Good Readers always:
Look at the pictures
Say the beginning three sounds
Read on to gather clues
Go back and read again
Break words into parts (paint + er = painter)
Try different vowel sounds (long or short?)
Think: Does it make sense?
Self correct when something doesn't make sense
Visualize and Summarize the story
Welcome to Reading Club!
Each fall, as soon as school starts, every Kindergarten, first, and second grade student in the district is given the ISEL, Illinois Snaphshot of Early Literacy, as a screening tool to determine which students may be in need of additional diagnostics and support. After our screening is complete, the scores are given to the classroom teachers for their review and comments. Together, the classroom teacher, reading teacher, and building principal determine who will receive extra help as well as put together a schedule of when and how students will receive services. Sometimes, the reading teacher may "push in" to the regular classroom and work with the whole class. While other students may benefit from small group or individual "pull out" support. The goal of Reading Club is to insure that students are successful in their classrooms at their grade level. On-going assessments are taken each week. Once each quarter, the reading teacher along with the classroom teacher, review scores to see if a student might be ready to be "dropped" and other students added. Sometimes, as new students enter the building, they may be added to the current students receiving support.
Kindergartners receive both push in and pull out services. I pull out students who need additional help learning their alphabet letters and sounds one afternoon a week. The other afternoon, I go into the classroom and work on phonemic awareness. We play with hearing sounds in words. We just started with our weekly take home books and shoebox collection of books that they can read independently. Please encourage your child to read books from their bedtime book box over and over. Help your child to establish good early reading habits!
In first and second grade, students will use the Houghton-Mifflin Early Success program. This program utilizes a weekly story book along with a paper "take-home" book. Each week the stories get progressivley more difficult. We always go through our new story and "de-bug" the book writing down any tricky words on the board and then we decode them together. This is a great time to reinforce phonics rules such as "the silent 'e' makes the vowel in the middle say its own name" or "when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking". We can also look for little words inside words and use our knowledge of prefixes and suffixes to help decode. Our goal is always to help each child become an efficient and independent decoder. After we read our new book, we then go over a few words selected as this week's "snap words". This is what we call our sight words. We call them snap, because I snap my fingers and say this is how fast I want you to know these words. I don't want them to stop and have to decode these words, I want them to know the word automatically. There are many words in the English language which do NOT follow phonics rules. These words, such as "says", "they", "through", will just have to be memorized so they will not have to slow down to decode. I also encourage students to practice reading their take home books until they can make their reading sound "just like talking". I want them to read smoothly, just like they talk and not "word by word". We also do a written response to a topic from the story. For example, if we have just finished reading the story "My Grandma", I might ask the students to write a description of their own Grandma. I learn a lot about how students are reading when I see their writing. I always encourage parents to not only read with their children, but write, too. Sometimes simple little notes such as asking what your child would like to eat for dinner can give them a reason to write a response. While I want to encourage them to use inventive spelling, this is a good time for me to help them with conventions of writing and spelling. After you listen to your child read his/her take home book, please initial the front page in the upper right hand corner. I have found that students who consistently take their books home for evening readings progress much more quickly than those who do not. Help your child progress by reading and writing together each day or evening! If you have any questions, PLEASE do not hesitate to call me at 346-6240 or email me at kpitzer@kahoks.org