funny stuff kids say....

Me: Do you have any plans for the weekend?
Student: No, but this summer I am going to Hollywood to become famous!
Me: Wow!
Student: Yeah, when I grow up I want to be a teacher, a movie star and work at Subway so I can get all the free sandwiches I want.

Song for Phonemic Awareness

My kindergartners have such a hard time with phonemic awareness. I am trying everything!!! Today it was a new song, they liked it.

Listen, listen, listen to my word
and then tell me all the sounds you've heard... CAT
/c/ is the first sound
/a/ makes two
/t/ is the last sound
it's true, it's true.

(I sang it in the tune of skip to my lou)

Rereading for Fluency

One of the most important things we have to teach struggling readers is fluency. The only way we can teach this is through rereading. Here are some fun fluency ideas.

Explicitly explain that:
Fluency is reading quickly, but not too quick.
Reading with expression.
Stopping at periods and pausing at commas.

Fluency ideas: (rereading the same story)
Whisper read to self.
Use a whisper phone.
Read to a partner.
Use a minute timer, see how far they can get... then try to beat that time.
Roll a dice with expressions such as: happy, sad, mad, glad and have them read the story/page with that expression.
Readers theater.

Word walls

Word walls are most effective if they are alphabetized on the wall and when the words are added as they are learned.

Too often we see teachers who put up all their site words at the beginning of the year and expect them to know them.

The purpose is to introduce... memorize and put them in an accessible area for students.

Ideas for word wall...
I spy (I spy a word that starts with w and end in y and let students guess)
Write sentences using site words.

Stretching words into sounds

To teach phonemic awareness to my kindergartners and first graders, I tell them we are going to stretch bubble gum. I let them pretend chew it up... then they get it in their hands and I tell them a word, cat, then we stretch it out into sounds /c/ /a/ /t/. Then we slap it back together and say cat. This is a fun activity and it gets the kids thinking about sounds in words.

Remember, we should work on PA everyday until 2nd grade but only spend a few minutes on it.

Only from the mouth of a child

I said to my student...
Me: Where were you yesterday, sick?
Him: No, my ears hurt.
Me: Oh no, you had an ear infection?
Him: No, they hurt from you yelling at me...

Priceless

After much testing...DIBELS! I was able to make my small groups. My lowest group needs lots of phonics instruction as most first graders do. These students are more on the kindergarten level, they don't know their letter names and sounds. I hear a song in my head "lets start from the very beginning, a very good place to start..."

We had a half an hour for this group: started with phonemic awareness... air --- plane, what's the word? quick and easy, we want PA to be more of a game. Then we played pass the site words: see and the. Next, we talked about A and the sound it makes /a/ and its spelling. I gave them a card with letters jumbled and had them find the letter a many times by naming things that started with a. I wrote all their names on the board and we circled the letter a in their names. To end and assess, I had them write the uppercase and lowercase a on a small whiteboard and say the sound.
I know this sounds "elementary" BUT, this is where we start with these students.