language, and yet effective communication strategies are often not taught with the same precision and structure as other parts of the curriculum.

School 21, a public school in London has made "oracy" a primary focus of everything they do. From the earliest grades on up teachers support students to find their voice, express differing opinions politely, and challenge one another's thinking. These are skills called for in the Common Core, but can be hard to find in many classrooms because students haven't been taught how to make "turn and talks" truly effective.

The Edutopia team visited School 21 and captured some amazing videos of students practicing their communication skills with support from teachers.

Another key element of the School 21 program is " well-being," a social emotional learning curriculum that is once again embedded throughout students' experience of school. In the following video, the communication skills teachers have helped foster become supremely important as even young students grapple with difficult topics like race, difference, diversity and kindness.

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Why The Art of Speaking Should Be Taught Alongside Math and Literacy | KQED

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Classrooms in the U.S. often focus most attention on literacy and math, largely because those skills are considered foundational and are tested. However most people will also need to communicate their thoughts and ideas to other people through oral language, and yet effective communication strategies are often not taught with the same precision and structure as other parts of the curriculum.

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Tool 7 Part 3 Topic 3f - Repeated Readings

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Tool 7 Part 3 Topic 3e - Scoop the Phrases

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Tool 7 Part 3 Topic 3d - Partner Reading

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Tool 2 Part 3 Topic 4c - 30 Second Conversation

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This chart can help teachers practice the correct sound for each of the 44 phonemes.  

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This chart can help teachers practice the correct sound for each of the 44 phonemes.  

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Despite there being just 26 letters in the English language there are approximately 44 unique sounds, also known as phonemes. The 44 sounds help distinguish one word or meaning from another. Various letters and letter combinations known as graphemes are used to represent the sounds.

The 44 English sounds fall into two categories: consonants and vowels. Below is a list of the 44 phonemes along with their International Phonetic Alphabet symbols and some examples of their use. Note that there is no such thing as a definitive list of phonemes because of accents, dialects and the evolution of language itself. Therefore you may discover lists with more or less than these 44 sounds.

Consonants

What is the International Phonetic Alphabet?

How can you pronounce a word you've never read? It can be a bit tricky. How about a word in a foreign language? Now that must be impossible! Or is it? Imagine a set of symbols that could tell you how to pronounce any word in any language on the planet? Well that is exactly what the International Phonetic Alphabet is. Currently, the IPA consists of 107 sound symbols, 52 diacritics (accents) and 4 prosodic marks (intonations) encompassing virtually every phoneme used in every language on the earth. So for any written word, you can identify the associated phoneme symbols, and with a bit of practice, pronounce the word! Congratulations, you can speak Greek now!

The IPA was created by the International Phonetic Association. Founded in 1886 in Paris, their original mission was to help school children pronounce words in foreign languages and to aid in the teaching of reading. Today their mission is to promote the scientific study of phonetics.

Vowels

Teaching phonemic awareness

Knowing that phonemic awareness is a critical skill and being able to effectively teach it are two different things. The book 50 Reading Strategies for K-8 Learners ( Sage Publications uggests 5 guidelines for phonemic awareness instruction:

1. Analysis of phonemic awareness assessment data should drive instruction, as only a small percentage of students need explicit instruction (Ehri & Roberts, 2006).

2. Phonemic awareness instruction should be a positive, enriching experience that allows students to engage in language play (Yopp, 1992).

3. Effective phonemic awareness instruction provides for individual differences in abilities and uses leveled scaffolding to facilitate growth (McGee & Ukrainetz, 2009).

4. Developmentally appropriate phonemic awareness instruction uses chants, poetry, songs, and rhymes to engage students' curiosity about language and to develop metalinguistic awareness (Yopp & Yopp, 2000).

5. Effective phonemic awareness instruction explicitly labels sounds and demonstrates the process of blending-segmenting of sounds (Ehri et al., 2001).

Begin with assessment and then use playful, individualized, multisensory instruction

Consistent with all the researched advice on teaching phonemic awareness above, educational therapist and author Dr. Erica Warren, believes that the key to successfully teaching the 44 phonemes in English is assessment, followed by individualized, multi-sensory instruction. She has developed a helpful assessment tool and a number of fun, effective instruction/remediation tools for helping young readers master the essential sounds of the English language. And she created a custom bundle of tools just for Reading Well parents and professional visitors at a special discounted price. The bundle includes an easy to administer assessment tool and over 50 fun, multisensory games and activities which children love. We suggest you check it out.

Final sounds on the 44 phonemes in English

The difficulty people with dyslexia have in distinguishing phonemes is most clearly revealed in their poor spelling. While any phoneme can be a challenge, some are more problematic than others. The vowels and digraphs generally present more difficulty than the consonants, although any sound can present difficulty depending on the particular word and phrase in which it resides.

Good luck and good reading!

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A list of the 44 phonemes in English, their 44 sounds and common spellings

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Tool 7 Part 3 Topic 3a - Extended Practice Activities with Connected Text

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sound and mouth movement support.

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Tool 7 Part 3 Topic 2f - You’re It! Flashcard Game

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Tool 2 Part 3 Topic 4a - See Think Wonder

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Mary E. Dahlgren is a national literacy consultant and child advocate from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.  Dr. Dahlgren’s longstanding interest in early childhood and elementary education has compelled her to spend much of her career working directly with classroom teachers to understand the science of learning to read and how to apply this information in classrooms. She provides training on how to provide beginning reading instruction along with implementation of effective interventions for struggling readers.  She is the president and founder of Tools 4 Reading a company providing literacy coaching, ongoing professional development, and publisher of products for elementary teachers.
Visit the Tools 4 Reading website to find out about Dr. Dahlgren’s reading supports including Sound Spelling Cards and other downloadable reading materials: www.tools4reading.com

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Tool 2 Part 3 Topic 3b (Discussion—Positive Reflections)

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Tool 7 Part 3 Topic 2d - High Frequency Words

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If you want some more practice to help you, here is a link to a video of Dr. Glaser articulating all of the consonant and vowel phonemes. You can use this video to help you practice and correct any phonemes you may be articulating incorrectly: Phoneme Pronunciation

If you prefer, revisit the exercises you did at the end of Part 1: Consonant Phoneme Practice and Vowel Phoneme Practice. It is a fun way to practice the phonemes and then get immediate feedback as to whether you pronounced them right.

phoneme inventories

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Tool 3 Part 4 Topic 2  - How to Correct Your Own Articulation and Your Students'

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Tool 2 Part 3 Topic 3a - Positive Reflections

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PAST (Phonological Awareness Screening Test)

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PAST (Phonological Awareness Screening Test)

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The Phonological Awareness Skills Test (PAST) is an informal, diagnostic, individually administered assessment tool to help you determine the point of instruction for your students and monitor progress made from doing the activities you select. As it is not a norm-reference test, there can be flexibility in its administration. Teachers are free to administer all sections of the test in one setting or break the test into smaller chunks. It is also acceptable to reteach the directions as necessary or add your own additional words to each section.

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Tool 7 Part 3 Topic 2a - Build a Sight Vocabulary

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What are your students’ levels of phoneme awareness? There are several assessments of phoneme segmentation, first sound awareness, and other phoneme manipulation skills. Explore the following websites for examples of free assessments.

Acadience Reading

Test of Auditory Analysis Skills

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Aouad, J. and Savage, R. (2009). The component structure of preliteracy skills: Further evidence for the simple view of reading. Canadian Journal of School Psychology, 24 (2), 183-200.

Catts, H., Adlof, S., and Weismer, S. (2006). Language deficits in poor comprehenders: A case for the simple view of reading. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49, 278-293.

Gough, P., Hoover, W., and Patterson, C. (1996). Some observations on a simple view of reading. In C. Cornoldi and J. Oakhill (eds.), Reading comprehension difficulties: Processes and intervention (pp. 1-13). Mahway, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

*Gough, P. and Tunmer, W. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7, 6-10.

Hoover, W. and Gough, P. (1990). The simple view of reading. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2, 127-160.

*Kamhi, A. (2007). Knowledge deficits: the true crisis in education. ASHA Leader, 12 (7), 28-29.

*These articles are short and easy to read.

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The Simple View of Reading is a formula demonstrating the widely accepted view that reading has two basic components: word recognition (decoding) and language comprehension. Research studies show that a student's reading comprehension score can be predicted if decoding skills and language comprehension abilities are known.

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Tool 7 Part 3 Topic 1 - Provide the Practice Students Need to Be Fluent Readers

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Astounding Effectiveness of Dual Language Education

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Astounding Effectiveness of Dual Language Education

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Another easy read on this topic by David Kilpatrick.

https://www.thereadingleague.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/13-14_Kilpatrick.pdf

~ Stegall

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Tool 3 Part 4 Topic 1 - Plan Daily Lessons

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Easy to read article about this research by Goigh and Tunmer. This has been a significant key piece to the NC SIP Foundations of Reading training that your districts may have offered to teachers in past years.

https://www.readingrockets.org/article/simple-view-reading

~ Stegall

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Tool 3 Part 3 Topic 9 - Daily Routines 3

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Dr. Marilyn Jager Adams holds a Ph.D. from Brown University in cognitive psychology and developmental psychology and is internationally regarded for her research and applied work in the area of cognition and education. Recipient of the American Educational Research Association's Sylvia Scribner Award for outstanding research, Dr. Adams's contributions include the landmark book, Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print (MIT Press). She is cited in the 2000 Politics of Education Yearbook as one of the five most influential people in the national reading policy arena.

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Tool 3 Part 3 Topic 9 - Daily Routines 2

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Tool 7 Part 2 Topic 3b - Diagnostic Assessment—The Next Step

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Tool 3 Part 3 Topic 9 - Daily Routines 1