For the week of September 28th

Response to Intervention small groups began this past Monday. There were some minor problems, but overall, students moved smoothly to new areas, and have been working hard to make progress in their reading. I have spoken to or had email correspondence with a number of parents, and am pleased with the positive feedback, helpful suggestions, and questions about how parents can help their children at home. Many weeks on my blog I write about different things you can do with your student - things which are enjoyable and beneficial at the same time. Look back over my past blog posts to get some ideas. I will be sharing more ideas as the weeks go on.

The most important thing you can do if your child struggles some with reading is to spend time sitting with them and reading. It is sometimes difficult for a child to force themselves to do something that is hard but it is more fun, and it is easier if a parent is doing it with them.

For the Week of September 21st

Students who have not made the target scores in aimsweb will begin getting extra instruction this week. Parents can help their children at home by sitting beside them as they read aloud. Give the child 3-5 seconds to determine unknown words. If they cannot get the word - give it to them, have them repeat what you said and go on with their reading. This can be done with any text or book as long as they can read the majority of it without you helping them. 4-5 words per page should be the maximum that you have to feed them. Echo reading can also help them to begin to learn to read with expression. You read a sentence and then they try to read the sentence with the same phrasing and expression that you did. It is amazing how just 20-30 minutes a night of this practice will help your child to become a more fluent reader.

For the Week of September 14th

This past week a team of 11 benchmarked, for reading, every student in the school. Now the teachers and administrators will be studying the results to see who should be placed in small groups for extra help in reading. Each student who is below the target score will be discussed and placed in the group where he/she will receive the support that they need. Those parents with students who need extra support will be notified this week. Small group time will begin the week of September 21st.

I am eagerly looking forward to working with this year's students. They are a great group of children.

A Fun Game - Match the Homophones

Its fun to play games with your child that also improves their reading. This is a great game to play with your 3rd grader. Make a batch of cards with the following words printed on them. Try to include some that your child knows and some that he doesn't know. Pick a reasonable number of matches for each game. Turn all of the cards face down and take turns turning over two cards and reading them. The person reading them must tell what each words means or use the word in a sentence. Mom or Dad can help if needed. If they are homophones (two words that sound alike but mean different things) then the person turning them over gets to keep them and take a second turn. The winner is the person with the most matches at the end of the game.

Cards to make: right, write, know, no, which, witch, son, sun, some, sum, banned, band, guest, guessed, missed, mist, plain, plane, mail, male, mind, mined, find, fined, weather, whether, father, farther, hi, high, by, buy, oh, owe, flour, flower, thrown, throne, nose, knows, write, right, night, knight, new, knew, seen, scene, sent, cent, piece, peace, sell, cell, its, it's, pale, pail, sale, sail, brake, break, lead, led, worn, warn, bury, berry, herd, heard, meat, meet