summer blog party: word study tips

Good morning! I have kinda fallen off the map because my niece is visiting me in Chicago for the week, but she's still sleeping so I am taking a few moments to write up a post about Words Their Way for our focus today: Phonics and Phonemic Awareness. Seemed appropriate since my most popular post is about the five day plan for word study - check that one out here!

Today I'm going to share some tips and tricks for a flawless Word Study implementation. So off we go!

Assessment and Grouping: First things first, you'll need to figure out how to group your kiddos. You'll need to give the spelling test in the back of the Words Their Way book, and use the feature guide to determine the level each child will start at. Word study is great because it's not a right or wrong situation. The feature guide will help you see which phonics principles the children have mastered and not. My friend Carla has a great You Tube video on her blog that will touch on this assessment. See what it looks like by clicking here. 

As far as grouping - I recommend no more than three different groups within your classroom. As their teacher, you'll need to provide each group with instruction and materials to enhance their knowledge of phonetic principles, so if you create more than three groups, it's going to make your life really complicated. Keep it simple: Three groups or less!

Forget days of the week: Because you're going to be guiding three groups of kids through the word sorts, you're going to have to stagger the days that you meet with them so you're able to introduce the words to the kids when they begin their new sorts. (This, and many weeks have holidays which will throw everything off!) Perhaps the following chart might be what your plans would look like:

Remember, kids sort their words first thing every day (to build automaticity) and then go on to their other task. So if you notice June 22nd - the teacher is responsible for giving group 1 and introduction to their new words and possibly giving an assessment to group 2. Teacher would begin with group one and then meet with group 2.

Also: It would be a good idea to post some kind of chart with each day and the description of activities. Then, groups numbers can be on a clothespin (or something similar) and kids have a visual of what they will do for the day. I've been looking online for a picture and just can't seem to find one!

Teach routines: Kids have to be taught the routines and procedures for each of the days. So, give your whole class the same sort for a few cycles and focus on teaching kids what the routines look like. Teach them what each day in the cycle is all about - how you meet with the teacher on day 1, how to do the vocabulary activities on day 2 and the word hunting in their Just Right books on day 3. Once you do the routines two or three times, then you'll be ready to complicate things further (for the teacher!) with three different word sorts going on!

Don't assume: As the sorts and the rules become more difficult, your students will most certainly need instruction to understand the phonetic principles, highest group included. You want to make sure all kids in the group can say each word correctly for sorting purposes. It's imperative that the teacher meets with each group on Day 1 - in addition to word pronunciation, you also need to talk about word meanings. This doesn't have to be any big deal - the kids can attempt to sort first if you need to see another group first, and then when you meet with them, they can tell you what they have trouble with. But please, see each group when they are on Day 1 of the cycle!

Connect to your guided reading: It's pretty likely that your word study groups will be different than your guided reading groups, but that doesn't mean that you can't do a little word study investigation within your guided reading. If you know anything about Jan Richardson's plans, part of it includes about 4 minutes of word study. This is a great time to dictate words or sentences (using words from their word sort lists) to do a little assessment of what kids are mastering (or not!). This will give you information about how you can better support the kiddos during your word study time when you meet with groups, too!

I hope this was helpful! If you have ideas how I can enhance something here, I'd love to hear them! Also, feel free to leave a question if something is confusing. Just because it makes sense in my head doesn't mean it does in everyone else's!

I'm also discounting my Word Study Implementation Guide by 50%! Check that out here!

Do you have some great tips and tricks for phonemic awareness or phonics? Be sure to link up with us and share them!

and.....exhale.

After an extended year because of snow days and after two days of curriculum committee, my first year as a coach is dunzo! So hard to believe that a whole year has come and gone, but it has. I've been kinda reflecting on the year in my brain each day, but I thought getting some ideas done on paper would be helpful, too! Let's get down to business with what worked this year!

First, I built some great relationships with colleagues at my new school. This was my first year at Emerson (I came from a middle school in our district) but getting to know a new staff takes time. I didn't want to come off as pushy or overbearing, so I did my best to build trusting relationships with the teachers at my school. I am so happy to work with awesome teachers - below is a pic from last night of some of us painting at Bottle and Bottega! I'm really feeling part of the Emerson team now, and I'm excited to hit the ground running next fall!

I also got to know a really great group of Literacy Coaches. We're lucky because there are six of us in our district, so we see each other about every month. We're all returning next year, so we can continue from exactly where we left off yesterday at Curriculum. I think going to the Illinois Reading Council (IRC) Conference together and stalking famous literacy people to take pictures with was the turning point - it was so much fun! I'm really looking forward to working with them again next year!

Michelle, Courtney, Felicia, Lauren, Anne, and Leah :-)

And finally, my year would never have been what it turned out to be without these two:

Laura, Christine, and I

We worked so well together as Emerson's reading team. These two were always there to debrief a day and also work together to get things done at school. Not only can I trust them and speak without having to edit my thoughts and they are super fun to work with, too. And....they taught me tons about my job every day! I'm so thankful for these two!

I learned so much about primary literacy! I teamed up lots in with a Kinder teacher who showed me so much about our earliest readers. Her whole team implemented Words Their Way (which they loved) and we also used Personal Readers to give kinders some reading material that was Just Right for them. I really appreciate all that I learned about kinder with our team of teachers.... and I have such a great admiration for them... I can only hang for about an hour in there at a time!

I also taught a second grade guided reading group pretty consistently across the course of the school year:

Thanks to Ms. Bratta for collaborating with me all year!

Thanks to my amazing colleague, Christine, I learned lots about how to most effectively teach guided reading! She taught me a great lesson plan to follow that includes guiding kids to better oral reading fluency with familiar reads and repeated reads, all the time having kids whisper reading in front of me so I can hear the miscues they make and give them tips - on the spot - to improve their fluency. Christine also helped me balance fluency instruction with comprehension over the course of the week through discussion and writing. Finally, I figured out a great way to track data and the best data points to use. I updated my data tracking sheet like three times this year so it can really reflect the child's progress and inform my instruction.

Another accomplishment was that we got a data wall up and running. We built this data wall around our Fountas & Pinnell data which is a more authentic assessment that measures students oral reading fluency and their comprehension. Even though this kind of assessment takes a while to administer, I love that our data wall charts this information.

first attempt at a pano on an iPhone!

Additionally, we had each teacher write a SMART Goal off of the info on their data wall. At our last staff meeting, we recognized three staff members who accomplished their goals: Ms. Vega, Ms. Smetko, and Mrs. Stalter:

For my evaluation, I implemented Academic Parent Teacher Teams with Ms. Optie, one of our kinder teachers. Check out the posts on APTT for more information, but I'm excited to hopefully expand APTT to all of kinder, roll it to first grade as well, and ask any other teachers who are interested in participating to join us. Now that I've done it one year, I know what needs to be different, what can be planned more ahead of time, and how we can best serve our community. I'm hoping we have even more parent participation with this project next year! I'd also really love to present APTT at the IRC Conference in the fall of 2015, so any teachers who collaborate with me - I'd love to have you join me at IRC if/when I get accepted!

Finally, due to parent request, we created the Emerson Community Collaborative Blog for sharing with one another over the summer (and really, beyond the summer, too!) Parents had requested summer reading lists for the kiddos and some assignments for the kids to do over the summer. I was all for the book recommendations, but not for assignments that would undermine a love of literacy, so the blog was formed. So far, we have had a few teachers post and one post submitted by one of our families. I am crossing my fingers that more families will submit posts for us and keep us going all summer! I'm really excited to see where the blog goes this summer. Make sure to check it out!

So those are some really great things that went on this year, but there is also room for improvement! Here are just a few things I want to do better and differently next year:

For our last PD this school year, the reading team presented on mini-lesson. We then had teachers go off to try out the strategy from the presentation, and then Christine and I were able to visit all classrooms twice to provide teachers with feedback. Because our PD was so structured, it made our feedback so focused. I really hope to get into this kind of cycle - a PD presentation, time to implement, and then time to provide feedback to teachers. It was so purposeful and I loved doing it. I just want to make it happen more next year!

I was supposed to do an exit survey for parents for the APTT meetings, but I never did it. Next year for the APTT meetings, I want to map out the whole year right away in the very beginning of school - get all the dates on the calendar, get the NJHS kids from the middle school set up right away for the childcare room, and plan the exit surveys early on. APTT is so much work and really worth it - but I need to get more organized!

Finally, I need to do a better job "positioning myself as the expert" as my best friend, Liz, told me to do when she visited me from Seattle a few months ago. (She's currently a doctoral student in a literacy program at University of Washington and she's always teaching grad school classes to teachers in her university's master's program.) I do have a lot of knowledge about literacy, but I'm not the kind of person who ever wants to come off as arrogant, so I did a lot of listening and perhaps not doing what's best for student achievement soon enough at school this year. It's not always easy to be a Literacy Coach....it's definitely a balance between helping teachers see things in new ways, but not being so overbearing that anyone shuts down and doesn't want to collaborate with you. The bottom line is though that I do know lots and need to use that to best serve the students at our school, so next year I hope to heed my bff's advice as I begin the year.

Your Turn...

How was your school year? I think it's such great practice to reflect on our work - hour-to-hour, day-to-day, and even year-to-year!

Have a great night!

A very late 5 for Friday!

I had such a great week last week and have been wanting to post but have been busy and relaxing. But, it's time now for Five for Friday! Linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to share mine from this past week!

The reading team was in charge of our Wednesday Morning PD so we presented differentiated sessions on Close Reading. Christine, one of our Reading Specialists presented a beginning session of Close Reading, just covering everything that it entails. Teachers who already heard this session on during our Institute Day in January came with me. I presented "Revving up the Rigor with our Questions." In this presentation, we talked about moving close reading questions from the Key Ideas and Details standards to Craft and Structure and Integration of Knowledge and Ideas. I showed lots of examples, like this one:

Teachers then had time to look at one of their guided reading books or an article they were planning to use and figure out questions they might ask.

This session was great, too, because a first grade classroom asked me to come model this in their classroom. It's strange - because I've been reading lots about close reading, but haven't got to teach it yet...super excited for next week in a first grade cotaught classroom!

On days when I present to our staff, I always make it a point to get a little more dressed up, so on Wednesday I was wearing a dress and pink sweater, some bigger jewelry, and I did my hair and makeup more than I usually do. A few hours after our presentation, I was walking down the Kinder hallway and passed by one of our sweet little guys who said in the sweetest voice, "You look beautiful, Ms. B." It seriously made my day!

Our kinder teachers have been using Words Their Way now for about 14 weeks and are just beginning the digraphs and blends unit. What's great about Words Their Way is the routine and consistency it brings. AFter 13 weeks of the same procedures, students know exactly what to do, so they can really get to business with their learning. Watch this video to see students doing a Word Hunt in books. They are looking for initial S, H, and SH words in their books. Then, they record them in their notebooks:

I love it!! Kids can really see the importance of sound sorting as they read hunt through their books and they get so excited to find words and read them!

A few weeks ago I wrote about my favorite Valentine's tradition: Warm Fuzzies:

I've been doing these every year since my first year of teaching... always with middle school, until this year! This year I asked one of the kinder teachers if I could try them with her class. Aside from me not realizing the fine motor skills they need to tie little strings - they loved them!

They said the cutest appreciations to one another:

"Thank you for sitting by me at lunch."

"Thank you for being my friend."

"Thank you for helping me with my sound sorts."

Additionally, a parent had emailed the classroom teacher about another question, but mentioned how she loved that the kiddos did this activity together. Winning!

My Valentine's Day was pretty great, too! I had no idea what we were  doing - the bf planned it all! We went to dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant...my Pineapple Calamari was served in a halved-hollowed-out pineapple and the bf's mango and coconut beef was served in a coconut. I'm not sure why I didn't take a pic, but definite points for creativity! We had a lovely dinner and got each other little gifts....couldn't ask for a better night!

Hope you had a great week and are enjoying a much needed three day weekend!

Five for Friday and an Announcement!

What a great week...busy, but got so much done and now I have time to relax a little bit. I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs to share my Five for Friday!

First, I was happy to work with second grade coteachers to begin implementation of word study following Words Their Way. The kids did a great job learning the procedures of the lessons and learned lots about special vowels: short a, i, and o. Here's a few pics from our time together this week:

A word hunt in Just Right Books

Playing games with short a, i, and o

On Monday I presented at our Institute day - and I wish I had a picture of my co-presenter and I, but I didn't take one. But, Rachel, I have to tell you that I love, Love, LOVE working with you and I'm so happy to have you as a colleague and friend!

Rachel and I presented about close reading to middle school and then I did another session on Reading Workshop based on an article by Combs. After my Workshop session I realized how un-interactive it was, so definitely going to have to work hard to make my next one more hands on. Either way, good info in both!

This week I also had another presentation - with a Kinder teacher for our second Academic Parent Teacher Team meeting. We presented to parents about comprehension and how the kids are assessed with the Fountas and Pinnell benchmark assessment. We showed parents books from levels A-D (and boy were they surprised at how much the kids learn in kinder!) Then we showed classroom data related to sight words, letter name fluency, letter sound fluency, and comprehension. Parents set goals and then the kids taught them how they did their word study. Such a great night for parents, teachers, and students to be working together!

Here's a pic of one of our families...nothing but smiles!

This week in my research class at grad school, we had a guest speaker from the Chicago Grassroots Curriculum Taskforce (CGCT). 

I'm not going to get into it in detail here...I'm planning on writing about it more in depth later.... but they are a group who writes relevant curriculum for students. Their first unit of curriculum is called Urban Renewal or Urban Removal: A Grassroots Look at Chicago's Land Grabs and the Struggle for Home and Community. This unit starts waaaay back in history and explains how land was taken right out from under the Native Americans who lived here (in many cases through trickery) and still some of the same issues are going on where groups of people are being displaced by campaigns to "renew" our city.

These readings are appropriate for 8th grade and up, but I wanted to have it to learn about the history of Chicago for myself, and maybe share with some of my middle school colleagues! More to come on CGCT soon!

Last but not least...I'm excited for the Loving Literacy blog hop coming up next weekend! I'm linking up with all the reading specialist/literacy coach bloggers again to share our loves of literacy - favorite books and freebies to go with them! Make sure to check back on my blog next weekend to hop through all our blogs and collect lots of great freebies!

And, just a reminder - the 30th of every month is book club! Please link up with BigTime Literacy to share whatever you've been reading lately!

That's all for this late edition of Five for Friday! Thanks to Doodle Bugs teaching for sponsoring the Link Up!

Until next time...

Flash Freebie: Word Study Posters and Implementation Guide

I just created a new doc that is now in my Teachers Pay Teachers store - Word Study Posters & Implementation Guide. It will be free for a short period of time, so hop on over there, download it, and let me know what you think!

You can find it in my store here.

Hope it's something you can use with your kiddos!