1. OCTOBER 14, 2014 MILTON SCHOOL Language Arts in the K-1 Classroom

2. Reading Reading is broken into five discreet strands

3. Phonemic Awareness  Phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken words are made up of separate units of sound that are blended together when words are pronounced.  Phonemic awareness helps young children use more advanced ways of learning new words.  Learning a new word involves forming a connection between visual information about the word and its meaning, pronunciation, and other information.

4. Phonics  Phonics is defined as a set of rules that specify the relationship between letters in the spelling of words and the sounds of spoken language  These relationships are predictable, but not completely consistent  Phonics helps young readers understand and use the alphabetic principle  Phonics helps young readers use the alphabetic principle - a systematic relationship between graphemes (letters and letter combinations) and phonemes (individual speech sounds)  Phonics instruction helps read and spell words accurately and automatically

5. Strategies for Word Study Letter Naming  Students have to understand that letters represent sounds.  Kindergarten teachers use letter tiles, magnetic letters and flash cards for quick alphabet drills.  Print nursery rhymes and have your child circle the letters. Initial Sounds  Identify and produce initial sounds before s/he can sound out words.  Draw pictures and identify beginning sounds Phoneme Segmentation  Phoneme segmentation is the actual sounding out of a word, letter by letter.  Choose three-letter CVC -- consonant-vowel-consonant -- words.  Say each sound slowly, clap your hands. Sight Words  Words that occur often in print.  Print a list of these words and focus on a few at a time.  Demonstrate how to say the word, spell it, and then say it again.

6. Decoding Strategies Match The Word Use a finger to point to each word to help teach the child one-to-one correspondence. Check The Picture  Look for clues in the pictures that might help them on a difficult word. Go Back and Read Again  After figuring out a difficult word, go back to the beginning of the sentence and read it through completely. Get My Mouth Ready  Otherwise known as "sounding it out".  Focus on individual letters and/or letter clusters.  Work through the word slowly and try to verbalize as many sounds as possible. Self Monitor  Ask: Does it sound right? Does it look right? Does it make sense? Find Chunks I Know  "Chunks" is a term we use for letter clusters.  Many letters that when combined with other letters form one sound.  Look for smaller/easier words that the reader may already know hiding inside the larger difficult word. i.e. about, speaking, there. Skip and Read On  Have the reader cover up the difficult word and read to the end of the sentence.  Look for clues that help give the meaning of the difficult word.

7. Fluency Fluency is the ability to recognize words rapidly, allowing readers to more easily comprehend text because they are not working to figure out words Fluency can also involve grouping words within a sentence into phrases that make what is read easier to comprehend Grouping words into meaningful phrases and reading with expression helps the reader understand the text by making what is being read resemble natural speech

8. Comprehension Comprehension involves constructing meaning that is reasonable and accurate by connecting what has been read to what the reader already knows and thinking about all of this information until it is understood Fluent decoding is considered a prerequisite to strong comprehension rather than an end in itself Good readers are aware of their own thinking processes, and they make conscious decisions to use different comprehension strategies as they read Comprehension is the final goal of reading instruction

9. Comprehension Strategies Monitoring Comprehension: track thoughts, ideas during reading Asking Questions: question the text before, during and after reading Making Connections: activate prior knowledge to connect with the text Determining Importance: focus on relevant information and key details from tex Inferring: use clues from text to figure out meaning of text and new vocabulary Summarizing: Highlight main ideas and gist of text

10. Gradual Release of Responsibility

11. The Literacy Classroom Balanced Instruction

12. MODELED INSTRUCTION Direct Teaching

13. SHARED INSTRUCTION Partner Reading Creation of class charts

14. GUIDED INSTRUCTION Reading Groups Literature Circles

15. INDEPENDENT WORK Centers and Stations Independent Reading Student Projects Writing Assignments

16. Big Ideas in K-1 Building strong reading habits Building stamina as readers Learning strategies to figure out tricky words Making predictions Recognizing story elements Learning the features of non-fiction literature Monitoring for comprehension/fluency Making connections

17. How can parents support their children? Read aloud to your child Be a model Provide exposure to a variety of text, experiences and literacy contexts Discuss reading and words Encourage rereading and reading aloud Help your child use and recognize a variety of reading strategies Make time for reading Make reading fun

18. Please take time to read: TO your child WITH your child OR listen to your child BY himself/herself Suggestions when your child is having difficulty reading by him/herself: Give a few seconds of wait time to see what attempts are made Ask what would make sense in that sentence Use picture clues Skip the word and come back Go back to the beginning of the sentence and try again Tell the word and go on

19. What Can Family Literacy Look Like? Let your child see you reading for pleasure. Share some vocabulary or great phrases, a character, or even part of the story line with them. See if there are any similarities with books that your children are reading. Talk to your children about how your parents read to you and told you stories. When you’re riding in the car, tell your children a story about when you were little, or tell them a story about something that happened at work that day. Leave off the ending and let them provide an ending. Make a family book that is a collection of stories; favorites retold generation after generation or stories of family events (first visit by the tooth fairy). Have your children select three things they want included in the story. Make up a story that includes those three things. For example, the selection might be a princess, a race car, and an ice cream come. The children will love helping you find clever ways to include all three things in the story. When you go on a trip, keep a family journal, writing down impressions and events, keeping postcards or illustrations, noting unusual names for places, or recording strange stories from different places. When you watch a movie, talk about the characters, about how important the setting (time and place) were in the movie, about the sequence of events. Ask how the movie compares with a book and discuss an alternative you or the children might have written for the movie. Use whatever the children have watched on television to connect to books. Help the children find books that give more information about something that has interested them on T.V.

20. What to Do When Reading Isn’t Fun for a Struggling Reader Allow your child to choose material the s/he finds interesting. Yes, even comic books! Expose the struggling reader to all types of literature and all types of books. Be sure that the books are near your child’s reading level so that your child can read them independently. Suggest that your child read a well-known picture book to a younger, non-reading child. This is much less threatening than reading to an adult or a peer. Remember that the most important task of any reader is to create meaning from printed text. Don’t get caught up on sounding out every word. Encourage educated guesses about unknown words from the context and/or picture clues.

21. “Just Right” Books Have your child use the “five finger test” to see if the vocabulary is just right. Ask your child to read one whole page from the middle of the book and count the number of words s/he stumbles on and doesn’t know. If it is more than five it is too difficult. If s/he gets them all or misses only one or two the book is “just right.” Help your child look through the book for the size of the print and the number of pictures-these should be similar to other books your child has successfully read. Encourage your child to read the back cover or inside fly of the book before beginning reading to determine whether the book would be interesting – it is OK to abandon a book occasionally, but not every week! Encourage your child to read at least the first few chapters before deciding to abandon a book – some books may have a slow beginning

22. Kindergarten and First Grade Library

23. QUESTIONS? Many thanks to our contributors: Kindergarten Teachers Sarah Bailey, Meghan Donovan, Chrissy Parrish First Grade Teachers Dana Coppola, Marianne DiSalvo, Karen Kozan, Kelly Sheridan JoAnne Nardone, Principal Kerri Winderman, Staff Developer Barbara Mehlman, Librarian Michele Black, Support Teacher Anna Sandolo, Support Teacher