Goals 3 and 4 - The Reading Strategies Book Study

Happy Friday!

Is that day as exciting in the summer? I'm not sure... ;-)

Yesterday, I took a quick trip to the Mercantile with a friend of mine. We attempted to stop at a water fall near Dexter, Kansas (my dad's hometown) on our way. No water! But we did squeeze a stop in to Henry's Candy Co. The Mercantile food once again did not disappoint, and this time I came away with a new favorite coffee drink - The Spicy Cowgirl. Cayenne pepper in my iced mocha coffee...YUMMO!

Okay, on to the book study!

Thanks for joining us again for this week's study. If you are playing catch up, no worries. Here's links to the first two posts:

Getting Started

Goals 1 and 2

This week's we are focusing on Goals 3 and 4, so let's get started.

Serravallo explains, "In order to construct accurate meaning from a text, children need to read words correctly, integrating three sources of information: meaning, syntax, and visual." She goes on to explain the importance of students learning to self-monitor their own reading. In my classroom, early in the school year I teach a variation of this cross-checking and have actions to go along with it (I think it is actually from Daily 5 or CAFE).

Here it is... (dork alert :-))

3.3 Use a Word You Know

I love this strategy and use it all the time. My teaching experience thus far has only been in 1st and 2nd grade, and I feel like we have to do a pretty good job of teaching word parts, phonics patterns, and word families. 

If you've ever visited our TPT store, you will see that Kristi and I have TONS of games for specific sounds. We've been blessed to teach in districts that provide our curriculum, and we like to use the games as a fun way to reinforce the sounds and word parts we are teaching each week. 

3.15 Take the Ending Off

Another one of my go-to strategies. I think sometimes our littles are overwhelmed at the sight of a "huge" word and it just stops them in their tracks. When you encourage them to cover up the ending, they will often recognize the base word or feel more confident attempting to decode the part that is left.

3.21 Look for Vowels that Go Together

At our school, we use a reading program called Pathways to Reading.  It teaches the kids to "Spot the Vowel." I like to start out doing this with a list of words on paper...actually highlighting the vowels or putting dots under them. If they see a vowel team, they connect the dots or highlight them together. Eventually, this transfers into one of my prompts as they are reading. I'll simply say, "Spot your vowel," and they know to read the vowel sound, then the word.

P.S. I was pretty excited to see so many familiar strategies in this goal section (even going by a different name). It was hard to choose my favorites!

Oh, fluency! 

I love how Serravallo reminds us that, "It's important in our attempts to teach children to read fluently, we don't send the message that reading is just about performing."

While I agreed with what she had to say about the dreaded stopwatch, I don't see how we can avoid it when most districts are doing some type of timed testing (we use AimsWeb). I actually like to do cold reads/hot reads because it gets my kids used to being timed and they get excited about their improvement (see more about that here).

However, I was intrigued by her method of recording phrasing and expressive reading. Definitely something I want to know more about!

4.5 Say Good-Bye to Robot Reading

Now this is a strategy that I wish someone would have told me about years ago! 

I actually stumbled into a variation of it on my own. I had a group that was struggling with fluency, and I was trying to make them understand what I meant by phrasing. We were practicing with sentences on a piece of paper and I started drawing "hops" to show them how they sounded compared to "hops" when I read the same sentence.

Love the idea of "scooping" up a few words at a time. I think it will make the idea stick with my kids even better than "hops."

4.14 Get Your Eyes Ahead of the Words

This is another strategy that I know as a reader I do, but it was always difficult to explain. I LOVE the graphic on this page. So simple, yet shows what I've tried teaching my kiddos!

The Reading Strategies Book pg. 121

4.19 Snap to the Next Line

I fell in love with this one right away! 

There is always some precious kiddo in my class who struggles with this concept. I think the idea of "snapping your eyes" to the next line will really help them understand how to keep reading through the line break. 

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Those are a few of my favorite strategies. 

I want to hear from you! Tell me about your favorites either in the comments below or on our Facebook page.

Don't forget to check out the other blog posts below for more thoughts and ideas!

Join in the study! Link up your blog post with your favorite strategies from Goals 3 and 4 in The Reading Strategies Book here.

1. Goals 3 and 4 - The Reading Strategies Book

2. Summer Book Study: Goals 3 and 4

3. Reading Strategies- Goals 3 & 4

4. Teaching With an Ocean View - Week 3

5. Decoding and Fluency Strategies |

6. More Practical Reading Strategies and a Great Give

7. The Reading Strategies Book - Goals 3 & 4

Morning Tubs and Even a Fluency Tub

Happy Friday! 

This year our schedule changed in the mornings so that students come to my room before choosing to go to breakfast. As soon as I found that out, I began considering what I could have students working on. My principal kindly told me that "work time" was probably out or all students would be choosing to go to breakfast. Ha!

Then I saw the idea for morning tubs which I'm hearing a lot about now, so I know there are probably a lot of great ideas out there of what you can use as morning tubs. 

Each morning when the kids get off the bus (8:10), we meet in the gym to say our pledges and acknowledge birthdays, etc. Then we head to our classrooms. My students make their lunch choice and check their GO (Getting Organized) Books. Then they either head to breakfast or start on morning tubs.

For now, I have been setting the assigned tub on a group of desks and rotating them daily. Each week I set out different tubs or go back to ones we have used in previous weeks.

Some of the ones we've used so far: Play-doh, Legos, how-to drawing books, lacing beads, and my Fluency Tub (more info below). 

Some things I plan to use: Letter tiles and/or magnets, base 10 blocks, math wraps, puzzles, whiteboards, etc. Basically anything they can play, build, or do that will get their little minds engaged.

I love this time! 

The students are excited to get to class and hurry back from breakfast. It is fun to see what they create, build, or draw. I've overheard a lot of good conversations and problem solving. I have time to take care of my lunch count and even pull a kiddo aside to talk to them or do a quick fluency check. 

I play my "Rise and Shine" song at 8:30 and we gather on the rug for Morning Meeting. 

I was a little worried that the "Fluency Tub" wouldn't be as popular when I introduced it this week, but they are LOVING it. 

Here's a video on what is inside the tub (if it won't play for you, try checking it out on Facebook):

The favorite from the fluency tub is definitely the "I have…who has…?" game--which is fantastic because as you probably know I have a lot of them! :-)

This particular one is the high-frequency words from our Reading Wonders unit.

If you need some "I have…who has…?" games, check out our TPT store. We have several that cover a lot of grade levels and phonics skills (math too). There's even some freebies to get you started!

I'm pretty excited to know that I should never run out of morning tub ideas they love. :-)

Have a great weekend!

P.S. Trying the embed video from FB here:

My Para's Name is Jackie

I have to tell you a funny story about my para (HER NAME IS JACKIE) this evening before I jump in to my post about student data.  

I'm really not used to people I work with following my blog, Instagram, Twitter, etc. but this year I have a new (to my room) para. Jackie (and my principal--eek!) has been doing just that. Yesterday, I posted this picture saying something like...

"My para and I got in on the art fun today..."

 

Later that night, I saw Jackie at our basketball game. She jokingly said, "Hey, Crystal! Does your para have a name?"

I explained that I didn't know if she wanted me to share her name, so here it is...now you know, my para's name is Jackie.

And Jackie and my principal were both bothered that I didn't explain the sunflowers were not yet finished, so here you go:

 

Speaking of that game, it was LATE! We were scheduled to play at 8:30 in the league semifinals at a college 1 1/2 hours away. We played at 9:00...got home at 12:45 a.m. This was my face this morning when I got to school:

Thankfully, we won! We play in the championship tomorrow--pretty exciting for a team who didn't even make it into the tournament two years ago! Our boys play in the semifinals tonight, so we'll see where they end up...

Okay, moving on to data. Monday at our inservice, I went to a session about students charting their own data and creating a data notebook. One of the things the presenter included in her data notebooks was a Hot Read/Cold Read graph. The same one that I use in a fluency folder. I've shared it before, but I thought I'd give you a flashback to that post in case you missed it.  

***From March 17, 2014***

Hi there! I'm still enjoying my spring break...headed to visit friends today. :-)

I thought I'd pop in to share something that has really sparked some fire in my readers.

Several weeks ago, I wanted to find a way for my kiddos to chart their own WCPM. I usually entered their data in an Excel spreadsheet which created a bar graph, but I knew the kids would benefit from seeing their chart more. I found this handy FREEBIE from A Peach for the Teach. It is a cold read/hot read fluency graph.

With the help of my awesome para, we have created a system that works wonderfully. Each kiddo has a folder with their name. The cold read/hot read graph is stapled on one side of the folder. For my struggling readers, I also included the sight word checklists from our Super Sight Word Packs on the other side of the folder. My para pulls the kiddos on Thursday or Friday of each week. They review the sight words (if needed) and then read their hot read (the one they have been practicing for the week) and the new cold read. The kids are practically crawling over the table to see how they have improved! Yippee!

***Me again--present day!***

Next year, I plan to expand this into a data notebook. I know it motivates the kids and can see the benefits of them charting their own data. If you haven't given it a try, these folders are an easy start!

Have a great weekend! Wish us luck at the tournament!

Reading Fluency and Roll and Read FUN!

Today we worked on our sight words for the week by playing the roll and read game.  The kids love playing this game.  They simply roll the dice and whatever number they roll they find it on the paper and say the word.  If they get the word right then they put an X on the square.  Whoever, gets a word to the top first wins the game.  

The other game they played was the roll and read fluency game.  They roll the dice and find that number on the paper.  They read the sentence with the correct expression.  If they read it correctly then they get to put a tally mark under that number.  Whoever gets the most tally marks wins the game.  My kids have been getting really good at using the right expression when they read.  Many of them started out reading sentences that have an exclamation mark at the end by expressing only the last word (LOL!). After practicing with this game, they have started to use expression throughout the entire sentence instead of just the last word (YAY!). 

I hope all of you are having a great day!