1. Kindergarten Read Well Initial Training Part 1 Kelly Pruitt kpruitt@tacoma.k12.wa.us
30 units of coordinated and engaging age-appropriate routines and activities designed to:
-Build students’ oral language, vocabulary, and background knowledge
-Introduce students to beginning reading and writing skills.
-Prime students for small group instruction
Small group component-
26 units of mastery based reading instruction (including placement and assessment) designed to:
-Carefully introduce, provide practice in, and review critical beginning reading skills.
-Allow all students to become readers at a pace that is appropriate for them.

2. Introduction and Overview
Read Well Level K is a comprehensive and fully integrated language arts program designed specifically for kindergarten students.
It is research based and field tested.
Whole Class Component… Get them ready.
Small group Component… Get them reading.
30 units of coordinated and engaging age-appropriate routines and activities designed to:
-Build students’ oral language, vocabulary, and background knowledge
-Introduce students to beginning reading and writing skills.
-Prime students for small group instruction
Small group component-
26 units of mastery based reading instruction (including placement and assessment) designed to:
-Carefully introduce, provide practice in, and review critical beginning reading skills.
-Allow all students to become readers at a pace that is appropriate for them.

3. Who is Read Well K for?
Kindergarten Students

4. Features of a Quality Kindergarten Program
Phonemic Awareness: Student’s ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds in words.
Phonics: Students’ understanding of the alphabetic principle-that is, the relationships between written sounds and spoken words.
Fluency: Student’s ability to read a text accurately and quickly enough to ensure understanding.

5. Features of a Quality Kindergarten Program (cont.)
Vocabulary: The words students must know to communicate - includes both oral and reading vocabulary.
Text Comprehension: Students’ ability to understand what they read, I.e. the purpose of reading.

6. The Big Picture 1 complete program with 2 separate components
Whole Class activities provide a foundation for the Small Group lessons.
Content in Whole Class and Small Group components is reciprocal. (Same themes, characters, and skills are found in both.)
Consistent, repeating formats within and across the Whole Class and Small Group routines and activities allow children to become familiar and comfortable with what they are expected to do.

7. Factors Influencing Implementation
Students (Predictors: Phonemic Awareness; Knowledge of Letter Names)
Time (Administrative Support; Scheduling; Coordination between programs)
Teacher (Management; Attitudes & Beliefs; Use of time)
*** Low performing students make the best progress when double dosed in the SAME research based program.

8. An Important Resource Getting Started: A Guide to Implementation
Comprehensive overview
Program Materials
Orchestration and Scheduling
How to teach the skills and activities
Independent Work
Classroom Organization
Appendix

9. Initial Placement Purpose: When: Who:
To ensure that each student enters Read Well at the appropriate level
When:
After week 3, and before week 9
Transfer students
Who:
Assessment teams/any trained professional

10. Initial Placement Part 1 Part 2 Capital letter names Sounds Blending
Small letter sounds
High-frequency
words
Pattern Words
Part 2
Sounds
Blending
Irregular Words
Sentences
Passages read with accuracy and fluency

11. A walk through of initial placement Your Assessment Manuals please……

18. Grouping Students
Determine number of groups based on time and adults available to teach.
Sort assessments in groups based on placement results.
Possible entry points:
Prelude A, Unit 1, 6, 10, 16, or Read Well 1

20. Critical Steps in Explicit Instruction
1. Demonstrate
Model, My turn, I do it
2. Guide Practice
Lead, Our turn, We do it
3. Mix group and individual turns… independent of your voice… Be creative!
Test, Your turn, You do it

21. Critical Steps in Explicit Instruction
4. Provide mastery based instruction
Be diagnostic as you teach, What are the errors?
Repeat steps 1, 2, and 3
Return to the difficult skill at least 3 times.
5. Acknowledge students’ efforts
Highlight and give specific praise.

22. When do you model? Model when skills are NEW or DIFFICULT.
Model when students make a mistake.
Do not model everything, all the time.

23. Making Small Groups Work
Teach students the expectations regularly and as needed.
Use 4 or 5 positively stated expectations.
Demonstrate as needed, and have children role play each expectation.
Provide ongoing, positive, descriptive feedback.

24. Teaching Expectations
“When your expectations are clear, students never have to guess how you expect them to behave.”
TEAM- Talk, Effort, Ask, Movement
T Charts
Provide positive and corrective feedback

25. Seating
Arrange seating so that each student is in the teacher’s line of vision.
Teacher should be able to reach each student’s materials to help in tracking while reading.
U shaped and kidney tables work best
If using rectangle tables, sit in the middle on the long side.

26. Students working independently
Prior to beginning small group instruction, teach and practice how to transition and work independently.
Review choices and expectations for independent time, frequently.
While teaching, give feedback to the students working independently.

27. Understanding Preludes and Units
Preludes A, B, C
For students who have age-appropriate language development and some alphabetic knowledge, but who are not ready for “formalized” reading instruction.
Units 1-20
For students with advanced language development and some alphabetic knowledge. For students when they complete the preludes.

28. Small Group Materials Teacher Guides Assessment Manual Blending Cards
Teach and support Oral Language, Phonemic Awareness (Blending and Segmenting)
Sound and Tricky Word Cards
Teach Phonics (letter/sound fluency) and Irregular Words
Show and tell

29. Small Group Materials (cont.)
Decoding Magazines (consumable)
Teach Oral Language, Phonemic Awareness, Phonics
Student Storybooks
Teach and support Phonics, Vocabulary, Comprehension, Fluency
Homework Blackline Masters
Support Fluency, Comprehension, and the Home-School connection

30. Teacher’s Guides Organization of the guides
New and Important Objectives
Language Priming
Detailed Lesson Plans
Language and Vocabulary Practice
End of Unit Assessment
Making Decisions
Extra Practice

31. Lesson Planning-Units 1-20
Options: 5, 7, 9, or 12 day plans
Some units will have a 4 day plan
AM p 75

32. Small Group Instruction Recommendations
Every group
Every day
20-30 minutes
Double dose for the lower performing students

33. Small Group Instruction
Teaching Table
After the lesson
Decoding Practice
(10-15 minutes)
Storybook Reading
Partner reading
(5 minutes, later in year)

34. Small Group Planning If you are alone…
Run 3 small groups (20 minutes each) for 60 minutes
Meet with higher performing group for less time, give additional small group time to lower scoring students.
Run 2 small groups (30 minutes each) for 60 minutes
Run 2 small groups (20 minutes each) for 40 minutes

35. Small Group Planning If you have 1 para…
Run 3 small groups (20 minutes each):
Para meets with 1/3
Teacher meets with 1/3
1/3 are “independent”
Para supervises 2/3

36. Small Group Planning If you have 1 para…
Class split into 6 groups.
Teacher and para each meet with 3 groups
Students are independent when not in a group.
If you have 2 or more teachers in your grade level and a para…
During small group time, split classes by ability level.

37. Daily Lesson Format 10-15 minutes Decoding 10-15 minutes Story Reading
Partner Reading/Independent Work
Extra Practice Activities
Homework

38. Decoding Lessons Include:
Warm-Ups-Magazine covers, Sound and word cards, Smooth and Bumpy Blending Cards
New Sound Introduction/New Sound Practice
Introduced with a poem and tracing letter
Smooth and Bumpy Blending
Stretch and Shrink
Sounding out Smoothly
Accuracy and Fluency Building
Tricky Words

39. Model and Practice
Practice a decoding lesson…

40. Story Reading Fully Decodable Text (Duet & Solo Stories)
Priming Background Knowledge
Vocabulary Introduction
Procedures
Finger Tracking
First Reading
Second Reading
Correcting Errors
Repeated Readings
Expressive Reading

41. Model and Practice
Practice a duet and solo story…

42. Assessment-End of Unit
Efficient, individually administered measures of each student’s mastery of newly taught skills, and retention of previously learned skills.
Assessment at the end of every prelude or unit.
Assessment Activity for students to complete while you are assessing. (Blackline Masters)

44. Practice administering Assessment

45. Jell-Well Review Periodic review of earlier units
Strengthens foundational skills, avoids overloads, builds confidence

47. Maintaining Home-School Connections
Found in the back of every Teacher’s Guide
Certificate of Achievement

48. Appendix
Checklists
Lesson Planner
Additional Blackline Masters

49. Whole Class Materials 26 thematic 5 day units with 4 review units
Teacher’s Guides
CD of Songs
ABC Wall Cards
ABC Poem Posters
Read Aloud Books
Literature Book Package
RW Lap Book Set
This is the show and tell portion of the day.

50. Whole Class Materials (cont.)
Pocket Chart Cards
Blending Cards
Art Related Activities
Unit Art Projects
ABC Scrapbook Art Pages
Independent Work (BLM or Workbooks)
Homework Activities

51. Whole Class Teacher’s Guides Teacher Friendly Organization
6 Teacher’s Guides, including all 30 units
Table of Contents
Overview
New and Important Objectives
Preparation
5 Day Planner
Day at a Glance
Detailed Lesson Plans
Take out the teacher’s guides to share

52. Teacher’s Guides Black text= Required Activity
Red text= Recommended but non-essential activities
Step by step “scripted” directions
Purpose: To visualize a quality lesson
Not to be memorized or read verbatim
Important notes, tips, and reminders
A star = a new skill, activity, or story

53. Teaching Whole Class Lessons
Teacher support of student learning is gently scaffolded:
Teacher demonstrates or overtly models the skill for students.
In Teacher’s Guide = blue text
Teacher guides practice of the skill with students.
In Teacher’s Guides = gray text
Teacher gives students independent practice (group & individual turns) with the skill.
In Teacher’s Guides= gray text in parentheses

54. Alphabet Routines Rhythm, Rhyme, and Repetition
Except for Day 1, these activities can be done in any order.
ABC Practice: Boogie Woogie, Alphabet Beat, Zee Zi Ziddly,
Purpose: To reinforce the letter names and alphabetical order
IMPORTANT!
POINT as students sing it!
These activities are quick, engaging, and flexible.
Play boogie woogie and model pointing.

55. ABC Cheer New Sound Intro Tell students the new sound.
Turn wall card over before you start activity in units 1-4, after in units 5-26.
Recite the new verse for students.
Recite the verse again, and have students repeat each line.
Point out which is demonstrating, guiding, and independent practice.

56. ABC Cheer (continued) Point to appropriate wall card.
Units 1-8 Verses only
Units 9-26 Use all the wall cards
If the wall card has a picture, students say the verse. If the wall card only has letters, students say the name of the letter.
After completing “cheer”, review known beginning sounds.
Point out CD tracks
“What sound do you hear at the beginning of spider

57. Poem Purpose: To reinforce known letter/sound associations
Basic Steps: Introduce/practice the unit poem.
Have students identify what they see on the poster.
Recite the poem and have students say it with you.
Review a previous poem, using a cloze format.
Point out the turtle and rabbit icons
Handwriting air practice should be discussed here…

58. Read Alouds and Related Activities
Everyday a Read Aloud!
Multiple Genres
Classic Favorites

59. Purpose of Read Alouds
To build students’ background knowledge and vocabulary
To familiarize students with story elements and structures
Develop comprehension strategies
Make connections

60. Read Alouds (continued)
Lit Books are the centerpiece of the unit.
Read on the Day 1 and re-read on the Day 4.
Read Aloud on Day 5 is Teacher Choice.

61. Unit Lap Book Stories
Author written interactive complements to the Lit Book
Read on Day 2 & 3
Use the programmed introductions, questions, and follow-up activities.
Copy the questions on post it notes and place them in the book before reading.

62. Stretch and Shrink Oral blending/Oral language
Purpose: Primes students for sounding out words
Provides practice with basic oral language patterns

63. Stretch and Shrink (continued)
Steps
Say the word.
Use the word in a sentence.
Demonstrate stretching out the word, then shrinking up the word.
Guide practice
Have students practice independent of your voice.
Don’t forget the oral language practice.
Make is exaggerated… Hold each sound 2-3 seconds
Don’t let the motor stop running

64. Smooth & Bumpy Blending
CRITICAL blending and segmenting practice
Purpose: Provides practice in identifying sounds in words.
Helps students distinguish between “sounding out smoothly” and “stopping between sounds”.

65. Provide practice by keeping your mouth shut

66. White Board Dictation Age appropriate spelling and drawing practice.
Purpose: Provides practice in hearing and writing sounds, pattern words, Tricky Words, and sentences.
Gently introduces early writing conventions.

67. White Board Dictation Basic Steps:
Sounds: Have students identify the sound at the beginning of the word.
Demonstrate writing the letter/sound association.
Have students identify the beginning sound again.
Dictate the sound and have students write it.

68. White Board Dictation Basic Steps:
Pattern Words: Say the word; then use it in a sentence. Have students say the word. Segment the word into sounds, with the students. Hold up one finger for each sound as it is said. Have students identify each sound as you write it. Have students blend the word and read it. Have students identify and write each sound. Have students blend and or read the word.

69. White Board Dictation Tricky Words and Sentences
See Teacher’s Guides for specific directions.
IMPORTANT MANAGEMENT TIPS:
First teach students how to use their white boards.
Develop a “routine” for handing out and collecting the white boards, markers, and erasers.

70. Independent Work Purposes: To help students develop work habits.
To foster home-school connections.
To improve handwriting and fine motor skills.
To reinforce learned skills
To provide work for students to do while teacher does small group instruction.
Directions are in Teacher’s Guides.
Teach first three units whole class

71. Samples of Independent Work

72. Read Well Whole Class Homework

73. Final Thoughts Teach a complete lesson Teach with fidelity
Decoding
Story Reading
Comprehension and Skill pages
Homework
Assess at the end of every unit
Teach with fidelity
Teach diagnostically – Assessments inform instruction