Y'ALL we did it! When I walked down the halls this week I saw so many smiling kiddos! I felt a buzz in the air about the elf & the InCrEdIaBlE bulletin boards. The spirit days were super fun! #2PJdays! I just wanted to take a moment and say- THANK YOU! What you do in a normal week for students is amazing, what you do the week before Christmas is ABOVE and BEYOND.
Here is an oldie but a goodie!
If anyone scoffs at your holiday break time, I want you to share this video from Haley Cuffman with them.
If you decide to do a little shopping over break don't forget about these discounts just for TEACHERS! Thank you Static Parade for putting them together! Ideas for relaxing over break! 1. Make homemade hot cocoa and snuggle up with a good book! Click image for a recipe from Living Well!
Thank you so much for all of the thoughtful reflection during PLC this week. This year is defiantly different in terms of how we go about supporting our students.
Keeping this in mind, I wanted to dig a little into Orthographic Mapping. Basically, orthographic mapping is how we represent speech in writing & all the rules that go along with spelling the words. It is the process of creating connections between sounds and syllables that help to recall spelling, pronunciation, and meaning. (Pretty important stuff when it comes to learning to read and write.)
Research says that the brain reads by breaking words into sounds. Our brains are naturally wired for speech but NOT for reading! Our brains need to rely on other systems to read such as our language. (That is why phonemic awareness is soooo important!) Below you will find the 4 systems!
Orthographic Processor:Takes the letters and letter patterns that our eyes see and processes them. It helps students remember the sequence of spelling.
Meaning Processor: Works closely with the orthographic processor and phonological processor to make sense of the words being read.
Context Processor: This process interprets words & supports the meaning processor. It also deals with background information and sentence context.
Reading truly begins with our EARS! Students need a language rich environment to prime their brain for reading.
Check out this video as is walks you through Orthographic mapping!
So what does this need to look like in our classrooms? What can we do as educators to help students build their sight word bank? Click HERE to read more about these infographics below!
What activities can I add right away to support this in my classroom?
Happy Friday EVERYONE! Thank you for the awesome week at The VIEW! Today on the Blog, I want to jump into the world of Bridges. Our MUCH awaited math intervention system!!!!
Bridges is Interventions provides targeted instruction and assessment for essential skills K-5 within a tiered system of support. This system is intended to complement regular math instruction. It is ideal for small groups or individually. Students will work with models to spur thinking and build confidence. Lessons will start with maniplulatives and move to 2 dimensional representations and end with mental images. Bridges Intervention is organized by content rather than grade. It supplies progress monitoring so support each 30 minute lesson.
All intervention lessons are aligned with the common cord. Click the binder to see how the CCSS are organized in the binder.
What are the components of Bridges?
Alison our math coach did a great video explaining how we can use our ISIP summary reports to help target where we need to start with a student.
When thinking about what I wanted to write about for our weekly blog one thing kept popping into my head. Just how thankful I am that we have been back in school! That we were given the gift to be back with our students and fellow teachers!!!!!
Virtual learning was hard in its own way but I really do
think the isolation was harder on us than we realize.
So here are my Thank-Fuls!
I am thankful that I get to get out of bed and drive to work everyday. (I get to be with my PVES PEEPS!)
I am thankful for innovative teachers that are NOT scared to try new things!!!!! (That's you PEOPLE! U are trying crazy things and making them work.)
I am thankful for our PEP Squad and how they have been spoiling our staff!!!
I am thankful for the energy that is buzzing through our halls.
I am thankful that we have an admin team that knows their teachers on a professional level & a personal level.
I am thankful for our custodians who have been kicking BUTT at sanitizing our classrooms and busses.
I am thankful for our TAs that support our teachers 1000000000%!
I am thankful for our office staff! They work together to answer ALL our questions, help us unjam the copy machines and find all the lost lunches!
I am thankful for my Instructional Coach Team! They always have my back and support me through all my crazy ideas!
I am thankful for a district that chose Plan B. They are helping us to stay safe and still see our students Face to Face!
I am thankful for all the smiling eyes I see above masks!
I am thankful for the teamwork that we have engaged in.
I am thankful for the bravery of my BTNTs in charging forward into this profession with so many unknowns.
I am thankful for everything I am leaving out...I know it is a TON! We have sooo much GOOD going on at Park View!
Things might be up in the air right now but what I know is, it WILL work out.
We WILL find a way!
We are EDUCATORS!
Please enjoy your break & rest! The mountain will be there for us to climb when we return!
We do such a great job teaching fiction and nonfiction text structures in our classrooms but there is one structure that sometimes gets left behind...POETRY! The amazing thing about poetry is its versatility! Poetry can be taught in reading, writing, and language. It also can support math, science, and social studies! Poetry easily follows a theme and can be part of our morning meetings or shared reading times in the classroom.
Poetry can also be a great connected text for students to support decoding! Phonics poems allow students to practice decoding and fluency at the same time. They are also GREAT for shared reading!
Enhancing your themes with poetry is also super easy and fun! Check out my Fairy Tale themed lesson below with an embedded poetry activity!
How cute are these shape poems to go along with Goldilocks!
Poetry also allows us to hit our speaking & listening standards along with fluency! Great discussions can be had and students will have opportunities to focus on meaning, connections, and visualizations.
Check out this blogpost from Lindsey Kuster!!!! SOOOO many connections being made through poetry! I absolutely LOVE the ideas behind The Phonics Poetry Station!
Students will be able to explore language through rhyme while also supporting grammar, sentence structure, word building and fluency. Poetry also builds vocabulary by exposing them to words they have not heard before. Older students can begin to analyze poems. Watch this short video that will walk you through 5 simple steps.
This video is a great explanation of the structure of a poem. Click below to view!
Check out these freebies on Teachers Pay Teachers! Lots of goodies to get you started!
Be sure to head over to Teaching with Jennifer Findley and read all about poetry in her classroom. Plus, download her FREE poetry booklet! Click below!
Her poetry BINGO is super fun too!
Be sure to check it out!
Get your kiddos writing poetry using this nonfiction book on Epic Books called, How to Write a Poem. Touch base with nonfiction text features while you are at it.
Teaching poetry is so powerful and it can be pushed out to support so many different curriculum areas! Think-your READ centers!
I have been waiting since last Friday to write this post for you! During my IC PLC last week, we dug into the Comprehensive Plan for Reading Achievement and had a GREAT discussion about The Simple View of Reading.
*It can ONLY be proven as true!
Grab a comfy seat and a cup of coffee or tea and watch this video!!!!
Reading is made up of 2 Components:
Decoding
Language Comprehension (Background Knowledge)
How can we use these components help our struggling readers?
When a student is struggling with reading we NEED to determine if it is a decoding problem or if it is a language Comprehension problem! HELLO!!!!
This is the key that we need to help move our students into the world of reading success!
*Decoding is easier to correct with explicit phonics instruction and practice with the skills in decodable readers. (Must be taught until it is VERY strong!)
*Language Comprehension is not finite...we are always learning and adding to our language comprehension.
I LOVE the idea of using a picture to help support students with reason and syntax.
In small group, students can practice looking at a picture and describing what they see!
Language Comprehension is broken up into to areas:
Vocabulary Knowledge-Easy to Correct
Reasoning Syntax-More Difficult to Correct
Take a look at Scarborough's Reading Rope! You can see how the strands work together.
I love the connection between The Simple View of Reading and the ROPE!
I am going to end with one more video and a great BLOGPOST on how children learn to read!
Hi All! Thank you so much for the amazing work in PLCs this week. We had such awesome conversations about The Science of Reading and Structured Literacy.
I am still growing and learning in this area too! I have been gobbling up everything that I can find on it.
AND I found the coolest experiment!
The PURPLE CHALLENGE!!!!
Prepare yourself for this one friends!
You are going to see some things in this video that you as an educator have used to teach reading with.
*You are going to see guessing strategies.
*You are going to see leveled readers that have words well beyond grade level phonics skills.
*You will see the 3 Cueing System.
Remember, don't panic! I have used all of the above in my classroom too. I was just lucky that my district in OHIO also made Phonics a PRIORITY! We used The Phonic Dance in K-2 so my students were getting the phonics in to support the decoding.
We have Letterland and I know that is happening in your classrooms and MGSD has made it a PRIORITY as well! We have really good things going on in our classrooms. As far as I can see, our BIG shift will be with our small group reading.
We just need to support our students with grade level text and provide the scaffolding to help them be successful.
Students will need PRACTICE time with new phonics concepts and that practice can be during centers or during small group reading with a decodable text.
Need some proof? Check out this next video showing what a little explicit phonics instruction can do. Pay close attention to when she reviews what phonics levels are required to read the words in the text.
So what do we do next?
*We keep having the conversations that we had this week in PLC.
*We start scouring our school for decodable readers and we as a school invest in purchasing decodable readers.
*We follow our Letterland manuals and make that time in our classroom a priority.
*We assess our students quickly on Fridays about the weekly phonics skill. Struggling students get reteaching the following week with word building and decodable readers!
*Students successful with the skill dive into small group reading focused on the weekly comprehension skill using a GRADE level text!
WAIT...what about words that you can't sound out? Like sight words?
Well, HEART WORDS of course! Teaching students that there are parts of words that you have to know by heart. Some words you can use parts of your phonics knowledge to decode but other parts you must know by ❤️! Check out this site with TONS of great videos and activities to teach HEART words!
Little steps! We can do this. Let's keep talking and sharing what we are learning about what science says about how students learn to read.
Hi All! Hurricane Thursday was definitely a surprise! Thank you for regrouping and adjusting to a last minute decision that needed to be made!
I spent the afternoon on Wednesday in an incredible PD about The Science of Reading and the shift our district is making to work smarter and not harder!
Meaning...we are going to follow the science of how our brains learn to read! We made this shift last year in math with the addition of our Clusters and the focus on the following:
This year is definitely crazy and we are having to adjust to so much but it is the perfect time to step back and punt! We can dabble in The Science of Reading and REALLY get a handle on what we want this to look like in our classrooms.
WATCH this video on The Reading Wars!!!!! We are going to heal the wounds!
WATCH this TOO!
I know what you are thinking...SCHROEDER! What does this mean for us? Well it means we are going to make small adjustments to our instruction to get the most bang for our buck!
First, friends we are NOT going to be leveling our readers like we have in the past. (I know, you may need to sit down.).
Levels are for BOOKS NOT Kids!
We will NOT be doing Running Records to determine a level to group students.
We will NOT be reporting to parents a LEVEL as a grade.
We will NOT be having the L group come for guided reading.
Friends~We are putting the MCLASS anvil DOWN! You are not holding this over your head all year! Your district supports The Science of Reading!
Well SCHROEDER, what will we be doing then?
We WILL be doing running records to drive our instruction. (The letter score is for the teacher!!!!!!)You can use any book or passage!!!!
We WILL be using decodable readers connected to our Letterland lessons.
We WILL be presenting grade level material in LARGE GROUP!
We WILL spend a good amount of our 90 minute reading block focused on Letterland!
We WILL be moving to STRUCTURED Literacy in place of BALANCED Literacy.
Wait but what if I teach 2nd or 3rd grade and my kids are reading high levels?
Aren't decodables for kiddos learning to read? Ours are reading to learn!
NO! Decodables are fantastic for students at high levels if the teachers connects the text to their Phonics Skills!
Students will work with connected texts based on our Letterland pacing.
They will read grade level texts in small groups and focus on the standards.
Students will interact with the read aloud text during small group-zooming in on certain parts fo the text. Students will work on higher level questioning and written response. (We want them to be secure with grade level material!)
*This is just a SNEAK PEEK at the direction that MGSD is going in READING. Remember it is going to be a work in progress this year.
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