Summer is great, but what is even better is helping a student succeed in the summer.
I spent the last seven weeks with a struggling reader who was referred by her 2nd grade teacher. The initial assessment put her at below first grade, she will be entering 3rd grade in the fall. The reading clinic focuses on finding what the student leans on to decode or self-correct and strengthening the areas the student is weak in. In the past, I have seen more focus on correcting what a student's poor strategies. The reading clinic leaves that alone and goes for weak areas the student is not using. My particular student had a poor self-correction rate, 0% for pre-primer and 12% for first grade. The student would guess at words that make no sense to the story and keep going. The student also had poor graphophonic skills, replacing Rush for Ruth. The goals for this individual student were to increase self-correction using semantic cues. Does the word I just read make sense? If it does not, I need to go back and read it again. The second goal was to use graphophonic cues to decode. The last goal was to increase sight word knowledge. How did I carry this out? Using well known proven strategies. Stretchy Snake for graphophonic decoding and Skippy the Frog for semantic cueing. Here is a link to explain these strategies, www.penfield.edu/webpages/tbrasacchio/files/beanie%20baby%20poster%20~%20tips%20for%20parents%20for%20all%20strategies.pdf. Teachers Pay Teachers also has many colorful printable for these strategies. It is important to know that reading strategies should only be taught one or two at a time. Two main strategies, Skippy and Stretchy, were the only ones we used all summer. To achieve teaching these strategies many different kinds of activities and games can be played. The student needs a significant amount of time to master and make the strategy their own. Activities we used for Stretchy the Snake: -A rubber band is held, for each sound in a word the band is stretched, when the word is complete the student lets it go back to normal shape while saying the word quickly. -Play-Doh is rolled into a snake shape, the student pulls apart pieces of the dough for each sound. The whole piece of dough must be used because it represents the word. When the word is segmented the student smooshes the dough back to one piece while saying the whole word quickly. -On a piece of paper, multiple boxes are connected by a line, picture a train. The student segments sounds into each box. Cat would be segmented into three boxes, c-a-t. Silent letters are attached inside a box, but are written small, such as s-igh-t. Skippy the Frog -The student is given a popsicle stick with a small frog on the end. When the student comes to a word they do not know they can place the frog on the word and skip it, finish the sentence and see if they know a word that makes sense in the sentence. The student needs to be taught to pay attention to the first letter or sound of the skipped word to make an informed choice. An example, Dad sits on the ch___ to eat dinner. The student skips chair but keeps in mind the ch sound, finishes the sentences and might say to herself, sits...eats dinner...probably chair! -After my student used the popsicle stick she graduated to just mentally skipping. Throughout the summer we trained using Skippy. I would cut sticky notes into small pieces that covered words. This forced her to perform Skippy. After she had success doing this she said it was too easy. I upped the difficulty by placing the small sticky note on the whole word, not allowing her to see the beginning sound. She would at times have two words she thought it might be when it was difficult. She would peel the note back to reveal the first letter/sound, then she knew which word to choose. To integrate semantic and graphophonic cueing systems we did fun things like scavenger hunts. I would make up 6-7 clues and place them around the 2nd floor where our classroom was located. She loved this and asked for more difficult clues. Once a week we also had "Reading for a Purpose". This consisted of a 20 min hands-on activity that requires the student to read directions. One day we sewed a tiny sleeping bag for her LOL doll. Other activities we engaged in were science experiments, July 4th star painted shirts, microwave cake and tacos. The goal of course is reading, to that end, we engaged in guided reading each meeting. Along with library books we accessed the subscribed site, www.readinga-z.com/ and printed leveled books. So, how much did she improve? We just completed the final assessment yesterday. She gained one grade level. She is now an independent reader at the first grade level. She is still behind for for entering 3rd grade, but with daily 6-hour a day opportunities to practice her strategies, I believe she will gain even more ground as school starts. Her self-correction rate went from 0% and 12% went to 50%. Now, when she comes to a word that does not make sense, as in she guessed and read a word incorrectly, she will know it sounds funny and will go back to find the correct word. This was a great way to spend the summer. I hope she will look back fondly at this time we spent together. She told me yesterday she now sees herself as a good reader. What more could a teacher ask for?
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AuthorSpecial Education major in a university teaching program. Substitute teacher, previous homeschool mom, wife. Archives
September 2019
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