What a joy it was to work with K-2 teachers at Pleasant View Elementary in Red Lion, PA right around Thanksgiving. We spent two days together planning and teaching small group reading lessons. We worked with the same groups two days in a row, so teachers could experience how to plan for connected lessons. The kindergarten group read a little book titled Fruit Salad and did interactive writing one day; the next day they reread the book and wrote a page independently about the book. Our focus was phonological and phonemic awareness and helping students apply what they know about sounds to reading and writing.
In 1st grade, the group read The Hungry Puppy, and worked on using word parts to decode words. I used puzzle pieces made from laminated sentence strips to help kids look at word parts and blending those parts together to read new words.
Our 2nd grade lessons focused on helping children “try the other sound” when decoding. These students were often using the short vowel sound to decode, but weren’t flexible in trying the long vowel sound if the short one didn’t make a word that makes sense. Our prompt was, “Try the other sound and make it make sense.” Students read part of a nonfiction book titled Eggs in this lesson. One day we created a “Try the Other Sound” chart of short and long vowel sounds in whole group because most students in the classroom needed this strategy. Then we helped one group apply this in small group the next day using small copies of that larger anchor chart.
Although our lessons focused mostly on phonics over these two days, this was what the groups we worked with needed. We included a “phonics warmup” before students read or wrote. For more ideas on these phonics warmups and information on how to choose a focus in small group instruction, see my book, Making the Most of Small Groups.
Counting the number of words in a sentence the kindergarteners will write together
Puzzle parts made of laminated sentence strip are used in a "phonics warmup" before kids read in this small group
Second graders read their "Try the Other Sound" charts together as a "phonics warmup" before they read the nonfiction book, Eggs
The phonics puzzle-is that words in a sentence cut up? Also, where can I find the flip a sound?
The phonics puzzle were chunks of a whole word cut in pieces. For example, br and ing to make bring. They were not words from the book, but were words similar to those kids would encounter.
We made the “Try the Other Sound” chart as a whole group lesson the day before I taught this in small group. The kids came up with the words and drew the pictures on the anchor chart in the whole group lesson. I then found pictures on Google images to make smaller charts to use in small group.
great idea for the chart. I use google.ca to find vocab words as well.
thank you!