Phonics & Sight Word Practice That Builds Confidence

Hi Peeps!
I love incorporating phonics and sight word practice with chunky monkey. This phonics strategy is awesome for beginning readers.

It is important, however, for beginning readers to address the strategies in realistic situations as well as in isolation.

In 7 Key Components to Effective and Engaging Instruction I stressed the importance of working on both phonics and sight words in independent and guided practice. This incorporates rigor, builds mastery, and improves fluency.

It is essential that students build confidence in working independently with phonic and sight word skills. One of the best ways to do that is by incorporating these important reading skills in as many things as possible.

I often have my students highlight or circle phonic chunks as well as the sight words we are studying for the week in worksheets and readings that we do throughout the week. Students notice the chunks of focus are not found in isolation. They are in every day text.

THIS is common core. Real life application. Understanding new learning in the context of where it is found in the real world.

Read More about how your kiddos can deepen their understanding, fluency and reading confidence.

How to Ensure Your Classwork is Meaningful and Engaging

Hey Peeps! Traci from Dragonflies in First here! I wanted to share about something near and dear to my heart - Engaging and Meaningful classwork, which I've shared about a few times on my blog.

It is essential to incorporate engagement strategies into your classroom throughout your day in order to ensure maximum student takeaway. Worksheets cannot replace brainstorming and discussion, field trips (both physical and cyber space driven), games, manipulatives, movement and role-play, music, story-telling and visualization opportunities. These key aspects of engagement are essential in every primary classroom. 

However, there are times when worksheets are simply part of the day. And that's ok! Just keep in mind, they should not be considered busy work. The worksheets you chose to incorporate need to have merit within themselves.

• Can they be completed after/within partner or small group discussions?
• Are the part of delving into research?
• Are they true assessment opportunities that can guide instruction or provide vital progress monitoring data?

Worksheets have a bad rap in the minds of many teachers - and for good reason - when they are used for mindless busy work, very little is gained by the student and the teacher. They amount to a lot of wasted time.

Throughout my many years of teaching one thing I have definitely learned - and it took a LOOOOOONNNNNNGGGGG time to learn this - was to s.l.o.w. d.o.w.n. 

I don't mean work slowly. What I mean is - stop making the goal to get through your stack of work you scheduled for the day - but rather make everything meaningful, even the worksheets! Turn what is routine into something engaging and meaningful. 

This wasn't an easy shift in thinking. Like so many teachers, I am a task person. A list maker. I like to check things off, get things done and move on!

But that is definitely NOT the way to teach. Thorough understanding doesn't occur that way. No, I don't mean throw out your schedule! That's just crazy talk!!! Just make room in it for better teaching.

Giving myself permission (and sometimes simply forcing myself) to SLOW DOWN and wring every speck of learning out of each thing we do in class was a fabulous change for me. My first few years of teaching I always stressed about getting everything done and not "falling behind".

One of the biggest and best "shifts" I made in this area was in correcting work.

I rarely grade things on my own and pass them back. In my class my kiddos hear a lot of....

"Ok, grab your red pens and we'll go over this."

In the first weeks of school we go over the rules about the red pens and how to grade/go over your own work. The kids know that skipping ahead, marking something correct when it is actually wrong and just needs to be fixed, will result in a moved tile and a paper that is thrown away. If they get something wrong, they know it is absolutely no big deal however it is a HUGE deal if they don't fix it when we go over it.

One way I like to explain this is with my morning work routine. In my room we complete Morning Wake-Up at the beginning of each day. I allot and 30 minute time slot for this routine. Sometimes it takes less, sometimes a little more. But, on average this routine that some teachers spend 5-10 minutes on in their classrooms gets a lot of attention in our room.

Morning Wake Up is a review sheet that we do each day. I've had it bound into books that the kids keep in their desks. For the most part the kids can complete all of the aspects of each page on their own because it is review. However it remains a little bit challenging so they are not completely bored. The pages are routine, so there isn't a lot of teaching involved, they are allowed to confer with table mates and partners if they aren't sure (the "how to" on group and partner discussion is practiced at length in class so they understand the expectation and procedure). I have mine bound into a book for each student just to keep things quick and handy.

Here's one of the pages. Keep in mind that the question content/standards vary a bit throughout the year, but the format is always similar.

On most classwork I instruct the kiddos to work on their own, or with partners/small groups (we've discussed HOW to work together numerous times - so there are discussions - not just one kiddo telling the other kiddo(s) the answers.) For our morning work, the routine is always the same. The know exactly what to do each day so little, if any, instruction is needed.

A finished page would look something like this.

This is where many teachers put it away, or collect it and move on. But in my room, it's at this point where I say,

"Ok kiddos, let's go over this."

And they grab their red pens.

But this is the important part. I don't just tell them the answers and have them mark them right and fix any errors. Each and every day we do a little lesson on each question. I consider it a time where they teach me. Their job is to explain to me why their answer is correct and I do a lot of asking why. A LOT OF ASKING WHY.

This type of "going over" things is super important with worksheets. It ensures that your students are engaged in their learning, understand their answer choices and can do some reciprocal teaching which is another extremely important engagement strategy.

The first question is my favorite part. This is really hard first graders. Quite honestly, most of the time it requires some common sense that a few of them haven't quite developed yet. This type of "read the paragraph and answer the question" format is found on many worksheets... my procedure in grading/going over/discussing it is nearly always the same.

I will start the correcting of this problem with questions like:

Is it possible that a kid may not share?

Sure, we've all met kiddos on that playground that have difficulty with that.

Might the kid not like to play kickball?

Absolutely, it never said that the kids liked to play it. We really don't know how they feel.

Could kicking a ball far keep other kids from catching it?

Yes, it could go way over their heads or go by them too quickly.

Ok... so were there any clues to make one answer a BETTER choice than the rest?

The point here is that often times there will be more than one possible choice. I encourage the kiddos to search out evidence that will help support the BEST choice. They must give me the reason WHY they chose choice B. 

This is a great technique to use whenever going over short reads and answers. Simply stating the answer isn't enough. You can take any work similar to this so much farther. A lengthy, meaningful lesson can be made from one small paragraph. 

Have students underline evidence for their answers whenever they are completing worksheets - it doesn't matter if that task is in the written directions or not. 

For direct questions like this consider asking:  "Why isn't C the correct answer?" Or, "What's wrong with B? It starts with a capital."

Having kiddos explain why something is wrong allows them to engage higher level thinking and demonstrate a more thorough knowledge of a concept. When they CAN'T explain it - I know we have another opportunity for a well needed lesson.

This type of question allows us to discuss WHY the name of this picture follows a phonic or spelling rule we've learned about. Find opportunities to incorporate what you've been discussing in all of your classwork. Those phonic rules are all around us. Pointing them out constantly helps students associate real world to their learning.

Another important engagement strategy is drawing or illustrating. Incorporate this skill whenever space allows. The directions to "draw" something don't need to be written on the page. In fact, the back side of a worksheet often offers plenty of opportunity to take learning farther by asking students to illustrate words, main ideas, essential facts and so much more!

I LOVE to have them explain to me the phonic rule or spelling pattern found in words, rather than ask them to spell or read it correctly. AGAIN... the more they can explain, the higher level their thinking and the greater rules are embedded into their schema.

Reminding students to read ALL answer choices in questions whether or not they think they know the right answer right away is an important skill and allows for more practice and engagement. 

In "grading" or going over questions like the one shown below, take it further than simply saying "The answer is A" or "What is the answer?".

Instead incorporate things like:

"What is that mark at the end of that sentence? What does it mean?" "Both a and c end in e. Why doesn't the o in those words make the long o sound?" "What would they say if the DID follow the rules?"

This provides the kiddos with another opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge on sight and high frequency words who "do not follow the rules".

Place emphasis on letter formation, editing, grammar, and sentence construction on all things. Don't just save it for your writing block. Consistently being attentive to sentence structure and all that goes into writing will help further develop those skills. Just "fixing a sentence" on a fix-a-sentence activity isn't always engaging enough. Incorporate as many skills as possible. "Is there another way we could word this sentence?" "What adjective or vivid word could you add to make the sentence more interesting?"

Ask your kiddos to show complete number sentences for how they found their answers instead of simply writing a number or bubbling in an answer. For example on problem number 7, it would not be acceptable to only write 3. Whenever possible, have students explain their answers in a written sentence or two, draw a picture to illustrate the process or teach a friend how the equation is solved. 

In the end, a corrected, engaging student paper will look something like this:

Throughout the time we are "going over" our papers I walk around the classroom and monitor their happy marks (stars, hearts, happy faces... whatever they can draw quickly). To be honest it only takes 1 or 2 times of someone in class getting their paper thrown in the trash for "cheating and not correcting their paper the right way" along with moving their tile to ensure that the whole class does the right thing and stays focused on the important part... LEARNING. I emphasize over and over again that we all learn from our mistakes and explaining our thinking.

When I first started teaching, it was hard for me to see taking this much time on "grading" as anything other than a COLOSSAL WASTE OF TIME. After all, it's review, it should go quick. But I realized that this review was a perfect opportunity for the kiddos to completely consume these concepts. Eat them up, spit them back out, know them upside down, sideways and backwards. AND it helps me identify who knows the concept and who doesn't while allowing me to immediately address the issue.

Realizing I had to make a shift in thinking in order to ensure what we did in class was as meaningful and effective as could be definitely made me a better teacher and definitely helped my students become amazingly successful thinkers! 

If you feel that stress of getting through it all, I greatly recommend you try telling yourself to slow down and just spend a day doing a lot of asking why. Cut back on the worksheets, and make sure the ones you do use are valuable, engaging and provide thinking opportunities. Have your kiddos teach you and each other what they know. You will learn a lot about what they don't know and what you thought they "got" but really didn't. If you are nervous about slowing down and letting some things on the plan go - I promise you'll change your mind after shifting gears for a couple of days. Once you see the shift within your student's knowledge gain you will be so happy you took the time. Worried your higher level students will be bored? Don't be. They absolutely LOVE being able to teach a concept back to you. All of my kiddos are seriously incredibly engaged during these "grading" times.

You can check out Morning Wake Up here:

Kindergarten Morning Wake Up

1st Grade Morning Wake Up

2nd Grade Morning Wake Up

Enjoy your day peeps!

Bossy E FREEBIE!

Hey Peeps! In my first grade classroom all of us have FINALLY moved on to long vowels this month! Yay! It's always exciting when we reach this time of year.  I thought I'd share one of my favorite long vowel things with you. I LOVE teaching literacy. It's just so fun to see the "lightbulbs" go off as the kiddos get the rules and patterns involved with phonics. In fact, phonic rules are one of my absolute favorite things to teach. Even the kiddos who read FAR above grade level get a thrill out of the knowledge that are rules behind a lot of this wacky stuff that is English. 

"I KNEW it was a long A word, but I didn't know there was rule!"

Many of my kiddos who know the e is silent and the vowel it is associated with is long... have no idea there is an actual phonetic rule associated with it. But they "get it" the second you spell it all out for them. 
The best part is that with the introduction of this rule, a whole new world of reading opens up for a lot of kiddos. Now they can read a variety of readers, books and stories because long vowels become part of the everyday routine.
This little e goes by many monikers: Silent e Partner e Super e Magic e Lazy e I am sure there are more. But in my room, we call him Bossy e. Because, well, he bosses letters around. He reaches over one consonant sound and BONKS vowels on the head and tells them to say their name. He makes C and G turn SOFT... and he does all of this in SILENCE.

Display this little anchor chart on your wall to copy (trace over) on a large poster paper and you have an awesome tool to which your kiddos can refer while cementing all that Bossy e can do.

The whirlwind of phonetic rules for long vowels and vowel combinations will fill the remainder of our school year. Bossy e is the best way to start it off! 

Click the pic below to grab the anchor chart shown above and these two practice sheets.

Check out the Long Vowels Practice and Review and Bossy R and the Diphthongs for all kinds of long and vowel combination phonic rule activities!

  

Stop by and visit me over at Dragonflies in First for more ideas and freebies!

One Activity ALL K-2 Teachers Must Have for The New Year!

Get the Most out of this FUN 10 Minute Activity

As a second grade teacher with only so many minutes during the day to teach, I'm always looking for intelligent ways to streamline my instruction.  Within our language arts block alone, we are expected to teach the following: reading workshop, writing workshop, guided reading groups, handwriting, vocabulary, spelling, grammar, phonics, and more.  What about the other content areas?  With only so many minutes in the day and within the week, how does one "fit it all in?"  

A good friend of mine, Ginny Dowd, introduced me to her program a few years ago called The Phonics Dance.  I have used it each year not only because it has helped to close achievement gaps for reading and writing but because it is incredibly fun - the students love it.  You see, we don't sit in desks in rows as we code letter sounds, separate sounds in isolation, or try to explain the schwa sound to a room full of seven year olds.  Instead, we stand up, sing, dance, and hunk and chunk patterns within poetry.  We get our bodies moving and grooving!  This great academic activity also serves as a kinesthetic brain break to get our blood flowing the way it should as we learn important content and have proper levels of oxygen delivered to all the right areas of our body.  

Here's How It Works...

Each week, we introduce two new sounds.  Our grade level team has done our best to align these sounds to our spelling program.  Some weeks it doesn't align perfectly, and that is alright.  However, for the week we focused on "the long a sound", it worked nicely.  Each sound has a "hunks and chunks word wall card."  These cards get placed on our "Phonics Dance Bulletin Board" as they're introduced each week.  

First...

As we introduce each sound, students learn the brief chant and motions.  (Teacher Tip: I ordered Ginny's C.D. so I could practice these in the car) After we have learned the new chant and motions, we start with the first one and quickly do the entire "Phonics Dance."  By the end of the year, it does take a bit longer since they're doing all of the sounds.  But this repetition pays off huge!  Then they get a poetry page to begin "hunking and chunking."  We know the brain seeks patterns, so we have students circle all the "hunks and chunks" they find within the poem.  If they see a previously learned hunk and chunk sound, it's fair game - they may circle it along with the new sounds they're learning.  They love hunting for these.  Honestly, it's like a game!  

*See Ginny's class fully explain The Phonics Dance <- video link!

(the dance part starts around 2:20)

Second...

When I pass out the poem that goes along with the sound, first I read it aloud to model the rhythm.  Then we read it choral style.  Finally I ask them to read it independently.  The fun begins after these three readings... hunking and chunking!  (this means they're simply circling the sounds they find - for example: ai, ay, wh, th, sh, ch...)

Third...

After everyone has "hunked and chunked" their poems, we frame the poem into stanzas.  In the beginning, students learn a stanza is like a paragraph... but for a poem.  Then we number each stanza.  This helps with management as we check our work.  I go through each stanza to verify quickly that each child has had the opportunity to locate all of the letter sound combinations.  They get so excited when they have found all of them.

Forth...

We go to the title of the poem and start from the beginning to count the number of hunks and chunks we found in each stanza.  We jot this number down to the right of the stanza, in the margin.  

Fifth...

Students look for easy ways to quickly "snap numbers together" in order to make it easier to add.  They hunt for patterns to make 10 or doubles or doubles +1, etc... This encourages them to take several numbers and group them easily to enhance their mental math number sense.  We jot the total number up top by our name.  For some reason, they get really excited about this... almost as if it is the poem's score in some sort of sporting event.  I love it!

Sixth...

We typically introduce this poem and new sound on Monday.  On Wednesday, we introduce the new sound and poem.  We go through the same process of learning the chant, dance moves, hunking and chunking the poem, etc.  The only thing we add is that we take the two poem's scores and find the difference so we can see which poem won for the week.  Students naturally discover the many methods for calculating differences when they have an authentic reason for doing so.  It's been a pleasure watching them share these strategies (like counting up or bunny hopping) with one another before I've introduced them within our math lessons.

Each year I've seen my student's light up in guided reading groups when they come to a tricky word and have another strategy to attack sounding it out.  The Phonics Dance teaches students letter sounds from sh, ch, th, wh, to tion, sion, and ion.  What a range!  My second graders simply love it, and that is my reason for sharing... I'm not an affiliate and receive zero commission for spreading Phonics Dance love.  I have a second grader myself and have watched him struggle as a developing reader.  Seeing how this has helped him is my motivation for sharing with teachers everywhere.  

Guided Reading Phonics Posters

Hello!  It's Reagan from Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits.  Here is a little repost from a couple weeks ago!

As a teacher of reading we come to discover that there are some habits that separate skilled readers from those that struggle.

Struggling Readers Tend To:

• Rely on context clues and guessing
• Skip difficult sections of text
• Read slowly and with great difficulty
• Focus on decoding and not comprehension
• Lack self-monitoring

Confident Readers Tend To:

• Process words automatically and rapidly
• Look for known chunks in unfamiliar text
• Use context to confirm pronunciation and meaning

Because the expectations for young students learning to read have increased tremendously year after year, it becomes overwhelming for many of our students to keep up with the fast pace of introducing new sound/spellings week after week.  Because we must cover so many different phonics patterns, we can lose those little strugglers to confusion and over-saturation of new material.

I noticed that when my strugglers were not able to recall learned sounds from previous weeks, I was having to dig out our previous word work activities or recreate them quickly with a little whiteboard to support that reader.  I wanted to have something I could easily point to and remind/review as needed. 

Phonics instruction provided in a meaningful

context provides multiple anchors to help

students learn about words: meaning,

spelling, and sound

  Being consistent with sound boxes can really make an impact on your struggling readers.  This gives them a concrete understanding of sounds and the letters that make them.  It can be eye opening to see how your students react and push sounds into the boxes. 

I had to edit this video down to just 42 seconds from almost 4 minutes in order to get it to upload, so this is not a complete picture of how we manipulate the sounds. 

Students gain an understanding of digraphs, trigraphs, beginning, medial, and ending sounds!

Anything can be used for sound boxes!  Changing it up provides novelty which makes for eager little learners!  #milklids  #erasers  #googlyeyes  #poms  #seasonalitems 

Focus on one particular group of sounds or build a guided reading anchor wall.

 In protective sleeves students can highlight, circle, or cover certain parts of the word to further explore the sounds and pattern.

I made two versions of each sound.  One that just anchors the sound to a word, and one that helps provide word examples of that same pattern.

In order to keep the pages from getting worn, I decided to place them in sheet protectors.  Plastic folders or little binders are the perfect place for creating a little review reading book. 

Click the picture to see these on teacherspayteachers.

The inspiration for phonics posters came from our flipping for phonics book sets.  My students LOVE to read these all.the.time.  I use them for a warm up during guided reading.  Students also put them int their book boxes and read them to anyone that is willing to listen.  

I also just uploaded these short vowel tracers!  Now my students can work on handwriting while I target their phonics pattern!    My reason for creating these is for RTI practice as well as for a fast finisher activity.  My groups begged me to put them in the writing center, but I decided to use them for a reward for finishing work.

I also completed the blends and digraph set of posters and tracers too!