• “Sound Hopscotch” – I will create a hopscotch game with chalk on the concrete outside. Each square will represent a different phoneme. Children will jump on the squares while saying the corresponding phoneme. After that, I will ask them to try and blend the sounds they jumped on to form a word.

• Accommodations: I will provide visual aids or sound cards for less confident learners. I will include multi-syllable words or challenging phoneme blends for more advanced learners.

I will create file folders with simple activities families can do at home, such as sound-matching games or rhyming activities.

Supporting Dual Language Learners at Home – This resource is tailored for English Learner families facing communication challenges. It provides bilingual activities and strategies for supporting phonemic awareness in different languages (Krastel, 2023).

Let's go “Phonics Fishing!” We will play a fishing game in which the students “fish” for letter cards and then blend them to form words.

For accommodations, I will provide a list of target words with visuals for struggling students. For advanced students, I will include more complex word patterns and vocabulary.

“Phonics Practice at Home” – I will send a booklet with phonics activities and games home to work on throughout the week. The booklet will include sorting letter cards and creating word families.

To support English learners' learning of phonics at home, I will make file folders that have word matching games and word bingo to help the students learn new words and reinforce the English phonics they already understand. I will also offer resources, such as IXL.com, to support phonics development in English (IXL Learning, 2024).

I will have the class participate in “Echo Reading”, which is where I will read a passage aloud, then have students “echo” or read it back to me, focusing on expression and accuracy. For struggling readers, I will provide shorter passages and additional modeling. For advanced readers, I will use longer and more complex texts.

Strategies that I will encourage parents to do to help their children practice reading fluently, will include reading with them for a minimum of 15 minutes or more each day, choral reading- where they read at the same time so the child can hear the tone, expression, and pace of reading fluently, and to remind parents to choose reading material that interests their child (Bardwell, 2022). I will suggest that parents take their child to the library and let them choose a few books.

An excellent at-home resource for families who are learning English is ABCMouse.com. They have multiple activities that focus on the components of reading, including building fluency, and they are offered in English and Spanish so that families can work together to develop their child's reading skills (ABC Mouse, 2024).

ABC Mouse. (2024). Can we personalize our learning experience in another language like Spanish? – ABCmouse. ABC Mouse. https://support.abcmouse.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500005418921-Can-we-personalize-our-learning-experience-in-another-language-like-Spanish

Adler, C. R. (2024). Seven strategies to teach students text comprehension. Reading Rockets. https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/comprehension/articles/seven-strategies-teach-students-text-comprehension

Bardwell, L. (2022, March 25). 6 ways to get families engaged in reading fluency growth. THE Journal. https://thejournal.com/articles/2022/03/25/6-ways-to-get-families-engaged-in-reading-fluency-growth.aspx

IXL Learning. (2024). IXL: Learn Phonics. IXL Learning. https://www.ixl.com/ela/phonics?partner=bing&adGroup=Search+-+ELA+-+General+-+Mod+Broad+-+US%2BPhonics+Lessons&msclkid=4d0864562c6c1364f49c029b7d28f377&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Search+-+ELA+-+General+-+Mod+Broad+-+US&utm_term=%2Bphonics+%2Blessons&utm_content=Phonics+Lessons

Krastel, T. (2023, December 20). 5 language-rich activities to support dual language learners at home during COVID-19 school closures. Teach. Learn. Grow. https://www.nwea.org/blog/2020/5-language-rich-activities-support-dual-language-home-learners/

Ramirez, R. (2023). To speak or not to speak my language: Supporting families’ home language practices. NAEYC. https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/tyc/fall2023/supporting-families-home-language

Sayre, A. P., Hulbert, L., Ehlert, L., Aston, D., Nolan, H., Neuschwander, C., DiTerlizzi, A., Underwood, D., Andrews-Goebel, N., Showers, P., & Barretta, G. (2024). Word walls. Reading Rockets. https://www.readingrockets.org/classroom/classroom-strategies/word-walls  

I will create a word wall of sight words and vocabulary words that we will reference throughout the current lesson. After the word's introduction and to assess their understanding, I will ask students to choose a vocabulary word, then ask them to use it in a sentence. This activity can be tailored for individual students by providing picture clues for students who may be below grade level or are English Language Learners and more in-depth for students who are above grade level (Sayre et al., 2024).

The first strategy I will encourage families to use at home is to practice "Word Families." I will create file folders with interactive games to send home. These games may include words that have the same beginning, middle, or ending sounds. To help learn vocabulary, I may send home another game that has laminated cards with pictures that represent vocabulary words, laminated cards with the words' definitions, and laminated cards with the vocabulary words. Then, the students and their families can play a matching game. For early readers, they may match the picture to the word and definition, or they may play it like Memory and mix them up, place them facedown, and take turns flipping them over to make matches.

The second strategy is for my English learning students. I will print flashcards of our vocabulary words in English and the language spoken at home, along with the definitions in English and Spanish. It is important to recognize that their familial language is important to their culture and to help the children grow in understanding both languages. It is crucial to be supportive and inclusive of families who speak a different language (Ramirez, 2023).

The strategy I would like to use for this example is story mapping. Story mapping is a visual graphic organizer that can look many kinds of ways. It may look like a list, it may look like a bubble web, or may even be sentences.

This story map will include the children filling in the main character(s), the location/setting, and main events.

For students who are just learning this skill, I will provide sentence starters, such as, "The main character of the story is ________." "The setting of the story is __________." They may also be given picture clues. This allows them to focus on the main point of the exercise rather than worrying about crafting a sentence or spelling the words correctly. My more advanced students can write their own sentences and list several main characters or discuss if the story had more than one primary setting, allowing them to dive deeper into comprehension. My students who are ELLs may be provided with dual language sheets or be given picture clues.

The first resource for parents to strengthen their children's reading comprehension skills at home is to pause before turning the page while reading with them. Ask your child questions about what they just read. Questions could be easy, like, "Who were these pages about? What did that character do here? What do you think will happen next (Adler, 2024)?"

The next strategy is for ELLs and their families. I will send home a book printed in English and Spanish (if that is the language they speak at home) for them to work on together. I will also send home a graphic organizer with sentence starters pre-printed on the sheet to help them identify different parts of the story. I will ask them to identify what happened at the beginning, the middle, and the end of the story.

The Literacy Tree: A Representation of Foundational Literacy Skills (REL Southeast) (REL Southeast) - YouTube

5 Effective Teaching Strategies for Reading - TeachHUB

What is Phonics? | Reading Lessons (youtube.com)

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED512569.pdf

Five (5) Components of Reading :: Read Naturally, Inc.