Counting Words in Sentences

Hello, everyone!  It's Andrea from Reading Toward the Stars here with a a fun and easy to do activity to help with

I am so glad that all of our beginning of the year literacy assessments are complete!  That means I can actually enjoy working with students, my favorite part of my job!

One of our reading program's biggest weaknesses is helping students gain concept of word, an essential skill for learning to read.  {Check our Carla's post on COW by clicking here.}  With kindergarten, I start with that during week 1 because these students really need it!

So many times the students I work with have never been read to until they enter school.  Some, surprisingly, have never been exposed to words!  This baffles me as I spend my days and nights immersing my own children in reading.  It seems like a simple concept, but some families find it hard.  As a reading specialist, it is my job to close the gap!

One of the things I start with to help students understand that sentences are made of words is a simple activity ~ Counting Words in Sentences.  To do this the teacher reads aloud a sentence to the students.  The students use cubes or counters and slide them up for each word they hear in the sentence.  It is all done orally by the teacher, and the students listen.

Here it is in action in my classroom!

We start out with our counters on our boards.

We move the tiles up for each word in the sentence.

This sentence has 3 words in it!

I always start off with three word sentences and work my way up to sentences with up to 10 words.  This is a great way to help students understand that what we say is made up of separate words, so what we read is made up of words as well.  It builds a connection between the spoken word and the written word.

To try this out with your students, you can grab a copy of my Counting Words Boards freebie by clicking {here} or on the picture below.

How do you help your students make the connection between the spoken and written word?

Teaching English Language Learners: Assessments

Hi everyone! It's Bex from Reading and Writing Redhead. I'm stopping by to share some thoughts on working with English Language Learners. I shared some instructional strategies in my 2 previous posts (Tips for Teaching English Language Learners and More Tips for Teaching English Language Learners) and today I have some thoughts on assessment for these students.

There are a lot of possible ways to assess English Language Learners, and much of what you do will depend on who your students are and what they need which will be determined by their level of English proficiency. When assessing ELLs, I would recommend being proactive and meeting with your school's ELL specialist to plan appropriate assessments together so that you can set students up for success, rather than giving a traditional assessment with no scaffolds or modifications and having the student completely flounder.

Some bright ideas...

If you are looking for ideas on different ways to assess your ELLs,  here are some suggestions. Many of these could qualify as informal assessments, but discuss them with your ELL coordinator and administration and depending on the situation, they may take the place of more traditional assessments that native English speakers are taking.

• Graphic organizers
• Word banks
• Bilingual dictionary
• Extra time
• Shorter responses are accepted
• Manipulatives may be used
• Visuals (both symbolic and authentic) are provided
• "Open book" is allowed
• Flexible setting - students may take an assessment in a separate room 

The scoring of assessments may also be differentiated. If an assessment is given to determine how well students understand a key concept, you are not going to need to focus on grammatical errors, spelling errors, or things like that. You may be able to accommodate ELL students' needs by grading them only on content that shows how well they understand key concepts, how accurate their responses are, and how well they demonstrate the process to come up with their responses (particularly applicable for math and science assessments).

Performance-based assessments are a great way to assess how ELL students are doing without having to worry about giving them a formal written test. Here are some suggestions of performance-based tasks that could be used for assessment purposes.

• retelling stories
• playing games
• oral reports
• reading with partners
• checklists
• brainstorming
• using visual or written prompts to give descriptions or instructions
• telling a story using sequence of pictures
• cloze passages
• self assessment
• projects 
• exhibits

ETS lays out some excellent guidelines for assessments which actually to me, apply to more than just ELLs. These make sense for all students. Their guidelines are:

Clear directions - Directions should be written and designed to eliminate confusion and emphasize clarity. Consider simplifying directions to ensure they are understood.

Defining Expectations - Do not assume students have had any experience with the type of assessment task  you are giving. Be explicit about what type of response is appropriate and what criteria you will  use to grade the response. 

Using Accessible Language - they explain that clear and easy to understand language in assessments is key but to be careful not to simplify content vocabulary that you are assessing. They suggest avoiding idioms, colloquialisms, complex sentence structure, use of constructions using the word "not" in questions and negatives,  and use simple context for fictional situations like word problems. School based fiction may be more accessible to ELLs than a home based context (particularly applicable to math word problems, for example).

Presentation - be aware and attentive to things like font size, illustrations, text, graphics placement and things of those sorts depending on the home language and literacy skills of your students.

Fairness and Sensitivity - and of course use neutral contexts and topics, avoid inflammatory topics, and consider school based contexts rather than home based for ELL students. 

To me, these all make sense as guidelines for all students, not just ELLs. What do you think?

What are some tips you have for assessing your English Language Learners? Let us know by commenting below.

Resources:
ETS' Guidelines for the Assessment of English Language Learners
Color In Colorado English Language Learners Assessment Webcast
Sarasota County School's ESOL and Migrant Education Assessment Strategies
Teaching Strategies Blog
Stanford University's Performance Assessments for English Language Learners

And a thank you to Ashley Hughes for the beautiful frames and Dollar Photo Club!

Great Books for Boys (and Girls)

Hi, lovely readers! I'm always on the lookout for great new books, especially series, that will appeal to my boys. I feel like I'm pretty set on girl books because I can recommend what I used to read or the latest series on Scholastic. With my students, however, I'm overloaded with boys who hate reading with the exception for maybe Diary of a Wimpy  Kid. I'm not as familiar with graphic novels, although I'm slowly learning my way around.  I've discovered two series recently that are a step away from graphic novels but make a great transition to "regular" books while still showing a decent amount of pictures.

The Strange Case of the Origami Yoda is a fun series about a social outcast who walks around giving advice through his Origami Yoda that he carries around on his finger. This "Origami Yoda" eventually makes him more popular. Lots of humor (and not as "boy gross" as Captain Underpants)! These are written slightly higher, but they're perfect for my fifth grade readers and some of my fourth graders.

Time Warp Trio was a series that I had had a small amount of interaction with before but didn't really know about until this year. Some of these books are graphic novels, although not the whole series. Jon Scieszka is the author, though, and he's kind of the guru on boy books (check out guysread.com, his website). In this series, a group of boys travel back in time to different important historical periods to help save history. And if you've ever read any of Scieszka's books before, you KNOW they're funny!

What books do you like for your boys?

RTI Documentation

Hello everyone!  It's Jennie from JD's Rockin' Readers!
I'm sharing a post with you today that I had on my blog awhile back.  It's had a lot of views and I know people are always interested in how they can better document interventions.  So, I am going to share with you a form that I created to help me keep track!

I created an RTI progress monitoring freebie and have had people ask exactly how I use it.  I have been documenting and thought I would share a student that I previously wrote a post about.  This student has been struggling with sight words in her reading.  She gets many of them confused and they are definitely not automatic in her reading.  This student is a good artist and loves to draw so I wanted to use her strengths to help her get excited about learning these words that are difficult for her.  You can check out the blog post {here} for more information.

The first page of the progress monitoring plan is basic information.  This page describes the students strengths/weaknesses, skills needed to succeed, and intervention skills that you will be specifically working on.  This page also allows you to document what the intervention will be, who is providing the intervention, how often, and what assessments you will use to monitor the progress.  Here is a sample of my student struggling with sight words. *Here is my disclaimer... I typed this for the purpose of this blog post.  I usually just hand write the documentation but I wanted you to be able to read it- my handwriting is not the best thanks to breaking my arm when I was younger:(

Here is the first page.

When I make copies, I copy page 1 and page 2 back to back.  Page 2 is where I record the Assessment Data and my progress monitoring notes.  For this intervention, I am using my sight word lists (I use Lucy Calkins list from The Teachers College of Reading and Writing).  You can check out my post here that tells why I choose to use her list over Dolch and Fry.  I also am looking at her Reading Benchmark Book running record to see if she is reading the sight words correctly in text.

Page 3 is where I do my daily documentation.  This example is over about a month.  Unfortunately, I didn't see B. L. as much as I had hoped.  She was sick for a few days and I was out with a sick child for a couple days as well.  And- I think we had a couple of snow days... For her intervention I made different flashcards.  Again, to learn more about the intervention and how I made the flashcards, you can go to this blog post.

I hope this helps give you some ideas of possible ways you can use this form to document.  Remember, this is only one example for one specific student.  This form can be used with just about any intervention you may need to do.

If you would like to download this sample, just click {here}.  

For a free blank copy you can click on the picture below.

Please let me know if you have additional questions:)

A Window To Dyslexia

Hi everyone! Emily here, from The Reading Tutor/OG. Do you ever wonder what it's like to live with dyslexia? Do you wish you could get into the minds of your students or even your own children to know what they experience when they try to read? If so, this is the post for you. Today, I'm sharing resources that simulate what it is like to be dyslexic. If you've ever been fortunate to sit through one of these simulation sessions, I'm sure you'll agree it's valuable.

One of the gifts as educators and parents we can give our children with dyslexia is the gift of empathy. To walk a mile in their shoes, and to feel, if only for a short time, the struggles and frustration that come when they are faced with the written word help us to understand, and therefore become more empathetic educators and caregivers.

Since October is Dyslexia Awareness Month, sharing these videos is perfect timing. Each one is short and powerful. Please pin or share this post when you finish reading and watching it. You can also read my last post on dyslexia for more information.

1. This first video explains how dyslexia works in the brain. Thanks to the Dr. Kelli Sandman-Hurley and The Dyslexia Training Institute for creating these powerful simulation videos.

2. Watch the first simulation video here. This one focuses on the challenges of reading.

3. Here's the second simulation. This one focuses on the writing challenges a dyslexic learner faces.

 

4. Read more about dyslexia here:

http://www.dyslexiatraininginstitute.org/blog/all-about-dyslexia/

 

5. Download the pdf file here and distribute to educators, administrators and families. http://www.dyslexiatraininginstitute.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/All-About-Dyslexia.pdf

 

6. Click here for an additional simulation and more helpful tips for helping children with learning differences:

https://www.understood.org/en

 

7. Learn more about the power of audiobooks and how you can use Learning Ally or Bookshare by clicking the links below:

https://www.learningally.org/

https://www.bookshare.org/

 

8. A fabulous classroom reading list for building classroom community and a culture of empathy.

http://dyslexia.yale.edu/EDU_Culture4ReadersList.html

 

What did you come away with after watching these videos? I'd love to hear and read what you think. Please feel free to comment below. Thank you!

 

How to Make Letters Fun!

With the school year in full swing now, my kindergartners and I are up to our eyeballs in letters! At the beginning of the school year, I assessed all of the kindergarteners on letter recognition. This is how I determined which students would be in my intervention groups. Many of my students are quickly picking up their letters, but a few of my friends need a little more practice. We have done letter names and sounds just about every way you can imagine. I will show you a few of these ways below.

One of my students' absolute favorite ways to practice their letter names and sounds is with the Pancake Game. I used the die-cut machine to cut out 26 brown circles to be the pancakes. On one side of the "pancake" I wrote the lowercase letter. On the other side, I wrote the capital version of the same letter that was on the front. 

I purchased a very cheap spatula at the dollar store. To play the game, I call out a letter name or sound, and the student has to "flip" the pancake with the corresponding letter. We have perfected our pancake flipping technique. Students place one finger on the front as they scoop and then flip. 

Another favorite of my students is the card game SNAP! In this game, I made a separate card for the lowercase and uppercase versions of every letter. Then, I made about 6-7 "SNAP!" cards. Students draw a card and have to say either the letter name or sound. (Depending on which I ask for!) If students answer correctly, they get to keep the card. When someone draws a SNAP! card, he or she has to put all of their cards in the discard pile. It is hilarious how excited they get about such a simple game!

Another activity we work on is matching capital and lowercase letters using clothespins. First, I made a card for each lowercase letter of the alphabet. I super glued these cards onto clothespins.

Next, I made large cards with the capital versions of each letter. Students have to pin the clothespin with the lowercase letter to the corresponding capital letter. 

I also use this activity to practice letter sounds by asking students to match the cards for the letter that makes the sound /b/. These are just a few of my students' favorite letter ID activities. There are endless ways to practice letter names and sounds.

What are some ways you practice letter names and sounds?

More Tips for teaching English Language Learners: SEI

Hi everyone! It's Bex here from Reading and Writing Redhead to share some more ideas for teaching your English Language Learners. Last month I posted about this topic as well, and shared writing instruction strategies and vocabulary strategies. You can find that post here.  Today I have some thoughts on supporting your English Language Learners during reading instruction.

 

Just a quick review  - what is SEI? In Massachusetts, SEI is Sheltered English Immersion, and to make a long story short, every classroom that has at least one ELL student is an SEI classroom and teachers need to be highly qualified by taking and passing a rigorous semester long course or passing the Massachusetts teacher exam for SEI. After studying for and passing the test, I was inspired to share some of what I learned. I think no matter what state you teach in, the  ways that Massachusetts encourages us to support our ELL students can be extremely helpful.  For information on strategies for vocabulary and writing instruction, check out my blog post from August here. 

Draw on and Build Background Knowledge: 

Students may have limited English proficiency but they may still have a lot of helpful background knowledge. One strategy is to allow students to briefly chat with peers in their native language to discuss their knowledge of the topic before starting a new text. Technology can make building background knowledge a lot easier- you can do everything from printing out pictures that relate to the topic  to show  your class, to playing DVDs, projecting video clips from youtube.com, visiting websites with useful images and using virtual field trips to tap into background knowledge and build new knowledge. Realia is always a great way to build knowledge. As example of a way to use realia is bringing in gardening tools when you are going to read "The Ugly Vegetables" with 2nd graders. There is so much you could do!

Click Here for a short 1 minute video on the importance of building background knowledge to give you some more info from Thinkport. 

  

Comprehension Checks: 

Informal comprehension checks are important. One new strategy I learned is to  print sentences from  the text on sentence strip paper, mix the strips  up and have students put them in order. For students with even less English proficiency you can do the same with pictures from the text.

Comprehension questions for students- Giving students the opportunity to answer questions orally and not solely in writing is important. Try using  simple sentences and key vocabulary.

Cloze Activities - if students need more support,  cloze passages can be very helpful at checking student comprehension. I created one for my students when we were studying plants. Cloze passages can have a word bank of key vocabulary from the text that you have taught directly, or to make it more challenge the blanks can have only the first letter or can be blank with no word bank. Nurturing Noggins has a great free product which includes cloze passages on Roosevelt. Check it out  here. Here are a few more cloze products you could look into : Ready Ed Publications Cloze Passages and Secondgradealicious Poem of the Week. And there is a solid post about using cloze with ELL students here at Teaching  Success with Ells.

Graphic Organizers:

There is an endless list of graphic organizers that can help any student with comprehension. Here are just a few. Scholastic also has a resource list with tons of graphic organizers too here.

Venn Diagrams

KWL

Story Maps

Cause and Effect Charts

Time Lines

What are your go to strategies for supporting your ELL students in reading comprehension? Let us know by commenting below!

Blogging Adventures with Students

Happy Friday from Carla at Comprehension Connection!  Fall seems to be moving in to our part of the US, and we are settling in to a new school year. Things in my classroom have been a bit hectic since the addition of a new teacher meant relocating my classroom a week into school.  However, the dust has settled and we're into the groove of learning, so why not add a new adventure to the routine, right?  We have to keep education lively for our kids in this technology age, and over the past year, I've been mulling over the idea of blogging with my students. 

The first step for me was to get a blog design done.  I wanted our project to be professional looking, yet kid friendly.  I checked with a few blog designers I knew, and Kristy at Kristybear Designs made it very reasonable for me to do.  I could not be more pleased with the fun and fresh blog design she made for me .  My classroom has a "Wild About Reading" theme, so in keeping with the wild animal theme, our blog is titled, "Where Wild Readers Roam".  After all, I am working hard to build wild readers daily. Here's a sneak peek at our design, but stay tuned for the wonderful projects we will be showcasing.

Before we can begin posting, there are a few management related steps to address.  I want to make sure that each participating student abides by blogging etiquette and keeps posts positive in nature. Parents will also need to give permission for students to participate.  Students will blog under a pen name or with their first name only since this is a public forum, and photos will be carefully formatted to protect identities when needed.  Here is a sample blog permission letter that could be modified to fit your needs. To use it, just click on the image and modify as you like.

Blogging use varies depending upon the grade level of the students, the students level of understanding with technology, and upon the goals of a given assignment.  In our school, we house grades Pre-K through 5th Grade.  I have partnered with our technology specialist and our gifted coordinator to organize the opportunity for the students, and our plan is to form a core team of students who will work with staff to secure the content and pictures, write up the posts (probably in MS Word), and upload the content with the assistance of moi!  Through this process, the students will experience the "Train the Trainer" philosophy, and gradually, we'll include others who are interested. The hope is that the enthusiasm will encourage blog reading and commenting.  

As I planned out this project, I looked at other classroom blogs and websites to determine the best platform and ways to use the blog.  For me, Blogger was the best option since I was familiar with how to manipulate pictures, share permalinks, schedule posts to display at certain times, use labels, and add pages to share links, photos, etc.  The goals I have in mind for our blog will not be class specific, but rather be for our whole school.  We will be using our blog similar to a website or newspaper.  

In addition to Blogger, I have explored include Edmodo which has a "Facebook" appearance. I used this with my students last year, and what I loved about Edmodo is the capability to hold class discussions on our favorite book.  It is very easy to moderate and post to, but the viewing is limited to just the class using it. 

Another option is Edublogs. The positive is security which may allow more interaction between students within the classroom.  The layouts and designs are limited as well as the audience.  It is simple to set up though, so for busy teachers, this may be a great first step to give it a try.

Finally, Kidblog is another option too.  They advertise that their blogs can be set up in 20 seconds. Students are not required to give an email in order to participate.  Again, this is a quick and simple option for teachers and students just getting started and who want limited viewing.

I am very excited to see where this blog goes.  I am going to discuss with our student team to see what interests they have, and we'll see how to channel those ideas.  As much as possible, I'd like to let our students take on a leadership role. I have a few ideas of my own to get us started.  

1. Book reviews-What a great way for students to discuss their reading and learn from each other!  I think having students read with an analytic eye helps students identify their preferences, but may also offer students other options that they may not otherwise check out.
2. Literacy Projects-Many students love hands-on learning and creating.  Literacy projects also offer a cross curricular opportunity where reading teachers can partner with art teachers to explore authors, illustrators, and create.  Projects can be easily photographed and described on a blog.
3. Literacy Events within the School-Communication is very important, and using the blog to publicize literacy events improves the home/school connection.  Students can increase the motivation to participate through their posts about such events.
4. Showcasing Written Work-I am really looking forward to uploading my students' work. They work hard at writing.  Even though we're still learning, I think knowing their work will be published and read will cause students to polish sentences and improve work quality.
5. Current Events-Students can write about grade level field trips, school functions, share thank you notes with the community, and other school or grade level events.
6. Interviews with Visitors or Authors-Students can share interview questions and responses that happen with visitors to our building in a news reporter fashion.  
7. Fun Photos-Kids love taking pictures, and why not have them write about them.  They can write clues for readers to follow to determine what the mystery picture is, describe how the object they photograph is made (artwork, food), or just photos of nature.
8. How-To Writing-Cooking in the classroom, group building projects, or crafts can be demonstrated (and videotaped) for sharing.  

As you can tell, I am very excited about this adventure, and I can not wait to write up a sequel in a few months telling you how our project is going.  If you have experience with blogging in the classroom, please share your experiences in the comments below.  I look forward to reading and learning from you too. 

Making Meaning of Main Idea

Hello, everyone!  It's Andrea from Reading Toward the Stars with an easy comprehension strategy for your students.

This year our school really needs to work on comprehension strategies to help our students understand what they are reading.  Not skills, but strategies!  Our students didn't score well on the reading or math assessments, so we are working hard to help those students become better readers.  Whatever we were doing before just wasn't working.

As the reading specialist, the teachers tell me what skills their students are lacking, and I work on the skills by giving the kids some strategies.  I love that our district uses Thinking Maps as a strategy to help students understand what they are reading or working through.

This week I have been working with my third grade group on finding the main idea of a fiction story and NOT retelling the story.  This is hard because kids want to tell you every single detail.  We have been reading this book from Mondo Publishing:  Edgar Badger's Balloon Day.

We have been reading chapter by chapter and focusing on the main idea or details.  Today we focused on both.  They read the third chapter of the book titled "The Wrong Day?"

After reading the chapter, we discussed the main idea and only the main idea.  This is tough for students.  They want to tell every.single.detail.  After talking about the main idea, we then listed some, not all, details to back up the main idea.

They wanted to give me every.single.detail again, but I helped them focus on what was important for the main idea.  This strategy helped them out so much, and the thinking map helped them to narrow down what was important information from the book.  Tomorrow, they are going to find the details for the chapter's main idea.  I hope this will help them as they think about what they are reading!

How do you help students focus on the main idea and details and NOT retell the entire story?