Readalicious
August 2012
Deer Creek Elementary
Special points of
interest:
Reader’s Workshop
RTI
Phonemic Awareness
Phonics
Fluency
Vocabulary
Comprehension
Dyslexia
Welcome Back!
Happy August! I’m so
happy to be starting
another school year
with all of you!
The purpose of these
newsletters is to give
you some strategies
and ideas for reading,
RtI, and other interesting things I might
come across.
If you have any suggestions on what you
would like to see in
the newsletter, please
let me know. I want
these to be useful.
I hope you have a
fantastic year full of
great reading!
Reader’s Workshop
Roles of the
Reader’s Workshop
Teacher:
*Read many types of
literature
*Share your reading
life
*Challenge readers to
go deeper into reading comprehension
*Facilitate discussion
and inquiry
*Inspire readers to try
new books
Reader’s Workshop is
a great way to teach
with books that are
meaningful to kids.
Reader’s Workshop
allows kids to:
1.Time to read and
discuss texts
2. Access to a wide
variety of quality
reading materials
3. The choice in what
they read
4. Meaningful response to their efforts
5. Quality modeling
of literate behaviors.
**Reader’s Workshop
is a great opportunity
to incorporate common core by using a
journal to respond to
reading.
RtI and ELL Helpful Hints
*Use English assessments to measure phonological processing,
letter knowledge and
word reading.
*Use data for direct,
small group instruction.
*Provide as much highquality vocabulary instruction as possible.
Teach content words in
depth and reinforce
them during instructional time.
*Academic vocabulary is
just as important as
conversational vocabulary.
*Provide time in which
ELL students can be
paired with an English
proficient student. This
time should be spent
working on academic
tasks that reinforce material that has already
been taught.
*Compass is a great
tool for ELL students,
but only if paired with
quality instruction.
*Encourage these kids
to read in their native
language. It is easier to
transfer skills than to
learn all new ones.
Readalicious
Page 2
The Big 5 in Reading
Vocabulary Apps
*Montessori Crosswords
*Spelling Bee
*Bookworm
*The Opposites
*Opposite Ocean
*Chicktionary
*Wurdle
*Word Sort
*Same Meaning Magic
*Same Sound Spellbound
*Word SLapPs
*MadLibs
*Preposition Builder
Phonemic Awareness
can be done with your
eyes closed. It is the understanding that sounds
work together to make
words. If a child has phonemic awareness, they
would be about to hear
the individual sounds in
cat (/c/-/a/-/t/- cat). The
lack of phonemic awareness is one of the earliest indicators of dyslexia.
Fluency is being able to
read a text accurately,
quickly, and with expression. Sometimes is it
easy to forget reading
with expression, but it is
an essential component
of fluency. Reading fluently helps with comprehension because the
reader does not have to
focus on decoding and
can use all their energy
to comprehend.
Phonics is the understanding the sound/
symbol relationship (the
alphabetic principle).
Vocabulary is one of
biggest indicators of IQ
and plays a huge role in
comprehension. When a
student comes across a
new word, it can take at
least 7 times of seeing
the word used correctly
before it is truly meaningful to the reader.
Comprehension is the
overall goal of reading. If
a child is reading the
words, but not understand what they are reading, they are not truly
reading. Comprehension
has a lot to do with how
the brain organizes
thoughts and applies
background knowledge.
Phonemic Awareness Strategies
For the little ones:
*Have students listen for a
specific word in a story of
poem. When they hear that
word, they give some kind of
signal.
*Identify rhyming words.
*After the student hears a
sentence, they identify how
many words are in the sentence.
*Identify initial sounds and
identify the one that doesn’t
go with the group (cat, ball,
bear).
Books for Phonemic Awareness:
*Orangutan Tongs: Poems to
Tangle Your Tongue
*Each Peach Pear Plum
*Animalia
*My Name is Alice
*Four Fur Feet
*Six Sick Sheep:101 Tongue
Twisters
For the big ones:
*While the majority of your
students will have mastered
this skill, it doesn’t hurt to
use the higher level activities
every so often.
*Identify orally word parts in
compound words.
*identify orally prefixes, suffixes, and root words.
*”I Can’t” Said the Ant
*The Winter Wren
Phonics Strategies
For the little ones:
Books for Consonants:
For the big ones:
*Make picture dictionaries of
words starting with a particular
sound.
*Play bingo with the letters that
you have taught.
*Sort words that students create
by the vowel sound.
*Give students a bag containing
vowels and consonants. The students must create as many words
as possible.
*Say words with the consonant in
different places. The students
identifies if the consonant is in
the beginning, middle, or end.
*Willie’s Word World
*Sing a Song of Popcorn
*Worrywarts
*Daisy Dare
*Watch William Walk
*Caterpillow Fight
*While the majority of your
students will have mastered
this skill, it doesn’t hurt to
use the higher level activities
every so often.
Books for Vowels:
*Fat Cat on a Mat
*Big Egg
*Dooby, Dooby, Moo
*Oodles of Noodles
*”Buzz” Said the Bee
*Silent Letters Loud and Clear
*Count syllables in words.
*Make index cards with syllables. Have students make
words by matching the cards
(this can also be used with
affixes).
*Work on the ability to divide
a written word into syllables.
August 2012
Page 3
Fluency Strategies
For the little ones:
*Choral reading– read with
the student or with a group
of students
*Echo reading– the student or
group of student repeats
after you. Make sure to call
attention to expression during reading.
*Audio-assisted reading–
have to student read along
with an audio book. The first
time, the student should
follow along. The second
time, the student should read
with the book.
*Reading material should be
on the student’s independent
to reduce anxiety and increase fluency.
Books for Choral Reading:
For the big ones:
*Mr. Popper’s Penguins
*Repeated reading– the student should read a text multiple times with explicit instruction between and during
each reading.
*Five Little Monkeys Jumping
on the Bed
*Dirt on my Shirt
*Big Talk: Poems for Four
Voices
*Brown Bear, Brown Bear,
What Do You See?
*A Light in the Attic
*Where the Sidewalk Ends
*Readers’ theater– model the
script (maybe with a recorded
version). The students should
practice keeping the audience engaged using expression.
*Radio reading– much like
readers’ theater, but use a
radio as an example to work
on expression.
Making connections
improves comprehension!
Comprehension Apps
*Aesop’s Quest
*MiniMod Fact or
Vocabulary Strategies
Opinion
*MiniMod Reading for
For the little ones:
Books for Vocabulary:
For the big ones:
*Word wall activities
(categorizing, cloze activities,
sentence construction, word
sorts)
*Have students locate pictures related to a specific
topic.
*Students complete analogies
using antonyms and synonyms.
*Create a definition map including: synonyms, antonyms, examples, characteristics, etc.
*Max’s Words
*Contraction scavenger hunt–
students find contractions or
words that could be contractions in newspapers or magazines.
*Students change the meaning of sentences by adding as
many affixes as possible.
Explain the to class the differences.
*Morphology Jeopardy–
teacher gives the root word
and meaning, student gives
the full word (ex. Root wordbeauty, definition– full of
beauty, answer– beautiful)
*Miss Alaineus: A Vocabulary
Disaster
*Spot’s Big Book of Words
*Ring! Yo?
*The Boy Who Loved Words
*Wonderful Words: Poems
About Reading, Writing,
Speaking, and Listening
Comprehension Strategies
For the little ones:
*Activate prior knowledgestudents share their personal
experiences with the class.
*Work on details by having
the students look at a picture
and then remembering as
many details as possible.
*Work on sequencing by having students retell a story
using pictures.
*Work cause and effect by
cutting off the last frame of a
comic strip. What was the
effect caused by the actions?
Cross-Curricular Books:
For the big ones:
*A Day’s Work (SS)
*A Smokey Night (SS)
*The Wall (SS)
*Activate prior knowledge
using a KWL chart, anticipation guide, previewing,
etc.
*Answer the 5 Ws about a
sentence using only information specifically stated.
*Give students a topic. Find
details about the topic. Work
backwards using a different
topic to find the main idea
based on the details.
*The Greedy Triangle (Math)
*Math Fables: Lessons that
Count (Math)
*Sir Cumference and the
Great King of Angleland
(Math)
*Following the Coast (Science)
*Deep-Sea Floor (Science)
*Paisano, the Roadrunner
(Science)
Details
*The Opposites
*Opposite Ocean
*Popplet
*Professor Garfield
Fact or Opinion
*Question Builder
*Same Meaning Magic
*Same Sound Spellbound
*SimpleMind
*Speech with
Milo:Sequencing
Clues to Dyslexia:
Pre-K:
*Trouble learning nursery rhymes
*Difficulty learning and remembering letters
*Failure to know the letters of his/her name
K-1st:
*A family history of reading problems
*Failure to understand that words come apart into
smaller words and/or individual sounds
*Inability to learn to associate letters with sounds
How to find some great
books for reluctant readers:
*Best Books for Kids Who (Think
They ) Hate to Read
*More Books Kids Will Sit Still
for: A Read-Aloud Guide
*Best Shorts: Favorite Stories
for Sharing
2nd and up:
*The use of imprecise language; referring objects
as stuff or thing
*Difficulty with rote memory
*Lack of strategy when reading new words
*Inability to read function words such as that, an,
in, the
*Very bad spelling with words that do not even
resemble true spelling
Strengths of a dyslexic child:
*Curiosity
*A large vocabulary for the age group
*Excellent listening comprehension
*1001 Children’s Books You
Must Read Before You Grow Up
*http://www.reading.org/
Resources/Booklists/
ChildrensChoices.aspx
*http://www.reading.org/
Resources/Booklists/
TeachersChoices.aspx
*http://www.reading.org/
Resources/Booklists/
YoungAdultsChoices.aspx
Myths and Misunderstandings About Dyslexia
One of the most enduring misconceptions is
that dyslexic children
see letters and words
backwards and that
reversals are an invariable sign. While it is
true that dyslexic children have difficulties
attaching the appropriate labels or names to
letters and words,
there is no evidence
that they actually see
letters and words back-
wards. A related misconception is that mirror writing invariable
accompanies dyslexia.
In fact, backward writing and reversal of letters and words are
common in the early
stages of writing development among dyslexic and nondyslexic
children.