| Instructional Decision-Making | Before Reading | During/After Reading | Letter/Word Work | Reading/Writing Connections |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Early Emergent Readers
Facilitator Notes
How does alphabet tracing help children having difficulty learning letters?
How do we scaffold word work activities to support our earliest readers in guided reading?
See also Suggested Readings for information you may want to provide for discussion during the Session, or as follow-up after.
How does alphabet tracing help children having difficulty learning letters?
BEFORE VIEWING: Read the introductory information on the webpage. Consider the guiding question.
DURING VIEWING: We suggest that teachers take notes related to the guiding question as well as other thoughts and questions, while they view each video clip.
AFTER VIEWING: Discuss participants’ thoughts and questions. Points to consider:
- Discuss some of the teacher moves that are important to making alphabet tracing successful, such as careful observation of children’s letter formation and guiding them before they learn bad habits; taking regular notes to scaffold appropriately; having a consistent alphabet chart.
- Alternatives could include individualized alphabet books with links chosen by the child. (Reading Recovery teachers can explain how they create and use these books with children with very limited letter knowledge.)
- Discuss ways to overcome any practical obstacles to implementing alphabet tracing or other individualized letter recognition work with kindergarten children most in need of this support.
How do we scaffold letter and sound activities to support our earliest readers in guided reading?
PREPARATION: You may want to connect this part of the Section with Early Emergent Readers in During/After Reading and Interactive Writing in Reading/Writing Connections Sections to think about how all the pieces fit together.
BEFORE VIEWING: Consider the guiding question.
DURING VIEWING: We suggest that teachers take notes related to the guiding question as well as other thoughts and questions, while they view each video clip.
AFTER VIEWING: Discuss participants’ thoughts and questions. Points to consider:
- After each clip, discuss how the teacher scaffolded to the children’s needs to provide a successful experience, (e.g., the smiley face dots to support letter formation in rainbow writing, increasing support to finding letters on the alphabet support by indicating a row, then offering choices with each letter, etc.)
- Discuss the importance of children rapidly recognizing and naming letters, and ways to begin focusing on speed as soon as children know specific letters (e.g., having students quickly name and match all the same magnetic letters together).
- In addition to having a consistent alphabet chart used in the school, discuss the importance of consistent verbal prompts for letter formation, and linking the motor movement to the verbal path.
- Discuss some of the practical aspects of developing letter and sound activities as children are just beginning to participate in guided reading groups:
- Each activity in guided reading is short (1 – 3 minutes).
- Teachers usually build up guided reading lessons from 5 to 15 or 20 minutes as children’s attention span increases. You might start just with a name puzzle, then in separate lessons introduce one new activity each time.
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Links to Reading/Writing
Facilitator Notes
How does our word work support struggling readers in their reading and writing?
See also Suggested Readings for information you may want to provide for discussion during the Session, or as follow-up after.
PREPARATION: Ask participants to bring:
- books they are currently using with a group of struggling readers, and recent running records, writing, and/or lesson notes, and/or
- lesson notes from a recent word work activity they did with their students, and the book and writing from the same lesson.
BEFORE VIEWING: Read the introductory information on the webpage. Consider the guiding question.
DURING VIEWING: We suggest that teachers take notes related to the guiding question as well as other thoughts and questions, while they view each video clip.
AFTER VIEWING: Discuss participants’ thoughts and questions after viewing each video clip.
- Points to consider:
- Making words helps children slow down, look closely, and articulate the sequential sounds in a word. They need to check by looking closely, left to right, across the word, to match the sounds to the letters. This is the same thing that they need to do to read and check their reading in text, and what they need to do to write and check their words in writing.
- Making and breaking (b-at) helps children see patterns in words to help them get to other words. It also reinforces the sequential order of sounds and letters in a word.
- As children move up in reading levels, words get longer and spelling becomes more irregular. Children need to look and listen for the biggest parts they know in words to read and write efficiently. Finding and using parts in word work teaches children this process.
- Analogies are another efficient way to get to longer or unknown words. By using words that have become sight words at higher levels (e.g., make, back, hop, hope), children can quickly figure out how to read unknown words (shake, cracking, slope). Analogies also assist in teaching children to be flexible in word solving – if it doesn’t work (make sense and look right) one way, try it another way.
- The teachers in the video clips always bring the word work back to how we use it in reading and writing. Children don’t automatically make this connection, so we demonstrate it continuously.
- Word work allows the teacher to see evidence of what children know and where they are struggling. Note places in the videos where children struggled and what the teacher may have learned from those difficulties to inform future lessons.
- With partners or in small groups, participants can share their data about their struggling readers, and discuss what type of word work would be most appropriate to help children move forward. Also discuss how and where they would link the word work examples to the texts.
- With partners or in small groups, participants can share their recent word work and discuss what they learned about their students in the process, and how it will affect next book choices and writing.
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High Frequency Words
Facilitator Notes
How do we effectively introduce new high frequency words during the word work segment of a guided reading lesson?
How do we effectively practice high frequency words during word work in guided reading?
See also Suggested Readings for information you may want to provide for discussion during the Session, or as follow-up after.
PREPARATION: You may want to connect this part of the Section with High Frequency Words in During/After Reading and High Frequency Words video clip in Reading/Writing Connections Sections to think about how all the pieces fit together.
BEFORE VIEWING: Read the introductory information on the webpage. Consider the guiding questions.
DURING VIEWING: We suggest that teachers take notes related to the guiding questions as well as other thoughts and questions, while they view each video clip.
AFTER VIEWING: Discuss participants’ thoughts and questions after viewing each video clip. Points to consider:
- Introducing high frequency words in guided reading supports struggling readers who may not be ready for sight words taught to the whole class. We can differentiate to their needs by choosing the words that are in the texts they are reading and the stories they are writing, thus making it much easier for them to learn these words.
- In both introducing new high frequency words and practicing them, teachers use multiple modalities, consistently reinforce looking left to right, direct attention to how the word looks (since children need to know them instantly on sight and many of them are irregularly spelled as well), relate the words to books being read, and emphasize fast reading and writing of the words.
While the high frequency word work is very important, it is short and focused and does not take time away from reading and writing meaningful text.