For the Week of November 2

Over the past number of weeks I have been highlighting some of the interventions we use at Prairieview in our RTI program. This week I am going to describe Fundations which is a phonics, sight word, vocabulary and spelling program. Fundations uses letter cards to help the teacher build words on the board. It uses magnetic tile boards for the students to build words on their desks. Small dry erase boards are used for student practice. Each student also has a student notebook and a composition book to help keep track of the rules he/she has learned. Fundations is a very systematic approach to learning the English spelling and reading rules. It shows students how suffixes change words and explains how and when the base words changes as suffixes are added. It teaches the different kinds of syllables and how to break longer words into syllables. Fundations is a research based method that we find helpful for many students.

For the Week of October 26th

This past week I went to a conference orchestrated by SCIRA, Suburban Council of the International Reading Association. P. David Pearson, a literacy specialist, author and researcher from Berkeley, California was the speaker. It was a wonderful experience. This man radiates the joy of literacy and teaching literacy. Dr. Pearson gave me a lot to contemplate about teaching reading. One idea he presented was that reading should not be an end in itself but should be presented to students as a tool to use to understand their world. Reading is a tool to learn about science, social studies, math and literature. He is working with scientists and teachers to write and publish curriculum that combines science and literacy. The students spend their time doing hands-on science quests, writing about what they have seen, talking about it and reading about it. Doing it. Writing it. Talking it. Reading it. Succinctly put, those are the approaches that help children learn. One idea I would like to pass on to parents is that many students, boys especially, dislike novels but love reading science. If you are a parent who has trouble getting your child to read, try going to the library or bookstore and looking at the science section instead of the novel section. See if a science book will capture your child's attention.

For the Week of October 19th

Last week I wrote about the computer program called Read Naturally that we use in both small pull-out groups and as individuals in the classroom. (see last week's blog) This week I am going to describe Reader's Theater. Reader's Theater is a fun way that we work on fluency with the students. It is used in the regular classroom as well as in small pull-out groups for RTI. Reader's Theater scripts are just like scripts for a play. Each student has the role of one character in the play. The difference between a play and Reader's Theater, however, is that the students don't do any acting. They only use their voices to make their characters come alive. They practice their parts until they can read them fluently and then they work on expression and sometimes even accents or funny voices depending on their characters. Reader's Theater is a researched based method for helping students with their fluency. Of course, vocabulary is a byproduct, because they learn new words as they are reading the Reader's Theater scripts.

You can try this at home if you have several people willing to participate. Find a book that has a lot of talking between characters. Assign a character or two to each child and someone to be the narrator. If your child is a reluctant reader it might be better to have the parent start out as the narrator because the narrator parts are usually longer. The character reads only those parts that are in quotation marks. The narrator reads the rest. This breaks up the text in a different way than paragraph-by-paragraph or page-by-page. Children enjoy adding expression to their voices. Reader's Theater can also be done with poetry by splitting up the poem for different readers.

For the Week of October 12th

Did you ever wonder what your child does when they work on the computer program Read Naturally? Read Naturally is a research based program that we use both in small pull-out groups and in the classrooms to work on reading skills. Students begin by choosing a story. Each story is introduced with vocabulary words. Then the student uses those words, the picture, the title and their background knowledge to write a prediction about what they think the story will be about. Next the student does a cold read of the story and is timed. This tells the student how fast they read the story without any practice. Then they listen to the story up to three times as a model for fluent reading and to help them learn the words that they don't know. After listening, the student practices reading the story themselves. Each student has been given an individualized goal for how fast he needs to be able to orally read the story. When he is able to read the story at that rate and he knows all the words, he moves on to the comprehension quiz. The quiz includes both multiple choice and short answer questions. After that the student must write a short summary of the story. When all of these steps are accomplished, the student is ready to pass. The teacher comes to listen to the student read the story aloud. The teacher counts the errors, listens for fluency and times the student. The teacher also looks over the written work and makes comments and suggestions for improvement. If the student passes, he then picks a new story to read. The three big areas of reading most worked on in 3rd-5th grades are fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. All three of these areas are addressed with Read Naturally.

For the Week of October 5th

Paraphrasing - A Great Reading Strategy

One strategy that you might try with your struggling reader is to help him/her paraphrase what he/she has read. Paraphrasing is saying the same thing that the author said, but in your own words. To help your child do this, you should do it several times yourself first. Read a paragraph together with your child. After reading, put the book aside and tell about what you read in your own words. If you can't remember something, or realize that you didn't understand something, look back and reread. Talk about your thinking with your child. After doing this several times, let your child try it on the next paragraph. Tell your student that it is important to make sure they understand what they have read so far before they read more. At first paraphrase paragraph by paragraph. After paragraphs are mastered, sections can be read before paraphrasing.