Developing a Concept of Word with Emergent Readers

Hello from Comprehension Connection!  Today's post is aimed at the Emergent Reader and will hopefully provide some help and guidance for the Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten teacher.  The specific topic is how to develop a concept of word (COW) in young readers. I chose this topic after requesting input from my Facebook readers on the types of activities that are used in the regular classroom to work on this skill and how much time is devoted to it.  Interestingly, there were misunderstandings on exactly what Concept of Word meant.  Many understood it to be matching speech to print or being able to track.  However, Concept of Word is a bit more than this, and it is *the* sign that an emergent reader has become a beginning reader.  

What is a Concept of Word?

A Concept of Word (COW) is the culmination of a student's automatic knowledge of letter sounds, his/her ability to isolate the beginning consonant sound, match spoken word to the print and realizing that words are separated by space, and remember words in isolation that have been previously taught. A student's COW develops in stages.  

Developing Concept of Word

The student shows following at each stage:
1.  Has left to right directionality, but no word awareness. Writing looks like squiggles across page.
2.  Points along with stressed units (syllables or words, but does not differentiate).  Writing begins to include some letters, but they are random.
3.  Points to words and says syllables. Writing begins to include beginning sounds of words.

Rudimentary Concept of Word Development

The student is approaching the beginning reader stage when he/she:
4.  Points to words and begins to self correct when he/she gets off track. Writing now includes beginning and ending sounds, but may not include vowels.

Firm Development of a Concept of Word

The student has reached the beginning reader stage when he/she
5.  Demonstrates accurate tracking of print.  Writing includes space between words and short vowel words include beginning, middle, and ending sounds. The reader in the video below is not completely  firm, but very close.

How Can Teachers Work to Develop COW With Students?

The first step with Concept of Word Instruction is to teach the poem to the students.  They need to have the poem memorized, so that they can accurately match the memorized words to the print they see. Teachers can use pictures that represent the text or hand motions with common nursery rhymes and finger plays.

What follows is the fun part for me!  The best way to develop COW is by playing with words, sentences, and a large assortment of pointers.  I mean really...don't we all love swinging around a light saber once in a while??  The pointers in the greatest demand in my room are most definitely my light sabers, but magic wands are very popular too. I also recommend flyswatters of various designs. They are perfect for boxing individual letters or for finding sightwords.

When working with my kinders on pointing, I place a touch point under each word.  I discovered this tip when I downloaded freebies from Sparklebox.co.uk .  I downloaded short vowel word cards for a game that included a dot under each sound.  (perfect for blending, but that's for another post).  Anyway, I transferred that technique to developing COW.  As we continue to develop COW, I put my students more and more into leveled books.  I continue to use this strategy with projected books on Reading A to Z and with other powerpoint resources I've made.  If you are a primary teacher, Reading A to Z is a subscription that is well worth the price.   The projectable feature has been very beneficial to my students for modeling and practice, but there are many other resources for beginning readers available on the site.  You can explore that further {here}.


Matching words in isolation to words in context is another activity that fosters an understanding of print. Teachers can use different fonts with the word cards.  Using Dolch words with various games helps students to identify them in context too and helps students recognize when their tracking is off.

Marie Clay refers to Concept of Word as "Reading the White Space", and this activity has helped my students recognize this.  I model how to separate words by cutting between them like pulling apart puzzle pieces.  In fact, we often take the pieces, mix them up, and reorganize them to make the individual words become the line of the poem.

After we have worked a few days with the sentences strips and words in isolation, I transfer my students to the book form.  With the book form of the poems, I spend time on letter identification, sighword identification, using picture clues, and even comprehension.  The children enjoy highlighting, boxing, underlining, and marking with mini stickies features I ask.  In the pictures below, you can see where we highlighted sightwords (I normally call it, "I Spy" which means it's a game).  We also mark by boxing around the letters by name and sound.

Even though comprehension is the focus with instructional readers, emergent and beginning readers need modeling of comprehension skills too.  After all, as students begin to read, they need to understand the meaning in order to cross check their accuracy.  For beginning readers, the picture clues provide a support to this understanding.  Teachers can have students "read" the text and decide what is missing in the picture. Above, you can see the apple before coloring and after.  The apple in the picture needed to be colored in order to accurately match the print.  

For this picture, teachers might ask,
 "How can you tell she loves to eat apples?"

For this picture, the teacher might ask students
 to connect the picture to the words that describe it.

With my students, I typically work with a poem for a 3-5 days depending on the poem's difficulty. The last thing I do with my students is give them the poem on a single sheet.  We practice reading without the aid of touch points, highlights, boxes, etc.  I have them prepare the poetry page for their keepsake book, and as the year goes, the poems we use increase in difficulty.  Our kindergarten teachers use thematic teaching, so the poems I choose to use with my groups typically parallel what is happening in the regular classroom.  I do not use the same poems in my room though because I try to provide them with new experiences to build upon skills that are developing in the classroom.  Plus, new poems keep the learning fresh and fun.

If you'd like to add this poem to your COW collection, feel free to download your own copy using the image below which shows what is included.  I also have a yearly bundle for $20.00 that includes 39 COW sets.

Pin for Later:

Now, readers, it is your turn.  Please share the clever ways you work on these skills or any observations you have made with your students.  Have a great start to the school year, and thanks for visiting today.

Celebrating Young Authors

We would like to welcome a guest blogger to our Literacy Land today: Maria from Curious Firsties. She is a first grade writing teacher.  That's right!  She teaches four 70 minute blocks of WRITING each day!  Needless to say, she has a passion for our young writers!

Thanks for joining us today, Maria!

Writing is a beautiful thing.  Can we get an amen to that?!  We are so blessed to be able to watch this process unfold in our young firstie writers.  After weeks, I mean WEEEEEKS, of sketching, writing, conferencing, sharing, conferencing some more and then finally choosing a piece to take to publication, our firsties are in need of some type of reward for their efforts. 

So we reward them with a PARTY!  And, who doesn't love a party?  Our firsties LOVE being able to share their work with families, friends, other students, teachers, and even our principal!  We love the look in their eyes when they are reading a piece THEY wrote and illustrated.  We love how empowered they feel as authors. 

Here's the fun part of celebrating authors..... THE CELEBRATIONS!  We have celebrations for just about every author we study in our writing class.  We like to mimic authors such as the GREAT.........  MO.WILLEMS. (in my best Jimmy Fallon voice)

We love keeping our decorations simple and cheap.  :) 

Next up....  Jane O'Connor
 After reading all about Fancy Nancy, we have a celebration to read our "How-To be Fancy/Handsome" to our parents.  Our firsties get all dressed up in ruffles, pearls, and suits.  For those who "forget" because sometimes that happens, we have our own Ooh La La Beauty Spa!  Here we give out mustaches, paint fingernails, tie bows in the girls hair and give the boys bowties!  It has been a BIG hit the last two years!

 Our next big celebration is for all our nature enthusiasts!  This year we added a SAFARI WALK to our research celebration. We think this was a student favorite.  Of course inspired by Pinterest we set up our classroom like this...

 And for this coming school year we have a few more celebrations in the works, but parties will not be on the top of that list. Instead, we will focus on one goal. We will be celebrating author accomplishments daily!  We are great about using our words to tell them how they are doing, but we'd like to take this a step further!  Our newest way to celebrate authors is by giving them bracelets!
Not only will our firsties love them, but our parents will also be informed about what their child is doing well at in writing class. :)  Two birds. One stone. :)

The inspiration for this came from my own girls.  They LOVE, LOVE, LOVE bracelets.  My oldest loves them so much she never takes them off.  She told me, "Mom, it's a part of me." That's when I thought..... hmmmm.... How can we do this in our classroom?  Bracelets.For.EVERYONE! 

These bracelets to encourage your young authors can be wrapped around a wrist,

                                    Put on a backpack,                   or on a lunchbox.
The possibilities are endless.  :)

Here's to an AMAZING year of growing young authors!



Click on the picture for your bracelet FREEBIE!



Maria from Curious Firsties

Booktalking Clubs - Increasing Enthusiasm and Excitement for Reading

Hi everyone! It is Bex here from Reading and Writing Redhead, coming to you to share about Booktalking and Booktalk Clubs! I recently did some professional development and went to a session on the topic and am inspired!

  

So before we do anything else, you are probably wondering, "Hmmm, is that a typo? Does she mean Book Club, not Booktalk Club?" Nope! Booktalks are a bit different than book clubs. Here is the scoop. Booktalks are 2-3 minute presentations someone gives to persuade others to read a book they  recommend. You know what I thought of? Reading Rainbow! Remember those kids would come on and give you a 1 minute spiel about a book they read and loved and then you would think, "Oh my gosh I need to read that"? Similar!

Booktalk Clubs are after school clubs that students join voluntarily. At some schools Booktalk Club is held before school, during lunch or during a free period. Students often get involved for one or more of the following reasons: They love reading, love writing, are social butterflies, or enjoy performing for others.  Booktalk Clubs rely a lot of peer assistance - more so than lessons during your reading block - and kids that join end up reading more  and recommending more books to others even outside of Booktalk Club. 

In my post I am not going to go into every step of how to run a Booktalk Club - that post would be extremely lengthy -  but at the end I will post some links for places you can get more specific information.

Let's talk about some basics though. Booktalk Clubs work best in 12 week cycles. Plan for 12 meetings, which may mean they go longer than 12 weeks because f vacations and holidays. How do you get students to join? Well, start with your own class and promote it to them, and get all the teachers at your school to do the same. Make up a flyer and encourage those students who already want to join to ask their friends to join. The Booktalk Club likely needs to be a coordinated effort across your school- your principal obviously needs to be on board to allow you to meet with students outside of class time, and the more your colleagues know about it and the more they discuss it with their classes, the better it will go! By the way, Booktalk Clubs can include students in different grade levels. It is up to you what range you pick. I will post some links with suggestions but I think 2nd grade-4th grade might be a good range, 3-5, 6-8 and so on. You don't want children to be so far apart in age that they no longer are really "peers". I think you also want the youngest students in your club to be able to read independently - not struggling. That's just my take!

How do you decide what books get picked? The element of choice is so important here. Students are volunteering to do this one their own time and need to have a lot of input in what book they read.  Grab a lot of books from your classroom library, the school library and town library and have them on display. Be sure to have a wide range of types and levels of books. As students sign up and give you their permission slips work with them to pick out a book (before the first meeting of the club). They need to have  their book read or almost read for the first meeting.  The first book choice is always the hardest. Try too encourage students to be realistic about book choice- for example a third grader choosing a 350 page Harry Potter book to complete if the first BookTalk Club meeting is in 5 days is probably not going to work! Sometimes students will realize their first book was too hard, too easy, too long, or too short and the next time around will adjust for it.

A big part of Booktalk Club is the presentation. It is encouraged that all booktalks be videotaped. Some clubs have a night where everyone's family is invited and all the students do  their booktalks live. Some clubs do both. Club members will make  decisions together  about what they want the culmination to look like.

To get an idea of what Booktalks look like as a finished product, check out these videos. I found 2 younger students and one older student. They did a super job!

This is a slightly different take on a booktalk - this older girl is recommending a book for younger children.

So have you ever done a Booktalk Club at your school? Might you try it? Let us know what you think and comment!

Scholastic's Booktalk Website

Waco ISD's Book Talk Update

Scholastic Reading Summit: Booktalk Update

Nancy Keane's Children's Literature Page

Reading Online Booktalk Resources

And thanks to Erin of I'm Lovin' Lit (and Adventures in Literacy Land!) for the terrific frames used above and KG Fonts for, well, the font!

Fluency Breakthrough!

 

Greetings from Literacy Land! It's Emily from The Reading Tutor/OG here, and I'm here to discuss a great fluency tip today.

Do you have students that get lost when reading dialogue? Over the past few weeks, I've been working on some fluency passages with my students at the end of Orton-Gillingham sessions. The passages I chose were a little heavy in dialogue. I knew this could be tricky for my students, especially the ones who don't pay attention to punctuation as well as proficient readers do. Text that's heavily laden in dialogue also can pose a comprehension problem. After reading several lines of dialogue, have you ever asked a child the following questions:

•  "So, who's talking in that part?"
• "What did _____ just say?"
•  "Who's telling the story?"
• "How do you know?"

You may be surprised at their responses! If they can't determine who is speaking when, or who the narrator is, that's a comprehension breakdown.

Back to my kiddos- I decided to try a highlighting strategy for identifying who was speaking and WHEN to use a different tone in your voice. Here's a pic of the passage I used. This passage was taken from a collection of Bonnie Kline phonetic stories that I use to match the skill I'm working on in OG. We were working on r-controlled vowels that day.

1. First read: I had the student read it out loud to me as a cold read. Then, we discussed how many characters were speaking and what their tone of voice should be when we read their dialogue. After that, I let the student choose 2 different colored highlighters and reread it to out loud.
2. Second read: THIS TIME, she had to highlight JoAnn's words in orange and Mrs. Martin's in pink. It was slow going during this read. She really had to pay attention, reread, and choose which words to highlight carefully.
3. Third read: The student had to read the story using different voices for Joann and Mrs. Martin.

Boy, what a difference on the third read compared to the first! She knew who was speaking, their tone of voice so she could apply the right cadence to her voice while reading and the super bonus, she could retell the passage beautifully. By highlighting during the second read, this student was able to clarify who was speaking, what the problem was and what events were taking place.

This was a fluency breakthrough for me! I won't use the highlighting strategy every time I read with a student, but, it's definitely been a huge help for this child when reading dialogue in text. She is much more equipped to answer the questions I mentioned earlier in this post when discussing a book.

Have you tried this strategy before, or perhaps something similar? I'd love to hear about it, so feel free to leave me some comments or ask questions below.

Thank you for visiting Literacy Land today. See you in August!

 
 
 
 
 
 

 

Host a Book Swap

My school is always looking for interesting and engaging ways to get families into the school.  We have hosted chili cook-offs, mystery events, book making parties, and lots of writing celebrations.   When I saw some book swap ideas online, I decided that this would be a great way to get families into school and books into the hands of our kids.

But I wanted to try it out first.  So I invited friends, friends of friends, and family members over to my house this past week for a book swap.  All the children that attended were Pre-K to 2nd grade, which made for a nice variety of texts.

Let me start at the beginning...I had to think about the following questions:

•How many books do you want each guest to bring?

•What age range did I want to target?

•Where was I going to put all the books?

•How long do you want the swap to last?

•What other activities do I want to have at the party?

•Should I have snacks and drinks?

Next up...the invitation.  I wanted it to look like an old library card.  There is a great website that generates this image for you.  After I plugged in my information, it came up like this:

Then it was time to get started on the decorations.  My girls (4 and 5 years old) helped me make banners

The day of the book swap approached and we were ready!  When each guest arrived, they received a ticket for each book that they brought.  That helped me to know how many books that they needed to pick out.

Once all the guests had arrived, the books were placed on the "red carpet" (it was just a long sheet of bulletin board paper held down with golf tees!)

The kids sat down and looked through the books as they tried to decide which ones they wanted to keep.

Once the kids were done picking out books, we had a book mark station and ice cream!

The book swap ended with a picnic.  Each family set out a picnic blanket and enjoyed a meal together.  I have to admit, it went so well and the kids walked away so excited to have new books.  This would be a great edition to the literacy events in our school.

I decided to make a pack that includes all that I will need to host the event at school.  I am going to make it free for our Literacy Land readers for the day.