Reading Intervention

I've written a little before about my work in Reading. When I first entered elementary school, teaching Reading was my weakest area. It's kind of ironic because my certification and interest was in middle school Language Arts, but teaching Reading is a whole different ball game. I know this is bad, but I had never observed someone teaching a Reading lesson in an intermediate elementary classroom, before I taught one.

Since that time, I have come a long way in teaching Reading. I actually only need one more graduate credit to have a Reading Specialist certification on my license because I took so many Reading courses in graduate school.

One of my responsibilities this year is to run the fluency reading intervention for our grade level. We use a store-bought program that intertwines the repeated reading strategy with a comprehension element. What I know about this program is that it works when it is followed correctly.

A new group will start the program tomorrow and this is my third group of students to come through the whole thing. With the past two groups, I felt that we used it, but we did not use it as effectively as we could. My goal this time is to really get it right. I know what I am doing with this program now, and I think I can do it, but there will be challenges.

I have 25 kids doing the program during a half hour block--this is by far the biggest group I've had for one session. During that block, I have to get them through all steps of the repeated reading, time them individually, and check comprehension. The only way it actually is possible is because I have a student teacher from a neighboring classroom helping me.

The kids are super excited, and I know I can do this to help them. I also know, it will not be easy.

999 Dead Tiny Sea Turtles

The story in our reader this week is called Turtle Bay. It is actually a very cute story and the kids really like it. It is about a wise old man who befriends two kids in Japan. Together they watch sea turtles come ashore and lay eggs and then watch the baby sea turtles go into the ocean.

I thought I would tie in an informational story about sea turtles returning to the beach where they were born before we read the story. So, this morning, I went to the school library to look through our books on sea turtles. I found a story with beautiful illustrations called One Tiny Sea Turtle. It looked about the right length and seemed like a good tie in, so I didn't bother to read the whole thing in the morning.

Reading time rolled around and I decided to start my lesson by reading the kids One Tiny Sea Turtle. I started reading the story and the kids were really into it. The baby turtle hatched and went into the ocean. She swam around for years. She made her own nest and laid eggs on the beach.

Then, we got to the part where the baby sea turtles hatched. I started to notice something was up before the kids because there were these ominous looking sea gulls overhead in the picture, and then these evil white crabs came. Well, the crabs and the gulls massacred the baby sea turtles until only one tiny sea turtle survived.

The looks on my kids faces went from awe and wonder to horror.

In the end, I still think the lesson was good because it did help the kids understand the story and nature is what nature is, BUT it was not exactly the way I pictured that lesson going...

The Things That Keep Me Awake at Night

On the first day of school, 23 eager, energetic, sweet, energetic (did I already say that) eight year olds poured into room 24. I had prepped for them all kinds of get to know you activities. I clearly wrote every direction on the board or smartboard in simple language. I didn't plan anything academic because I wanted to give the kids a chance to learn the classroom rules and get to know each other. Quickly I noticed that one little boy wasn't doing any of the activities. He wasn't defiant or drawing attention to himself. He was just a passive observer. I noticed it, but I let it be for the first day of school.

On the second day of school, I passed out supplies to my motley crew and began introducing subjects. During writing, I wanted the kids to start prepping their writing journals. I had them flip to the end of their journals and write each letter of the alphabet on a separate page of their journals (this will serve as their dictionaries). All the students had finished when I noticed that the passive observer was still on letter "B". He was looking at the cursive alphabet that ran above the whiteboard and copying down each letter in cursive (because he wasn't sure which letter each symbol was and he didn't know the order the letters went in). When I verbally fed him each letter he was able to write them, but he needed me to say each letter because he didn't know the order of the alphabet.

As time went on, he began to bring me papers and ask very quietly "what word is this," or "what does this mean?" I gave him a phonics screener and to my surprise he failed the first category (cvc words). I gave him a sight word screener and to my surprise he missed words as simple as "at." I gave him a fluency screener and he scored 28 wcpm with 40% accuracy.

This child went to a private school in another state prior to third grade and when I pulled his file, I was shocked to see that he passed second grade with middle marks. He had been shipped across the country over the summer to live with his mom, after having lived with his dad, and it seems that no one had realized that this little boy couldn't read, after three years in school.

I know what it means for him if he leaves third grade without being able to read. The statistics are grim. My eyes fill with tears every time that I think about him making it through three years of school without significant intervention. I pledge to myself that he will read by the end of the year. I know it can be done, but it keeps me up at night to think about how.

Reading Interventions

I've been reading (ironically) enough and using some fluency interventions with our third grade students. We don't have any summative data on the program yet, but I will say that the formative data looks extremely promising. I am going to talk a little about what I have learned in my research. Hopefully it helps.

The most powerful fluency intervention for kids past the primary (K-2) level is repeated reading. Repeated reading is a strategy to build automaticity, the fast (automatic) recognition of words. As reading becomes more automatic, comprehension is increased because it is not impeded by the decoding process. Below are the major components of a repeated reading intervention.

1.) Students work with a set of texts at their reading level. It is very important that students are not just given a grade level set of texts. Generally intervention kids read below grade level. So, if you have a struggling fifth reader, you first might use third grade texts to make them sound like a fluent third grade reader.
2.) The student hears a model reading of the passage (this could be a teacher read or an audio recording). The commercial program we're using, Read Naturally, has audio-recordings.
3.) The student practices with the passage (reading orally) until he can prove he has attained the desired level of fluency with that passage. He proves it by reading with the teacher who is timing words per minute.
4.) The repeated reading needs to happen at least three days a week for thirty minutes a day.
5.) The teacher needs to progress monitor words read per minute during each session.

The other intervention we are using is Reader's Theater. The kids practice a presenting a story at their reading level fluently. This intervention does not pack the punch of repeated reading, but it is much easier to implement.

Well, this is the most technical blog I've ever written, but these interventions have really helped my students in reading!

Read Across America Video

If your school is participating in Read Across America week, you've got to show this video to your class. It is so cute and gets the kids pumped up about reading.

Here's a link.

http://www.schooltube.com/video/e9bd79d29b4d0e6a2345/Gotta-Keep-Reading--Ocoee-Middle-School

Reasons Not to Be Complacent

When I was first hired by my district, I had to go to trainings over each of the subjects in our curriculum. I forgot most of what they told me, but a fact shared by the literacy facilitator stuck with me. The state of Arizona uses third grade literacy scores as part of the formula to project the number of prison beds that will be needed when these children reach adulthood (http://www.readfaster.com/education_stats.asp). As a third grade teacher in Arizona, that stat brings tears to my eyes.

My roommate is a nurse, and she's described to me the pressure that she faces every day knowing that a screw up could kill someone. I don't know how she handles that, but this statistic reminds me that our screw ups matter too. Statistically, if a child leaves my room with significant Reading problems, he's more likely to need a prison bed. It is sobering to think that they might buy a prison bed for this kid if I don't help him improve his reading.

I can't think about this fact that much because I would drive myself crazy obsessing over the reality that sometimes kids will leave my room without conquering their reading difficulties. It is good to remember it once in a while, though. I just can't take my job too lightly.

It Like Figures...

Teaching students to write more descriptively is a huge challenge (at least for me). I have had some success with using five senses graphic organizers, but practically speaking a lot of descriptive writing needs to be primarily visual what things feel like, smell like, and taste like are only important in limited contexts. I really believe that the key to helping kids write descriptively is the mastery of of using figurative language. Below is a lesson I've developed over the last three years to help kids experiment with the use of figurative language. It's really more of an exercise and I recommend doing it several times to make a lasting impact.



I introduce the lesson by showing the kids some detailed pictures from a picture book. (I use the book The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant because I use that story to teach personal narratives as well and my kids are familiar with it.) I show them pictures and each student writes similes or metaphors based on the pictures. For the first few, I give them the first half of a simile and let them fill in the blank (ie The realtives were as crowded as ______________________). For the final picture, I give them five minutes to write as many similes and metaphors as they can think of describing the picture.


Then I either give the students a topic sentence for a descriptive paragraph or I have the students write their own topic sentence (my instruction to them is "write a sentence that describes the whole picture"). Then I have the kids use at least three of the similes/metaphors they wrote and add a concluding sentence. I and the kids have been amazed at the level of writing this produces. After doing this activity a couple of times, I start to require the kids to put one simile or metaphor in assignments that I know that would be appropriate for.

Young Teacher Goes Old School on Students

Prologue: Is it narcissistic that I titled this post like it is a headline about myself? Don't worry, I assure you that no one is interested enough in what goes on in my classroom to write a headline on it (much less an article). I just wanted a title with the word "old school" in it. That word is funny to me.

I would describe the district I work in as extremely modern. The district would scoff at that label--not because they want to be traditionalists or conservative in practice, but because the term "modern" can be used to denote a movement in education that they have progressed beyond. I could call them progressivists, but that too is an educational movement of yesteryear. To be a progressivist is so not progressive anymore. My district would want me to say that they are "on the cutting edge". My point is that in my district we are always asked what is new in the field of education. I have never heard a question in a formal meeting or traing about what is tried and true in education.

That is why, if we were at school, I would only say in a hushed voice that I have been using a lot of old school teacher techniques that have been really successful. I thought I would describe some of these, and why I like them, but I do admit that I find myself watching to see if anyone will come in and "catch" me using outdated, washed up methods. I, of course, prefer to call them classics.

1.) Reciting Times Tables We've been told by the Math coach that we need to carefully consider if developing fluency in Math facts is the best use of our time, so I know that no one would be happy if they knew I have taken to reciting all the problems on our timed test with my class at least twice a week.

The kids love this, though. We follow such a nice rythm it sounds almost musical and I figure that we have to check all one hundred problems anyway, so I may as well do this to aurally reinforce the information.

2.) Choral Response This year my class has to answer questions from every area of the curriculum in unison. Below are some examples.

Me: Class.
Students: Yes
Me: What is the predicate of a sentence?
Students: The predicate is the 'what' of the sentence, Ms. Understood.

Me: Class
Students: Yes
Me: What are the narrative elements?
Students: Characters, plot, and settings are the narrative elements, Ms. Understood.

Me: Class
Students: Yes
Me: When did Colombus sail the ocean blue?
Students: In 1492, Ms. Understood.

Could my students answer these questions in their sleep after a while? Yes, but they know these definitions so well they can answer them in their sleep!

3.) Reading to the Wall One thing I have had to work on is building fluent readers. So, I give the kids all one passage. They echo me and read it correctly, and then we have a drill. They all sit with both feet on the floor. When the bell rings, I start the timer and each student gets up and finds a spot facing the wall. They read the entire passage, return to their chair, count to three, and go back to the wall to read the same passage. They have to do it three times to complete the relay. They write down the time on the timer and try to beat their own time when we repeat the drill. Contrary to what you might be expecting, the kids love this drill.

4.) Red Pen Editing and Student Rewrites I have been told that a teacher should never go through a students piece of writing and correct all errors with a red pen (apparently something about red is bad for self-esteem), but this is the most successful thing I do in Writing. Every week I correct errors in their rough drafts and I make them write their final copy correctly. Yes, most of them would prefer that I did not make them rewrite things, but all of them are better writers now. I have never had a parent complaint about this either, but I have had many parents thank me for this.

Epilogue: To use an old expression, let's not throw the baby out with the bath water! I embrace technology. I embrace new methods that have come about over the years, but old does not mean bad.

I Heart Sentence Diagramming

I student taught seventh and eighth grade Language Arts and then taught fifth grade for two years before teaching third grade (which is what I am doing right now). One thing that is good about that is that I know where the curriculum is building to and I know what things kids have trouble mastering in the earlier grades. One strand of the curriculum that weaves through it all is recognizing subjects and predicates. Honestly, it's been my experience that most eighth graders still do not grasp this topic.

I am supposed to teach subject/predicate in third grade over the next two weeks. The great thing for me is that this year I get to work with empty slates. The fifth graders and Middle Schoolers I have worked with in the past had already had many unsuccessful encounters with this material. The kids I am teaching now don't think that it is hard and confusing yet.

So, I have developed a smartboard lesson, several activities, a buddy project, and am using a video to teach this over the next two weeks. I am going to start out with very very simple sentences. I am going to have the kids diagramming from day one and I am going to make sure each and every kid masters identifying simple, complete, and compound subjects and predicates.

I think I am the only third grade teacher devoting so much time and energy to this standard, but I know that learning this thoroughly now will make the next five years so much easier.

Word Detectives

The story from our reader this week is a mystery. It's actually a really lame story that I sort of hate, but for whatever reason the kids are stoked about it. Perhaps I hide my disdain for it well.

Anyway, I also made a supplementary lesson on using context clues which used the story vocabulary. I used it as a pre-reading activity.

What I didn't anticipate was how perfectly the activity lent itself to mystery week. I didn't think about it when I was prepping, but during the lesson somehow the kids all became "word detectives." They used clues found in the sentences to guess the meaning of the words I covered up. It was fun, and at the very least, had them thinking really hard about their vocabulary words.

There are some fun things about the younger guys. I like their really active imaginations.

Now, if I can just get them to put these imaginations to work in Writing...

Big Success with Guided Reading

So far, *knock on wood* I like doing guided but silent reading with the third graders. People told me not to expect little ones to read silently, but I am finding that as long as I teach it and break it apart, they do really well.

I am open to using the tape first if I find this doesn't work, but so far I like reading with the tape second for fluency and reading silently for comprehension first.