This past week some of my groups spent time focusing on the first 4 parts of the EET. Before we started practicing, we brainstormed ideas of possible choices for each descriptor. Miss Weyandt wrote their answers on the table for them to use while they practiced describing items. Check out these students and their excellent work!
I love using the Expanding Expression Tool by Sara Smith in my language therapy! This tool is a fantastic way to get students to increase their expressive language by learning how to give full descriptions for vocabulary. The tool has a tactile rope with colored beads and a catchy little chant that helps them remember the different aspects they should include in their descriptions: Green Group, Blue Do, What does it look like (shape, size, color)?, What is it made of?, pink parts, white where, what else do I know?.
This past week some of my groups spent time focusing on the first 4 parts of the EET. Before we started practicing, we brainstormed ideas of possible choices for each descriptor. Miss Weyandt wrote their answers on the table for them to use while they practiced describing items. Check out these students and their excellent work!
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As I've mentioned before, one way to increase reading fluency is by doing repeated readings. I have also mentioned that reading the same passage many times has the potential to become boring for the students. We try to make it more exciting in any way that we can. The 3rd and 4th graders LOVE to stand on their chairs while I time their reading for 30 seconds!! This little difference brings some great enthusiasm to our class :)
The ability to make inferences in an important skill for comprehension. In order to accurately answer inferential questions, students are required to be able to take clues from the text and combine them with things they are already know in order to come up with an answer. Tyler has been working very hard on improving these skills! He has recently began using a graphic organizer to help him come up with inferences. He is required to read a short paragraph and complete the organizer before choosing his answer. Check out his hard work below!!
Our parent literacy workshop that was originally scheduled for Wednesday, January 29th will be this Thursday, February 13th. The workshop will be at Waggoner Road Middle School from 6-8 PM. This session will focus on important skills associated with kindergarten and first grade reading. Mrs. Brower and I will explain and share activities associated with segmenting phonemes, reading 3 and 4 sounds words with short vowels (basic code), reading more difficult words including long vowel words (advanced code), and reading fluency. We hope you join us to receive LOTS of literacy resources, games, and activities, as well make materials to take with you when you leave the session.
This week some of my boys had a fun time practicing their /r/ sounds. I have a book called Funny Flips. It has crazy characters and funny sentences to go along with the pictures. The kids get to flip the pages and make mix-match people while practicing their articulation sounds. Since they think the pictures are especially funny, it's a great way to practice their sounds!
When we work on reading fluency in my room, we do a lot of “cold scores” and “hot scores.” A cold score refers to the first time the students read a passage. They are unfamiliar with it and often have difficulty with some of the words. I usually have the students record their cold scores in an iPad and then we listen to them together as a group. After we listen to their cold scores, they graph them with a blue crayon. We then spend a day or two practicing the passage over and over again. When the students have become more fluent with the passage, we are ready for hot scores. A hot score refers to the last timed reading the student does with the passage. They usually are much higher than their cold scores because they have had lots of practice and are “warmed” up to the passage. They then graph their hot score with a red crayon to see how many more words they were able to read. The kids LOVE seeing their growth on their graphs!
I often tell the kids that reading fluency means that I want them to "read the way they talk." I don't want them to read too fast or too slow. I don't want them to sound like a robot. I want to make sure that they pay attention to punctuation marks and that they can read the words accurately.
One way to increase reading fluency is by doing repeated readings. This means that we read the same story over and over again to build our fluency and make sure that we are including all of the necessary components. Because this can be kind of boring, we try to make it more fun by doing things a little "differently." Check out my students below who are "kicking back and relaxing" while they read, or my other groups who enjoy reading "down below." The kids really seem to like it when I let them do funny things while learning! |
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