INTRODUCTION
Best Practices of a Reading Teacher
INTRODUCTION
As a Reading Specialist for students in kindergarten through fifth grade and Title I Coordinator, I am in contact with a variety of people including students, teachers, paraprofessionals, administration, and parents. I teach twelve small groups during the day for 25 to 30 minutes each. At the beginning of the year, all my students are below-grade level in reading. My goal is for them to learn to read better and to “catch-up” as much as possible to their grade-level peers. I must use best practices with my students because every class is important and necessary to help them to improve.
Normally a Reading Specialist will “pull out” the students that she serves or do inclusion in the classroom, but at Cornatzer Elementary, I do not “pull” students out of the classroom. Instead, the whole school participates with Acceleration groups. For 50 minutes to an hour a day, each grade has PE half of the time and small homogeneous reading groups the other half of the time. Then the groups switch and the second groups have Acceleration while the others have PE. All the students in the school have an Acceleration group, even the AIG students. I get a portion of the below-grade level students.
When I began my job as a reading teacher three years ago, I had just completed my bachelor’s degree. Before long, a colleague told me that a reading teacher needed a master’s degree. I thought, “I’ll show her. I CAN do this job.” At that time, I knew two instructional approaches to teach reading. One was First Steps (Early Steps) and the other was Guided Reading; both of these I learned when I was a teacher assistant. I wanted to continue to teach reading to small groups of elementary students and when the Masters in Reading Education program was offered in a nearby county, I took advantage of the opportunity.
Now that I am at the end of the master’s program, I realize my colleague was right. I needed the education that I received through this program to do the job right. I needed more instructional methods than Guided Reading and First Steps. I needed strategies to differentiate even small groups and I needed strategies to share with other teachers when they came to me.
Through experience and my master’s classes, I have gained confidence in my ability to teach reading to struggling readers and those with reading disabilities. I am able to make suggestions to parents and teachers concerning children that need to improve their reading. I strive to use best practices that have been researched and proven effective to teach the diverse learners in my classroom.
ASSESSMENTS
Formal Assessments
As one of two reading specialists at Cornatzer Elementary, I am responsible for all literacy assessments, except End of Grade Tests (EOGs). My job is to make sure the assessments are completed and that the reports are sent to the county office. I am involved with literacy testing at each grade level and I supervise third, fourth, and fifth grades. Recently more of the responsibility for the assessments has been placed on the classroom teacher. Now my role is to oversee and assist the classroom teacher in administering the K-2 Literacy Assessment, DIBELS, and the EOGs. I administer IRIs on third, fourth, and fifth grade students as requested by the teachers. Our formal literacy assessments, DIBELS and K-2 Literacy Assessment, are required by my district. The instructional methods that are informed by these assessments are explained in detail in the Reading Instruction section.
Since I only have my students for 25 to 30 minutes per day, I try not to spend our class time doing assessments. Instead, I use the data from assessments that have already been completed. There are two assessments that I do in my classroom, depending on the purpose of the group. If the group needs instruction in automaticity and decoding, I use the Hill Center Reading Achievement Program (HillRAP). HillRAP is an intervention program for students who have not been successful with regular classroom instruction. It emphasizes phonics and word recognition. I administer the corresponding reading assessment that gives information about the student’s phonological awareness, letter and sound recognition, word recognition (grouped by word families or phonetic patterns), and sight word recognition (HillRAP Manual, 2003). The reason for the HillRAP reading assessment is so I will not instruct on things that the student already knows and waste both of our time. If the student is able to read words within a certain word pattern, then I do not go over those, instead I move on to the pattern the student has not mastered. The overall purpose is to differentiate instruction.
If the group is guided reading and I am going to teach word study, I use the Elementary Spelling Inventory from Words Their Way (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 2008). The purpose of this assessment is to place students in their developmental word study stage and differentiate instruction. This is a spelling test; however, the students do not study for it. I give this to the whole group by calling out the words for the students to write down. The word study stages are determined by analyzing the words correct and the errors. For example, if a student can spell short vowel words, but has not mastered digraphs, he is in the Middle Letter Name-Alphabetic Stage. I determine the developmental word study stage and I begin instruction at that point.
The K-2 Literacy Assessment examines the reading and writing skills of our kindergarten, first, and second graders. There are different components depending on the grade level. Kindergarten uses the Early Reading Screening Instrument (ERSI) which includes assessing alphabet knowledge (recognize and write upper and lower case letters), concept of word, phoneme awareness (spelling-points are given for invented spelling), and word recognition (sight and decodable words) (Morris, 2008). In addition, kindergarten assesses concepts of print, writes name, letter sounds, and rhyming. The classroom teachers and I use this information to form small groups by placing students together with the same needs. The kindergarteners are grouped into readers, pre-readers that know the letter to phoneme relationships, pre-readers that do not know the letter to phoneme relationships, nonreaders that do not know the alphabet/have been exposed to print, and nonreaders that have not been exposed to print. I instruct in the needed areas of my group. The purpose of this testing is to drive instruction and to show the progress made by the students. After looking at the mid-year test scores, the classroom teachers and I evaluate the small groups. The students who did well on the assessment move to another group. In a normal year at mid-term, some of my students move to other teachers, some of my students stay with me, and I get new students to teach. The students continue to be grouped together by their literacy needs. At the end of year, we do Informal Reading Inventories (IRI) (Morris, 2008) on the kindergarteners that are reading.
The first grade K-2 Literacy Assessment transfers the student’s kindergarten scores at the beginning of the year on the ERSI, phonemic awareness, alphabet knowledge, IRI, retelling, and writing. By transferring the scores, it saves classroom-teaching time. The classroom teachers and I use this information to form small groups. Second grade transfers the first grade scores at the beginning of the year for phonemic awareness, sight words, IRI, writing, and retelling. The purpose for these assessments is to show student progress, instructional needs, and if intervention is needed. The K-2 Literacy Assessment is time consuming, but it does a thorough job of evaluating literacy. The end-of-year testing for K-2 is summative and provides the next year’s teachers and me with academic information about the students.
For grades three through five, we use STAR Reading, a research based software assessment (STAR Reading, 2009). Through cloze passages, an instructional reading level is determined. The advantages of this program are it is quick (approximately 20 minutes), the whole class can be assessed at one time in the computer lab, and the results are ready immediately. At the beginning of the year, the classroom teachers and I use the STAR instructional reading level along with IRI scores, if available, when forming small groups.
I feel the IRI is the best literacy assessment that we administer at Cornatzer Elementary because it does a through job. We do an IRI at mid-year and end-of-year on all first and second graders and kindergarten, third, fourth, and fifth graders as requested by the teachers. The IRI assesses word recognition, oral reading accuracy, rate, and comprehension; it can also assess silent reading rate and comprehension (Morris, 2008). The student’s instructional level is determined by this assessment. Classroom groups and Acceleration groups (instructional groups for the whole grade) are formed using this information and the teacher knows the level to begin instruction. I also analyze the IRI and determine what prevented the student from achieving the next highest level. Is his rate low, could he answer the comprehension questions, or was he unable to decode the words? By looking at these areas, I can determine the need/needs of the student and know where to instruct. Classroom teachers and I look at the STAR and the IRI to decide which students will be in my small groups. I use this data to direct my instruction. In addition, 3rd grade teachers and I look at the STAR and IRIs at mid-term to change student groups.
This year my school started having Data Meetings for each grade. The principal, RTI coordinator, and teachers for that grade meet quarterly. I am not a part of these meetings, but I receive the data. The purpose of these meetings is to look at where each student is improving and what his needs are. As a team, the group looks at the information and plans accordingly. After the Data Meetings, occasionally, the students in my groups are changed and my instruction changes to meet the needs of the new groups.
Informal Assessments
The kind of informal assessment that I use depends on the group and the instructional program. With this type of assessment, the students are not usually aware that they are being assessed. The purpose of informal assessments is to inform instruction (Spinelli, 2008). The formal assessments are for the overall picture and the informal ones are for day-to-day monitoring and teaching.
With my Beginning Readers group, I observe and see if the students have mastered the skill, such as letter to phoneme relationships, rhyming, or blending phonemes. I write in my plans to continue working on the skill or to come back later to this skill. As they learn their sight words, they put a sticker on their chart. This is the way I informally assess which words have been learned and the students like getting the stickers.
For my HillRap groups I have a phonological awareness checklist. As the students master the concepts, I check it off and date it. Each student has his own list of words and as he masters the pattern, the date is noted. The HillWrite spelling also has a checklist for the words the student has mastered. This way I do not teach the words the student already knows. These are informal methods of tracking progress.
The Seeing Stars group has a checklist for the phonemes and letters. As each group masters these, I check it off and move on to the next set. When we work on syllables, I check-off as the group masters each set. I also have a checklist for sight words. Again, by using the checklists, I am not wasting time going over material the students know. Instead, I can focus on their areas of need.
I do not have a checklist for First Steps or Words Their Way, but I write in my lesson plans when we need to move to the next set of words. This informally checks the progress of my students. During Reading Workshop, I check to see if the students understand the concepts that I taught, by having them write on a card an example from their independent reading book. If the students do not give a correct example, I continue to instruct in this area. When evaluating a student’s progress, it is important to use formal as well as informal assessments.
MATERIALS, TECHNOLOGIES, AND MEDIA
The materials used most often in my classroom are books. Since the purpose for all my students is to learn to read better, we read books. The school provides leveled fiction and nonfiction readers in sets for small groups. I use leveled books to teach on the student’s instructional level (Morris, 2008). My room also has books for independent reading. I have a personal collection of fiction and nonfiction books for independent reading in class and for students to take home. My collection is growing and I purchase a variety of texts so that there will be material that interests my students. Choosing a book that interests a student is motivation for him to read (Morrow, 1992). I have a few nonfiction leveled readers that I have downloaded from the internet. I use these to supplement the school’s collection especially if I need a story that interests a group. Interest is the motivation that leads students to want to learn (Morris, 2008). I also have a shelf of read alouds; some are provided by the school and some are part of my collection. Reading aloud lets the students hear the modeling of an experienced reader (Fisher, Flood, Lapp, & Frey, 2004). We have leveled Reader’s Theater sets of scripts in fiction and nonfiction. I use these to improve fluency. (Young & Rasinski, 2009).
My kindergarten students use tactile letters to touch and go over the letters with their fingers. These letters have a sandpaper texture in the shape of upper and lower case letters. They also use magnetic letters for the alphabet, letter to phoneme relationships, and making words. Manipulatives are another way to teach my struggling learners (Moats, 2010).
Developmental word study cards from Words Their Way are part of my guided reading groups’ word sorting (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 2008). Instead of taking class time to cut out words, I have the word cards ready. I also have concept of word cards to use with groups that need this. Another group of cards is in the First Steps kit. These include picture, alphabet, sight word, and word family cards. These are used with students that are instructed in the First Steps Method (Morris, 2005).
Personal CD players with headphones and CDs are used for fluency. Each student can listen to a story that interests him and is on his instructional level. There is a Smartboard in my room and I use it for stories on-line. Students listen to the actor’s guild read stories with the words printed at the bottom of the screen, such as Thank You Mr. Faulkner. Through this, the students hear someone else read aloud (Fisher, Flood, Lapp, & Frey, 2004). I also use the Smartboard to introduce a book or topic and to get more information about the subject we are reading. The Smartboard is good for review and comprehension games.
A variety of reinforcement games are in the room. These include literacy board games, sight word bingo, and hangman. The children enjoy playing the games while they practice the skills that have been taught.
READING INSTRUCTION
Since I teach kindergarten through 5th grade, I use a variety of instructional methods depending on the instructional level of the students. One thing that I try to do with all my groups is to ask higher order thinking questions. I often ask, “Why” and “How do you know?” My questions are based on Bloom’s Taxonomy (1956). Sometimes I progress through the levels of difficulty from the simple, knowing questions, to the challenging, evaluating questions. For example, a knowing question is where did he find the dog; an evaluative question is what could have been different?
Recently I had a third grade student that was doing a Word Ladder exercise (Rasinski, 2011). She had about ten small letter cards on the table to use. The definition led her to the word “wring” and she already had the letters “r, i, n, g” in front of her. She knew she needed to add a letter to the beginning. I encouraged her to take individual letters and place them in front to find the right letter. When she placed an incorrect letter in front, she could see that it was not right. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts, she placed the “w” in front and told me that was the correct letter. I asked her how she knew. She said, “Because you spell write with a silent ‘w’.” Through the series of questions, I let the student to figure out the correct letter and make a connection to something she already knew.
I use graphic organizers (Jiang & Grabe, 2007) to help my students get a visual when we compare or use KWL charts. Writing the information in an organized manner helps the students sort the information and comprehend it better. I also teach the students to connect the story to something that has happened to them. Getting the students to use prior knowledge is another way that I instruct students to think and comprehend. I teach them to think about what they already know and not just when I ask a question. I model how I think when I read the title of a selection and how I look at the text structure to understand what I am about to read. I think-aloud about what I already know about an author and how that connects to the story. We practice these steps so that it will carry over to their reading, especially nonfiction. When a student makes a connection between something that I have taught him and the selection, without me asking, I seize this “teachable moment.” We stop and discuss the connection.
Beginning Readers
This year I have a pair of kindergarteners who scored low on their ERSI. When they came to me, they had little exposure to books and reading. I began teaching them letter names, corresponding sounds, and order of the alphabet (Moats, 2010). I use a multi-sensory approach with the students, which includes tactile, visual, auditory, and walking on the ABC rug (Henry, 2010). It is important for students to learn the alphabet because letter recognition involves the ability to distinguish print and letter formation. In addition, it provides the base for learning letter-sound relationships (Elliott & Olliff, 2008). I also use a systematic instruction approach to phonological awareness by teaching the Road to the Code (Blachman, Ball, Black, & Tangel, 2000) program. This plan includes phoneme segmentation, Elkonin cards, initial sounds, and rhyming.
The purpose of using Road to the Code or any phonological awareness instruction plan is to teach students an awareness of phonological segments of speech. The segments of speech, phonemes, are represented by letters. The main goal is for phonological awareness to carry over to reading. I use a visual to help the students distinguish pictures and letters by comparing which one is different. The paper is divided in five rows with five pictures in each row and one picture is slightly different. For example, one picture is facing a different direction than the other four. I have the students tell me which picture in the row is different and why. The last row has letters with four letters the same and one different. This helps the students to look for differences and the purpose is for it to transfer to visualizing the difference between letters. We also do picture sorts by beginning sounds. Recently we began word families and reading emergent text (Morris, 2008).
First Steps
First Steps, or Early Steps, is an instructional program that I use with first and second graders. I modify it slightly from the way we did it in the Practicum to fit in the 25-minute class period. First, the student’s instructional level is determined by an IRI. On the first day, the student has three new short books to read at the beginning of the lesson. These books are on his instructional level.
The next day he rereads two of these books and a new book is introduced at the end of the lesson. The following day the new book is moved to the beginning of the lesson to be reread. Each day the student is rereading two or three books. After reading, the student does word study by sorting words or pictures into categories. The sorts range from picture sorts (beginning consonants) to word families to vowel patterns. Following the sort, we play a quick reinforcement game like “Race Track” with the word cards. Next, I call out eight of the words from the sort for the student to write (Spell Check). Then the student writes a sentence or two using a word from the sort. The last part of the lesson is to introduce a new book (Morris, 2005). I see growth and improvement in my First Steppers. They especially like to play a game with their word cards.
Hill Center
Another program that I use for instruction is the Hill Center Reading Achievement Program (HillRAP). This structured program focuses on phonological awareness, phonics, word recognition, fluency, and comprehension. The Hill Center’s instructional methodology is based on the Orton-Gillingham approach and research (HillRAP Manual, 2003). I use this program for students that need help with automaticity and decoding. Before beginning instruction, I assess each student with the HillRAP assessment to determine the student’s skills.
The daily lesson begins with each student in the small group of two to four being asked oral drill questions. The purpose is to help students gain automaticity of letter sounds and other skills that have been taught. Each student has his own questions that reinforce what he has already learned. Some examples of oral drill questions: what is the sound of short a, is the vowel sound long or short in a CVC word, and what is the sound of “ai”? A student must answer his question correctly three days in a row and then three review days. We spend about three or four minutes on this component. Next, I do phonological awareness with the group as a whole. The purpose is to help students understand the structure of the language. This is auditory as I work with these students on rhyming, syllables, separating words into phonemes, manipulating phonemes, and manipulating syllables. The next part of the lesson is word recognition. The purpose is to practice decoding words and apply phonics rules. Each student has his own list of words that was determined by the beginning assessment. This differentiates his instruction. The word lists are grouped in patterns (short vowel words, three letter blends, oi/oy words, etc.) The student has to read the words automatically to master the list.
After word recognition, the students do a timed test on a mastered word list or a reading passage. The purpose is to help students increase in accuracy and speed as they read words in isolation or read words in context passage reading. For the mastered word list, the first three days are used as a base to set a goal that is slightly higher than their best day, but within their reach. Students graph their results and they only compete against themselves to improve. After meeting their goal three days in a row, the students retire that word sheet and get a new one. For the timed test on a reading passage, we do not set a goal, but the students strive to improve in rate, accuracy, and prosody. The final component of this daily program is to read. The purpose is to increase in fluency, gain automaticity, and improve in oral expression. For HillRAP, Cornatzer Elementary uses decodable text to give the students an opportunity to apply and practice the skills they learned during the word recognition time. Sometimes I use the acronym CROWD for comprehension questions, which is part of the HillRAP program.
Completion (leave a blank at the end of the sentence)
Recall (retell the story)
Open-ended (questions that do not have a specific answer)
Wh-questions (who, what, when, where, why, and how)
Distancing (connect the story to the students’ lives)
HillRAP is a fast-paced program and I see improvement in my struggling readers that are part of these classes.
Another one of the Hill Center programs is HillWrite, which focuses on spelling and writing. Last year I had a fourth grade boy that could not spell when he wrote. When groups were being formed this year, I requested this student so that I could instruct him in developmental spelling. He and another fifth grade boy, that also needed spelling instruction, formed a HillRap and HillWrite group. With this fifth grade group and a second grade group, I use the HillWrite spelling two days a week and HillRAP three days a week. The spelling goes along with the student’s word recognition and he does not study the words ahead of time. Each student has his own list of words as in HillRAP and the spelling reinforces the word recognition patterns. At the beginning of the lesson, I go over missed words from the previous lesson and we orally break the words into onset and rime (Break and Spell). Then I give the students the words to spell on paper (HillWrite Manual, 2007). This has helped the students spell their classroom words because some of them will break unknown words into onset and rime for easier spelling and writing.
Seeing Stars
This winter I attended a Lindamood-Bell workshop about a reading intervention program called Seeing Stars. It is based on symbol imagery, seeing letters in the mind’s eye (Bell, 2007). This program teaches students to visualize letters, syllables, and words. It is designed for one-on-one tutoring, but can be adapted to small or large groups.
I had three students that I thought would benefit from Seeing Stars. One student, a first grader, was not making progress with the Hill Center Reading Achievement Program and two second graders were not improving with First Steps instruction. Both of the second graders see the EC (Exceptional Children) teacher. I was able to change my groups so that the first grader was joined by one more to make a group of two and the second graders were joined by another student to make a group of three. I decided with both groups to use part of the Seeing Stars program along with reading leveled books (Morris, 2008) to form the daily lesson. The first day I set the purpose by explaining to the students that I was going to teach them to see letters in their imagination and the reason for this was to help them read and spell better. This helps the students take charge of their own learning, which is part of the New Teacher Evaluation.
Each day the lesson begins with air-writing letters. I show the students a card with a letter or vowel team on it. The students and I take our finger and “write” the letter in the air as we say the letter name and the sound. Sometimes I say the sound without showing the written card and we air-write the letter, while saying the letter name and sound. Then we image and decode ten syllables or words. Again, I show a card with a syllable or word on it. We air-write it as we say the letters and the sound. With a few of the syllables, we add letters in our minds to the beginning or to the end to make a word. For example, I might say, “Add ‘b’ at the beginning and what word do you have?” Or, “Put ‘t’ at the end and what word do you have?” All the time the students are visualizing this in their minds. Now the students are telling me letters to add at the beginning or the end to make words.
Some days I have the students write with their fingers the words that I call out on a rectangular piece of cardboard. Other days I call out words from the patterns we are studying for them to write on paper with a pencil. Next we image and read sight words in a similar manner as in the beginning of the lesson. We only work on sight words that the individual student does not know. This differentiates his instruction even in the small group. The lesson ends with reading from leveled books. Of the five students using this program, I am pleased with the improvement they have made as they transfer the skills to written spelling and instructional-leveled text.
Read Naturally
Read Naturally is a fluency (with comprehension) program that I use (Read Naturally Manual, 2008). I instruct in this method with students that read word-by-word and slowly. With Read Naturally, the student works on rate and expression, which are part of evaluating the student’s oral reading. One thing that I like about this fluency program is that it has written comprehension questions that go along with each passage. There are four multiple-choice questions (main idea, vocabulary, detail, and inference) and one question is open-ended. There is also a written retell portion. The Read Naturally program that I use has nonfiction-leveled passages. I let the students choose the story they want to read because choosing increases their interest and motivation. Differentiation is easy since each student has his own-leveled passages.
Once every week or two, I have a Read Naturally lesson. After the student chooses a passage, he listens to a CD with the vocabulary words and their meanings. Then he writes a prediction about what he thinks the passage says. Next, he times himself reading for one minute and records the words per minute he read. After that, he listens to the passage and subvocalizes along with the CD. The student practices reading the passage several times followed by answering the questions and the retell. I check the questions and go over any mistakes with the student. We then look back at the passage to see the correct answers.
When the student is ready to pass the story, I listen to him read and he graphs his score. I note expression and accuracy. The students enjoy seeing how much faster they read with practice. Simos et al. (2007) conducted a research study using Read Naturally for fluency intervention. (The study also used Phono-Graphix to instruct phonological awareness and decoding skills.) Following the sixteen-week intervention, the second and third graders showed significant growth in fluency, decoding, and comprehension. While using this program I have seen one of my students improve significantly in his oral reading. He scored on-grade level on his IRI at mid-term after being below-grade level the first quarter. My other Read Naturally students improved also, but not as much. Students also gain confidence in their reading ability using these repeated readings.
Reading Workshop
This year I started Reading Workshop with two groups, fourth and fifth grade. One of the goals of this instructional method is to motivate students to read at school and at home. I began the year by sharing what I was personally reading, outside of school. I shared my thoughts and feelings about the book. I modeled this to show my students how important it is to read. I hoped my enthusiasm would carry over to the students’ personal reading and it did for some. Another principle of Reading Workshop is to improve comprehension. Comprehension is the purpose of real-life reading, to understand and process the text. By choosing the books, they want to read the students are more interested and comprehend better.
For each lesson, I begin with a minilesson about a literary element, skill, or genre. I read aloud a picture book and we apply the skill to the story. The students write the skill, definition, picture book title, and example of the skill from the picture book in their composition books. The topics for minilessons come from the North Carolina Standard Course of Study and needs that I see arise (Atwell, 1998). Then the children choose a book that is “just right” for them and one they want to read. By letting students choose what they want to read, they become more involved in their learning (Fountas & Pinnell, 2001). To teach students to take charge of their own learning is part of the New Teacher Evaluation. When students find topics that interest them, they want to know more and thus choose to read more on the subject (Ivey, 2010). During independent reading, they may stay seated or go to a comfortable spot in the room. Independent reading is not “free reading” or “sustained silent reading” rather it is a time for instructional conversations with students. I go to the students individually and have them tell me about what they are reading and give me an example or two of the skill that we studied. In addition, students acquire vocabulary words through independent reading (Nagy & Anderson, 1984). Both classes have been excited about choosing independent reading books and many of them have asked to take the books home to finish. This shows interest and motivation.
Another component of Reading Workshop is guided reading. Since I only have the students for 30 minutes a day, I alternate between the minilesson independent reading and guided reading. I select the text, an interesting novel, a selection from an anthology, or a nonfiction book. When possible I try to choose a book that correlates with what is being studied in their grade. Using the same text, we work as a group to learn reading strategies, literary elements, or informational content. Students share, verbally or written, how the strategies apply to the guided reading text (Fountas & Pinnell, 2001). If it is a nonfiction text, we discuss the information and relevance to the students.
Read Alouds
Another instructional method that I use is read alouds (Fisher, Flood, Lapp, & Frey, 2004). This is a strategy where the teacher sets aside time to read orally to students from texts above their independent reading level, but at their listening level. One purpose is to model fluency and another is to help students learn new words (Beck & McKeown, 2001). With some read alouds I teach rhyming and patterns. With others I “think aloud” as I read, to model the questioning process. I also teach the students to make connections from their own lives to the book. I ask questions throughout the story and ask the students to predict what will happen next. I allow the students to share their thoughts and feelings about the story. Sometimes I read aloud to students just for enjoyment.
Reader’s Theater
Reader’s Theater is an instructional method to improve fluency and expression (Young & Rasinski, 2009). I choose scripts that are on the independent reading levels of my students. By practicing and rereading, the students improve their fluency. After they practice their parts, then they read it aloud. Sometimes we read for fun and sometimes we read in front of others. This also helps students improve tracking, listening, and speaking skills. My students enjoy Reader’s Theater.
Words Their Way
For word study, I use Words Their Way (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 2008) because I like a systematic approach that covers a wide range of spellers. I instruct developmental word study because even in my small groups I can differentiate instruction. This year I have two guided reading groups where I include word study. The goal for my students is to read better and I feel that word study is important for my struggling readers. Reading and spelling use the same linguistic skills, such as orthographic knowledge, phonological awareness, morphological knowledge, and mental graphemic representation. Word study along with reading instruction strengthens the student’s linguistic skills (Kelman & Apel, 2004) and as decoding becomes more automatic, it lets the reader concentrate more on comprehension.
At the beginning of the year, I find each student’s developmental word study stage by giving the Elementary Spelling Inventory (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 2008). There are five stages in Words Their Way and each stage is divided into three areas, early, middle, and late. I begin instruction at the point where a student first makes two or more errors on a feature. I look at what does the student know and what is he “using but confusing.” Each student begins instruction at his area of need and time is not spent on words/patterns he already knows. Once the levels have been determined, I give the students word cards to sort into categories. This hands-on approach is good for my kinesthetic learners. The sorts allow the students to generalize about the words that they can apply in their reading (Gillet & Kita, 1979). I avoid telling the students the patterns; instead, I let them figure it out themselves. They learn the patterns better this way. I also ask the students, “What is the pattern, why did you sort the words like that, and why is this word an oddball?”
After the student has sorted the words a few days, I do a blind sort. The student places the headers for the sort in front of him. I call out a word and he orally spells it. Then I hand the card to the student and he puts it under the correct header. I do the blind sort to be sure the patterns are reinforced and that the sorting is not orthographic only. I link the word study to the text that we are reading to help the students connect the skills to reading. Occasionally, we play a reinforcement game to practice the word study pattern.
LANGUAGE ARTS
Literature and Author’s Craft
I incorporate literature in the guided reading groups. I choose a novel, a selection from an anthology, or a nonfiction book. As the students are reading the book, I stop at different points and discuss the literary elements, the author’s choice of words, figurative language, the point of view of the narrator, what the author is teaching us, etc. In Reading Workshop, I begin the class with a minilesson about a literary element or figurative language. Then I read aloud a picture book and we find an example of the skill taught in the book. Next, the students choose a book to read and they find examples of the skill in their independent reading (Fontas & Pinnell, 2001).
One of my third grade groups enjoys acting out stories. I read aloud the literature and they pantomime. They must comprehend the story to be able to do an impromptu play. This kinesthetic activity also helps them remember the literature.
Occasionally I will read aloud traditional literature from different cultures and we will compare the story with the Western version. I read Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal by Paul Fleischman to my fifth graders and we compared the various aspects from other cultures that were in the book with the Cinderella story they knew. I also have read aloud The Three Little Pigs and David Wiesner’s, The Three Pigs. Then we compared the traditional literature with the new version.
Writing
I do not teach writing with all my students because most of the groups are intervention programs that address certain needs. Occasionally I plan a writing lesson for the guided reading groups. I begin with a prompt and have the students brainstorm ideas. They write their ideas on a story web to organize their thoughts. Then they write their story. After they have finished, I look over their writing for major grammar mistakes and have the students correct these. I accept invented spelling (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 2008), if it developmentally appropriate.
My First Steps students write almost every day a couple of sentences of their choice (Morris, 2008). I encourage them to use a word in their sentences from their daily word sort. I look to see if the words they have been sorting during word study are spelled correctly. We go over any big grammatical errors, but again, I accept their invented spelling. Looking at students’ writing gives insight into their phonological awareness (Henry, 2010). Writing intertwines with reading (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 2008) to make the student a better reader.
Genre
I teach a genre unit with two of my guided reading groups. I begin the class with a minilesson and explain the genre type we are studying. The students write down the information in their composition books for reference later. I read aloud a picture book and we discuss why it is an example of that type of genre. I have other books for the students to look at. We discuss which ones are and are not a particular genre. I apply this genre study through out the year by asking students the genre for the material we are reading. This also helps to review the genre types.
Poetry
I teach a poetry unit as part of the genre study. We begin with a discussion about poetry; what it is, how do you recognize it, and does it have to rhyme? We talk and look at types of poems, which the students know such as Acrostic and Haiku. Then we look at other types of poems like Couplets, Quatrains, and Cinquains. I let the students choose poems to read to the group.
I also let the students choose their favorite type of poem and write a poem. Occasionally I will pull out a poem and each student will read a stanza. They practice their part and it improves their fluency and expression (Rasinski, Rupley, Nichols, 2008)
Poetry is often hard to interpret, especially on the EOG when there is a “correct” answer. I instruct and help my students find clues to interpret poems. A fun activity that I do with poetry is to illustrate a poem. I recently downloaded Shel Silverstein’s (2011), Eight Balloons and I let the students illustrate their idea about what the poet meant. Another fun activity is for the student to write a poem about a camel and write it within the outline of a camel (Silverstein, 2011).
CONCLUSION
I enjoy my job as a Reading Specialist and I enjoy the children that I teach. I try to bring pleasure and excitement to their day through various instructional methods. At the beginning of the year, I talk with my students about the reason for being in my class and we decide what our purpose is. The statement is posted in my room. It says, “My purpose in Mrs. Riddle’s class is to learn to read better!” Sometimes I must remind the students about the reason they are in my class. From the courses that I took in the Masters in Reading Education program, I have gained a wealth of ideas to help my students accomplish their purpose. I use the research based best practices that I was taught in the program for my instruction. When my students accomplish their purpose of learning to read better, I have accomplished my purpose.
References
Atwell, N. (1998). In the middle. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.
Bear, D. R., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (2008). Words their way: Word study for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling instruction. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Beck, I. L. & McKeown, M. G. (2001). Text Talk: Capturing the benefits of read- aloud experiences for young children. The Reading Teacher, 55 (1), 10- 20.
Bell, N. (2007). Seeing Stars: Symbol imagery for phonemic awareness, sight words and spelling. San Luis Obispo, CA: Gander Publishing.
Blachman, B. A., Ball, E. W., Black, R., & Tangel, D. M. (2000). Road to the code: A phonological awareness program for young children. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing.
Bloom, B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives, handbook 1: The cognitive domain. New York: David McKay Company Inc.
Elliott, E. M. & Olliff, C. B. (2008). Developmentally appropriate emergent literacy activities for young children: adapting the early literacy and learning model. Early Childhood Education Journal, 35, 551-556.
Fisher, D., Flood, J., Lapp, D. & Frey, N. (2004). Interactive read-alouds: Is there a common set of implementation practices? The Reading Teacher, 58 (1), 8-17.
Fountas, I. C., & Pinnell, G. Su. (2001). Guiding readers and writers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Gillet, J. W. & Kita, M. J. (1979). Words, kids and categories. The Reading Teacher, 32, 538-542.
Henry, M. K. (2010). Unlocking literacy: Effective decoding & spelling instruction. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing.
HillRAP manual (2003). Durham, NC: The Hill Center.
HillWrite manual (2007). Durham, NC: The Hill Center.
Ivey, G. (2010). Texts that matter. Educational Leadership, 18-23.
Jiang, X. & Grabe, W. (2007). Graphic organizers in reading instruction: Research findings and issues. Reading in a Foreign Language 19 (1), 34- 35.
Kelman, M. E. & Apel, A. (2004). Effects of a multiple linguistic and prescriptive approach to spelling instruction: A case study. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 25 (2), 56-66.
Moats, L. C. (2010). Speech to print: Language essentials for teachers. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing.
Morris, D. (2008). Diagnosis and correction of reading problems. New York: Guilford Press.
Morris, D. (2005). The Howard Street tutoring manual: Teaching at-risk readers in the primary grades. New York: Guilford Press.
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Read Naturally manual (2008). Saint Paul, MN: Read Naturally, Inc.
Silverstein, S. (2011). The world of Shel Silverstein. Retrieved from
Simos, P. G., Fletcher, J. M., Sarkari, S., Billingsley-Marshall, R., Denton, Morrow, L. M. (1992). The impact of a literature-based program on literacy achievement, use of literature, and attitudes of children from minority backgrounds. Reading Research Quarterly, 27, 250-275.
C. A., & Papanicolaou, A. C. (2007). Intensive instruction affects brain magnetic activity associated with oral word reading in children with persistent reading disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 40 (1), 37-48.
Spinelli, C. G. (2008). Introduction: The benefits, uses, and practical application of informal assessment procedures. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 24, 1-6.
STAR Reading [computer software] (2009). Wisconsin Rapids, WI: Renaissance Learning, Inc.
Young, C., & Rasinski, T. (2009). Implementing readers theatre as an approach to classroom fluency instruction. Reading Teacher, 63 (1), 4-13.
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