Fluency

Hi All!  Thank you for another wonderful week at PVES.  Great discussion in PLC about Data Meeting Follow UPs!

I know with our focus on Dibels, you all have dug deeply into your students' areas of need.  I love how we have adjusted our Patriot Block groups to meet those needs. 

Today on the blog, I wanted to dig into fluency.  I know that was one area that our kiddos struggled with.  I feel like this is a great opportunity to peel back the layers and really focus on why we are assessing fluency. 

What is fluency?

Reading fluency is the ability to accurately read at an appropriate rate while demonstrating prosody and comprehension of the text. 

Keeping these 3 components in mind will help students develop into fluent readers that can access the comprehension of the text.

Fluency is the bridge to comprehension!

Dr. Jan Hasbrouck explains fluency in the video below. 

Just like our systematic approach to teaching phonics, there is a fluency continuum that allows us to build on each component. 

Early fluency instruction begins with mastering the Alphabetic Principle and the sounds of all the letters to form a firm foundation. Once students have become fluent with individual letters and sounds, then working with groups of sounds and syllables becomes a priority.

• Students then move into blending sounds together, they become more fluent reading individual words, building vocabulary knowledge.

• Fluency then advances to reading increasingly larger chunks of text starting with phrases and moves to sentences and longer passages.

• Teachers will need to adjust instruction backward or forward along the continuum to meet the needs of students.

Supporting Fluency?

Modeling fluent reading is soooo important!

We can do this through our IRAs!

Students can also use multiple reads of the same text. Adding in rhyme and poetry to make those reads fun and engaging.

Readers Theatre is another way to help students focus on the text as a performance.

Check out this blogpost from Sarah Snippets! It breaks down the continuum with activities that you can implement easily!

Also over on Twitter, check out Tim Rasinski! He posts fluency activities every Friday!

Check out his podcast on The Impact of COVID Learning Loss on Reading Fluency.

Small Group: Word Chains

Hi All! Thank you so much for all of the work you put into our data meeting this week.  I love how you all worked together to represent our students and our school.  As we begin our Patriot Blocks, warm up activities can be so valuable hitting different holes our readers are struggling with.  Word Chains are perfect activities for our students to engage in & they are provided in our Fly Lead Book sets.  

What is a Word Chain????

A word chain is a hands on activity that helps students build neural connections for automatic word recognition. It helps to map the orthography of words to sounds. Students will explore the relationship between phonemes and graphemes as they listen for the sound change in the words.  Word chaining supports phonetic patterns, manipulating sounds in words & reading words.  Students will be activity engaged in "chaining" which is a sequence of words that can be made by changing just one sound.  

Changes can be at the beginning, middle or end of the word.  

Here is a simple video to walk you through a word chain. 

When you are planning your small group lessons, word chains would be a perfect fit for a warm up or making words activity.  Connecting the skill/pattern for your chain should support your mini lesson from Letterland.  Remember there is power in repetition! 

Word Chains can be made with the following materials:

• Magnetic Letters
• Letter Cards

These are the cards that come with our Flyleaf Kits:

• Dry Erase Boards & Markers 
• Jamboard!

Have your students organize their letters as vowels at the top and consonants in the middle, then a space for the word building at the bottom.  

Click the image to grab a copy of this word chain board in Jamboard!

Be sure that you ask students to change one sound at a time. 

Those changes can be:

• adding a sound
• deleting a sound
• changing a sound 

Here is an example of a word chaining lesson from one of our emergent reader lessons in Flyleaf.  Click Here to view the whole lesson. 

Once the word has been built, students should tap under each letter and say the sound.  Then run their finger under the letters and read the word.  

This video from Reading in Room 11 is great for walking you through the process!

Here are some FREE resources that help you get started word chaining with your students!

Pair this lesson with a decodable text or passage with the corresponding skill and you will make a POWERFUL connection for your students!

Executive Function: Independent Learners

Hope you all enjoyed the snow this week! I know I loved being snuggled up at home and the short week we had.  Much needed rest for ALL!

I spent time on Wednesday going over our data slides and that included our behavior for our school over all.  From what I am hearing in PLCs and what the data shows we have many students struggling with some Executive Functioning Skills.  I know we are striving for Rigor and Relationships in our district but we can't ignore that our students may not be ready for learning to happen due to developmental, pandemic or outside repercussions.  

What is Executive Function AGAIN?

In a nutshell, Executive Functions are cognitive skills that aid in thinking and self regulation. They call on your prefrontal cortex to help with decision making and goal setting. Executive Functions help us manage our feelings and actions during day to day life.

Executive Function is broken into 2 strands. Sounds familiar right?????? (SOR and the reading rope.)

Makes me think this is something that we REALLY NEED to pay attention too!

Check out what EF skills are developed at certain ages.  This is very interesting in seeing exactly where your students may lie in their development. 

(Give it a CLICK to make it bigger!)

 

Take a look at the EF skills below.  I bet students in your classroom that are struggling academically also struggle in one or more of these areas.  

This blogpost from The Pathway to Success is incredible!!!! It walks you through each skill and what it looks like in the classroom & what your can do to support it.  

There are even separate posts about interventions that can be put in place to help support the specific skill development. 

This video is one of my favorites!  

EF is like an air traffic controller! 

As educators,  we always know that we have to focus on the whole child and not just the academic piece.  I want us to keep this in mind when we dig into our data.  Title 1 will be supporting students but we know there will be a chunk of students in our classrooms that will need more support than ever.   

Love the idea of offering information to parents about what they can do at home to help strengthen their students EF skills.  Grab this freebie!

I know this may seem like another thing to teach but I encourage you to look at embedding these skills in your lessons.  Such as teach planning skills when you are doing a research paper. Or use games!  Check out the link below! 

I love this video to share with students about EF and how they work for them!

Here are some simple things that you can do to help explicitly teach and support the development of these skills in the classroom. 

Don't forget about our Behavior Problem Solving website!  So many incredible resources for you to use with your students to help support EF skills. 

                              

Metacognition Strategy for Small Group

Welcome Back!  I hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing break!  I sure did!!!  This week,  I know you spent lots of time getting your kiddos back into the swing of being back at school. (I spent time getting myself back into the swing of being back too!) 

On the blog, I wanted to bring back an oldie but a goodie!  Metacognition!  U know I love it!  As you know, explicit instruction is crucial for young readers.  Modeling your thinking is just one way you can address metacognition during your literacy block.  In the past, we have used our Think Bubbles & Reading Salad. 

Check out this video all about Metacognition for a quick refresher! 

I came across a new Strategy that I know it will be super powerful in small groups!  Here is how to get started! 

In large group, read a text and point out what parts of the text triggered your thinking.  (Recording those thoughts in a think bubble would beneficial for them to refer back to.) This is your explicit modeling time!

Such as:

Aha moments

Questions

Connections

Inferences

Small Group Metacognition Strategy

Guess my Thoughts!!!! 

I love this activity and so will your kiddos!  It is a perfect activity to reinforce your large group modeling. Guess my Thoughts fits perfectly into small group and  to centers.  Simply choose a text and record your thinking as you read a section on sticky notes. (This would be great for one of our F & P books.  Then use it in your small group or copy the section being used for centers.) 

• Show the students your sticky notes first and read your thoughts in no specific order.   
• Allow them to then read the text and guess what parts of the text triggered your thoughts.  (I would copy the page and label where Post its may occur.)
• Pass out small posts its, one with a smile, star and square.  Ask students to place their post its in front of them matching where they occur in the text.   
• Be sure that they pin point what part of the text they think triggered your thinking. 
• Allow students to choose one of the sticky notes and write how they feel about your words.  Do they agree or disagree and why?
  

  This sheet will work beautifully for a center work activity! Just click the image to download a copy!

Hope this is helpful!