Teaching Students to Blend Words

admin December 21, 2013 No Comments

Blending sounds into words–what an exciting step in learning to read.  Once students know a few consonants and vowels, we can begin to teach them how to blend those sounds into meaningful words.  Blending, for some students, is a challenge.  Do you have students who know their letters and sounds and can sound out any word sound-by-sound, but yet haven’t figured out how to smoothly connect the sounds?  Their reading may sound something like this:  “The /b/ /u/ /g/ bug is /u/ /n/ /d/ /e/ /r/ under the /r/ /u/ /g/ rug.”  For these students, direct instruction in blending will be needed. One way to begin instruction is to help students recognize patterns within words.  We can do this by

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7 Syllable Types Classroom Posters

admin December 6, 2013 No Comments

It’s always so much fun listening and watching our  young readers figure out those “longer” words.  Many of our little ones are pretty solid decoding one-syllabe words and are now ready to learn strategies for decoding multisyllabic words.  So, really, what is a syllable?  Simply put, a syllable is a unit of pronunciation containing a single vowel sound.  “Syllabication” is the process of analyzing the pattern of vowels and consonants in a word to determine where a word is broken into its syllables. The ability to break a word into syllables helps students decode those longer words as well as helps the student remember spelling patterns.  Understanding the 7 syllable types helps students to become better readers and writers. There

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Teaching Phonemic Awareness Skills

admin October 17, 2013 No Comments

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words and the understanding that spoken words are made up of sequences of speech sounds.  The child’s level of phonemic awareness upon entering school is one of the strongest indicators of how well he/she will learn to read.  Children must have an understanding that words are made up of separate speech sounds that can be broken apart and put together to form words.  Without this understanding, learning the alphabet doesn’t make much sense.  Although some children enter school with an appreciation of the sounds of language, many do not.  The exciting part is that, as teachers, by assessing our students’ phonemic awareness skills early on, we can identify those who

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Halloween Themed Game Boards

admin October 16, 2013 No Comments

Halloween is just around the corner and it’s time to add a little holiday spirit into centers and small groups.  These Halloween-themed game boards might just do the trick.   There are 9 boards using words from the Dolch 220 sight word lists.  You can easily differentiate your literacy center activities by choosing which boards to use with specific groups.  Your kiddos might even enjoy taking a few home for added practice.   Click the following link to download the FREE game board for list 4 of the Dolch sight words  Halloween Sight Word Game Board List 4 If you like this little freebie, you might like all the Dolch sight words printed on Halloween-themed game boards.  When you download

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What’s all the Nonsense about Teaching Nonsense Words?

admin October 5, 2013 No Comments

It’s been nearly 10 years now that our schools have been using the Dynamic Indicators of Early Literacy (DIBELS) Next as a school-wide reading assessment.  DIBELS was first introduced as part of Reading First and fit so nicely into our new Response to Intervention initiative.  The DIBELS Next is a valid and reliable screener that can identify students at-risk for reading difficulties.  The idea is that if we can identify those students early, we can put in place interventions to actually prevent the reading problem!  Personally, I love this assessment.  It does exactly what it is suppose to do.  In the ensuing years; however, misunderstandings of the assessment have lead to inappropriate use of the data as well as inappropriate

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Write It Phonics Cards for Vowel Teams

admin September 20, 2013 No Comments

The Make, Take & Teach Write-It Phonics Cards have been one of the all time favorite activities for literacy centers for practicing targeted phonics skills.  I started with the beginning and ending sounds and am slowly but surely working my way up the phonics ladder. I just finished the Write It Phonics Cards for Vowel Teams!  When you download this product you’ll receive 47 colorful cards with pictures of words containing the oa, ee, ea and ai vowel teams.  They are so easy to assemble.  All you need to do is print the pages, laminate and secure them together with a 1″ loose leaf ring.  Super simple!  Have your students write the correct vowel team on the card and when

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Popcorn Words

admin September 14, 2013 No Comments

The Dolch sight word list is a list of 220 words that make up between 50-70% of the words we encounter in text.  Most of these words are “service words” that must be quickly recognized in order to read fluently.  Many of the words cannot be sounded out and they need to be learned by “sight”.  Because the words must be identified quickly (just like a popcorn kernel pops quickly) many teachers tell their students that these words are “popcorn words”.  The words just need to “pop”.  Our little kindergarteners and first graders love this concept and you can have tons of fun using the popcorn analogy to teach sight words.  When you download the Dolch 220 Popcorn Words file,

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Research-Based Reading Intervention Strategies

admin August 22, 2013 No Comments

  I found this really great book.  I mean A REALLY GREAT BOOK!  I attended a conference a few weeks ago and came across Elaine McEwan-Adkin’s book 40 Reading Intervention Strategies for K-6 Students: Research-Based Support for RTI.  I opened the book, took a few minutes to look it over and headed right over to the check out counter.  I needed this book- and NOW!  Here’s why I love this book! All 40 intervention strategies are listed in this handy table!  Each strategy is then categorized per instruction or target area and THEN the grade level in which the strategy is appropriate is checked!  OMG!  Is this awesome or what?  The book then has a chapter for each strategy in

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Multi-Sensory Activity for Teaching Letters and Sight Words

admin August 13, 2013 No Comments

I love using plastic screens for introducing and practicing letters and sight words.  Plastic screens can be found in any craft store (Michaels or JoAnn Fabrics) or in the craft section of most department stores.  When I use the screens for teaching letters, I typically cut one sheet into quarters and then for the sight words, I’ll cut 3 long strips.  You can use ready-made templates of letters or sight words or you can simply write the letters/words on paper yourself.  First have your students place the paper on top of the screen and, with a crayon, trace the letter or letters of the sight word.  When they remove the paper, the letter/word will be “bumpy” on the paper.  If

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Teaching Phoneme Segmentation

admin July 14, 2013 No Comments

Phonemic awareness is one of my favorite topics relating to literacy instruction.  Studies of reading development have demonstrated that the acquisition of phonemic awareness is highly predictive of success in learning to read.  It’s so important that our beginning readers have an understanding that spoken words are made of up individual speech sounds so that phonics instruction makes sense.  Teaching phonemic awareness skills can be actually quite fun.  There are tons of activities that you can use during your whole and small group instruction.  Here are a few: There are several skills which fall under the category of phonemic awareness and phonemic awareness awareness falls under a broader category known as phonological awareness.   I’ve created this little video to

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