Tuesday, November 26, 2013

WHY READ 20 MINUTES AT HOME?

A colleague of mine shared this document with me this week, and I found it to be SO powerful!  I will definitely be sharing this with all of my parents. I always have parents questioning WHY do we have to read 20 minutes every night with my child? This is a perfect explanation and a GREAT visual!  




Here's a link to my school website if you would like to download this to use. :-)

http://www.boyle.kyschools.us/userfiles/210/Classes/891/why%20read%2020%20min..pdf

Monday, November 25, 2013

Raz-Kids.com

Do you worry about your kids not reading over breaks? 


I know I always do...That's why I am I always writing letters to my parents about how important it is to make sure you read with your students over the break. Our school has recently started using Raz-Kids with our students, and it has really encouraged our students to read at home!  You can enter your students at their reading level, and they can access their books at home. They can listen to the books, read the books, then take a quiz. After they have taken the quiz, they can go to Raz Rocket to "play" with their stars that they have earned. It really is an incentive for the students!  We really like it!  You should try it! I think you would really like it!




Friday, November 22, 2013

Have you wondered what level your students should be reading?

Our intervention team has been working on determining when to pull students for intervention services, so we have come up with the following chart to help us determine whether or not students need intervention services. I hope you find this to be helpful! :-) 

Here is a link to that chart. :-)


http://www.boyle.kyschools.us/olc/page.aspx?id=941&s=210

Reading Recovery---a Tier 3 Intervention!


 

I spend half of my day one-on-one with the most challenging first graders in our building! 

Reading Recovery was developed by Marie Clay of New Zealand. It is an early intervention program to serve children in first grade who are having difficulty learning to read and write.  Reading Recovery is a highly effective one on one early literacy program designed to help bring the lowest performing first graders to the average of their class. Reading Recovery utilizes and builds upon genuine conversations between teacher and child as the primary basis of instruction. This teacher-child dialogue has been found to be an effective method for teachers to help students learn to deal with complex tasks such as reading. The Reading Recovery lesson follows a strict routine of components containing activities that are molded to meet the individual needs of each child based upon a daily analysis of student progress by the teacher. 
A Reading Recovery lesson lasts 30 minutes and has several components:
1. The child rereads several familiar books building fluency.
2. The child rereads a book introduced in the prior lesson while the teacher does a running record, and the teacher chooses a powerful teaching point to move the child forward.
3. The child is guided toward discovering how words work through developing visual scanning through letter knowledge and word structure awareness.


4. Next, the child writes a story with the teacher providing opportunities for him/her to hear and record sounds in words and take words to fluency.   


5. The child rearranges his/her story from a cut-up sentence strip provided by the teacher.
6. The teacher introduces a carefully selected new book for its learning opportunities, and the child reads the new book orchestrating his/her current problem-solving strategies.

Strategies to look for:                                                                     *Directional movement
* One-to-one matching      
* Locating known/unknown words      


Advanced Strategies:
* Checking on oneself/self-monitoring     
* Rereading

* Cross-checking          

* Searching for cues/Self-correcting    

* Integrating Meaning, structure, and visual information                             
Reading Recovery occurs daily and typically lasts from 12-15 weeks.
Welcome to my Blog! I am excited that you have stopped by. I have been teaching for 17 years. I have taught a 1st/2nd,  3rd/4th classroom, and a 4th classroom. Also, I have been a Literacy Coach, and currently, I am a Reading Recovery Teacher/Reading Interventionist! I love my job, but at times my job is very stressful... I always get the most challenging students...oh yeah, I guess that's why I'm an interventionist. :-) Although many of my students are extremely challenging, there are rewards to my job. It feels so good to truly see struggling readers grow into students that LOVE to read! I had a student tell me today, "I just love when you come to get me. I love to read!" On the other hand, I often hear remarks like these:  "I didn't ask for a reading teacher."  "I hate to read." "Why do you always ask me to read?" But, once you see that same child going on his own to the library to check out a book, you know you have changed their life forever. That is one of the many rewards of working with struggling students. 

Leveled Literacy Intervention






The other have of my day is spent with small, guided reading groups. I implement these groups using the following program. I can't speak highly enough about this program. Ever since our school began implementing this program, our reading data has improved tremendously!  We are getting great results from it!


Leveled Literacy Intervention is a daily, 30 minute, small-group literacy intervention program designed by Fountas and Pinnell. It is designed for the lowest achieving students at their grade level. Through systematically designed lessons and original, engaging leveled books,LLI supports learning in both reading and writing, helps students expand their knowledge of language and words and how they work. The goal of LLI is to bring students to grade level achievement in reading. 
The lessons follow a two day format where students will read books, work on phonics lessons, and write about what they read. 


Here's a link to a great post with wonderful resources from LLI!!!!

http://k-5literacyconnections.weebly.com/literacy-intervention.html



What a Stressful Day!

I don't know how many of you all know what Behind the Mirror is...but today was the day that I had to go "behind the mirror"!!!  For Reading Recovery teachers, we all know know what that means....the dreaded day....we will all be observed by at least 15 people and picked apart about what we "should have done".  Well....it's over for another year. Thank goodness! 

I thought I would post one of my favorite Reading Recovery teacher's links tonight. It is a wonderful link! Perfect for interventionists as well as classroom teachers. She is such a great teacher, and this is a WONDERFUL book for classroom teachers as well as interventionists!  



Here's an awesome link with great resources from the book: 

http://www.janrichardsonguidedreading.com/resources-1
Hi! My name is Andrea Richards.This is my eighth year teaching at Woodlawn Elementary School, and my eighteen year teaching!  Oh my goodness! Time flies!  I am married to my husband Job, and we have two daughters, Alex(19) and Lauren(17). We like to go to the lake, travel, spend time with our family and friends, and go to sporting events.
I am a graduate of Boyle County High School, the University of Kentucky (Bachelors Degree in Elementary Education), Georgetown College, and EKU (Rank I in Leadership/Principal Certification). My goal is enable children to reach grade level in reading, and also show them the importance of the world of reading. Hopefully, I will also be able to teach them to LOVE school and want to come each and every day. Please contact me if you have any questions or concerns.