Chapter 3 was all about working with your pre-A and level A students. These are your students who don't know very many letters, sounds, sight words, and most of whom aren't ready for guided reading yet. If they are ready, they are only able to do simple books with familiar sight words and picture clues for unknown words.
Here are a few highlights from the chapter.
1) Have students who don't know all their letters trace the letters every day while saying the letter and the name of a picture that starts with that letter. I don't know that I'll be able to do this every day during the year. I don't often have parent volunteers or helpers that can do this with the kids like the book suggests. HOWEVER, right now I'm teaching summer Pre-K and since there are two teachers I am able to pull the students who don't know their letters and do this. I'm eager to see the improvement by the end of the summer.
2) Have students work with their names and the letters in their names. One of the ideas was to make a puzzle with the students names. I did that with my little iii group. We started with just two puzzle pieces, and each day cut another piece to make more. The puzzle is kept in an envelope that has their name written on it so they can independently check if they put their name in the right order. I always have them trace and say the letters in their names before they open up the envelope to start putting their puzzle together.
3) Sight word work. I've always believe sight word work is just as important as phonics work. The more words the student knows, the easier time they have. Instead of getting frustrated trying to sound out ALL the words in a sentence, students with strong sight word knowledge can read the words they know, then sound out the few they don't. Much less frustrating. #nomoretearsplease
Here's what my general weekly synopsis for sight words goes, both during summer school and the regular year:
Monday - I introduce the new words and we practice the new words and any old words on flashcards a few times. Once they've got the hang of it we'll play simple games with them - such as swat the word, or one kid holds up the word and calls on someone to say it who then holds up the next word, etc.
Tuesday - We review our words, maybe go through the flash cards once or twice, then I introduce a pocket chart story that uses the words we are working on. I point to each word and read the sentence, then point again while the students read each one.
You can see all my pocket chart packs here:
Wednesday - We review our words, review the sentences in the pocket chart, then we do a fun activity such as a cut and paste or color by sight word page.
Thursday - We review our words, review the pocket chart sentences, then we play a simple game where I take out all the pictures and I call on a student to read the sentence, find the matching picture and match it up, then point while everyone reads the sentence. They love this! After, we'll do a simple fill in the blank worksheet where the kids will have to read the pocket chart, then read the sentence on their page and fill in the missing word. These worksheets are all included in my pocket chart packs.
Friday - Fridays are special! On Fridays after we review our sight words and pocket chart story, the kids get their own little book version of the pocket chart story! We practice concepts of print such as finding the front and back of the book, title, etc. Then we read through the book together, practicing pointing to each word as we go. After we practice reading together, I go around and listen to individual kids read while they color the pictures in the book. Sometimes I have them put these books in their book boxes for read to self/read to someone, and sometimes I let them take them home to read to their families!
And that's all I've got for chapter 3, pretty sure I got this up just in time to not be a whole chapter behind! Looking forward to Chapter 4!!
