School and the City

What should students be working on independently while you teach small groups? This is a question that is continuously asked in my building and on social media. As teachers, we recognize the importance of time. There’s never enough time to do it all, so it’s imperative that all time students spend at school is purposeful.  Below you’ll find many simple, evergreen ideas for word work centers that align with the science of reading research and evidence-based practices. Word work can include phonics , vocabulary , and comprehension .  No need to make copies each week - Place these in dry erase pockets or have students complete it using an online tool like Seesaw.  Phonics & Fluency Sound-Spelling Mapping Level up your spelling practice! Say goodbye to rainbow writing and hello to phoneme-grapheme mapping , which gets students thinking about the spelling patterns that match the sounds in words. Mapping is an opportunity to practice sp...

Beginning readers need to be explicitly taught how to sound out and blend unknown words. This will require lots and lots of modeling of using the alphabetic code: matching graphemes and phonemes.  The goal of code-emphasis instruction is to help students automate sound-symbol associations to decode words accurately.  Through lots of practice and exposure, they will begin to recognize some whole words automatically. This means that a word has been stored in orthographic memory through the orthographic processing system. Until then, though, students need to be in the habit of looking at all of the letters in a word in order to sound it out accurately. “There is no comprehension strategy powerful enough to compensate for the fact that you can’t read the words.” - Dr. Anita Archer Classroom Application One of the most common, simplest ways to explicitly teach and practice decoding with your students is to use a blending board. You may like a traditional bl...

When it comes to explicit phonics instruction, students need lots of practice both decoding (reading) and encoding (writing). It's easy to make decoding fun with phonics games to practice fluency! Check out my favorite ways to get kids reading with no-prep games that are easy to implement with any skill. Gamify Decoding Practice Tic-Tac-Toe This is the easiest option when you only have a few minutes to play. Use paper, whiteboards, or even windows. Students read before each play. Connect 4 Students of all ages love this one! The setup is quick but the game is exciting. Turn Connect 4 into a phonics fluency game by having students read before each play. Quick and easy! Jenga Jenga is - by far - the favorite in my classroom. A big pro for Jenga is that you can play in 3's if you have an odd number of students. Of course, a majoy con is the setup time and the fact that young students can't keep a tower standing for long....

Looking for a new activity for your small group phonics instruction? Try using a word chain!  Word chaining is like word building, but better, because it adds another level of thinking. Using a word chain gives students the opportunity to build words, but also to recognize differences between similar words. Word chains draw attention to the individual phonemes that make up words and their locations within words. Therefore, word chaining involves practice with both phonemic awareness and phonics skills.  Classroom Application Word chains have to be planned in advance. A few things to think about when planning: What is our current target skill? You’ll want most (or all) of the words in your word chain to include this skill to ensure that students get plenty of practice.  What skills have students learned previously? Make sure your word chain does not include any patterns that students have not yet been explicitly taught. I also try to include an...

You may have heard the term “orthographic mapping” more and more often lately. Wondering what it is and how it benefits students? Let me break it down simply for you.  What is orthographic mapping? “Orthographic mapping is the process we use to permanently store words into long-term memory.” - David Kilpatrick In other words, orthographic mapping is not a classroom task or activity - It’s a mental process that happens in our brains when we are learning to read.  Elementary Classroom Application We can support students’ brains in orthographic mapping by intentionally using evidence-based instructional routines. You may hear of classroom activities called… Word Mapping  Phoneme-Grapheme Mapping Sound-Symbol Mapping These are all different names for the same thing: matching spoken sounds to written letters.  When students are able to match spoken sounds (phonemes) to the respective written letters (graphemes...

Bulletin boards: Do you love them or hate them? For me, it's a bit of both! As an instructional coach, I try to find fun but simple ways to add a little more literacy to students’ lives. I’ve created a few literacy-related bulletin boards in common spaces around the school.  The problem with hallway bulletin boards is that they get worn (or destroyed) quickly. Busy hallways bring lots of eyes to see engaging content, but also lots of curious little hands (and pencils, and erasers, and scissors… you know). The fact is that regular butcher paper just doesn’t cut it when it comes to bulletin boards in busy hallways. It’s frustrating to see your hard work torn, ripped, or faded after just a few weeks when you are hoping it will last all year! Enter: Fadeless Paper ! It’s the best for creating eye-catching - but durable - bulletin boards. It is so high quality that it won’t fade after a month or so of sunlight exposure like typical butcher paper will. It’s also so t...