The Science of Reading

Hi All!  Thank you so much for the amazing work in PLCs this week.  We had such awesome conversations about The Science of Reading and Structured Literacy.  

I am still growing and learning in this area too!  I have been gobbling up everything that I can find on it.  

AND I found the coolest experiment! 

The PURPLE CHALLENGE!!!!  

Prepare yourself for this one friends!

You are going to see some things in this video that you as an educator have used to teach reading with.  

*You are going to see guessing strategies.

*You are going to see leveled readers that have words well beyond grade level phonics skills. 

*You will see the 3 Cueing System.  

Remember, don't panic!  I have used all of the above in my classroom too.  I was just lucky that my district in OHIO also made Phonics a PRIORITY!  We used The Phonic Dance in K-2 so my students were getting the phonics in to support the decoding.  

We have Letterland and I know that is happening in your classrooms and MGSD has made it a PRIORITY as well!  We have really good things going on in our classrooms.  As far as I can see,  our BIG shift will be with our small group reading.  

We just need to support our students with grade level text and provide the scaffolding to help them be successful. 

Students will need PRACTICE time with new phonics concepts and that practice can be during centers or during small group reading with a decodable text.  

Need some proof?  Check out this next video showing what a little explicit phonics instruction can do.  Pay close attention to when she reviews what phonics levels are required to read the words in the text.      

So what do we do next?  

*We keep having the conversations that we had this week in PLC.  

*We start scouring our school for decodable readers and we as a school invest in purchasing decodable readers. 

*We follow our Letterland manuals and make that time in our classroom a priority. 

*We assess our students quickly on Fridays about the weekly phonics skill.  Struggling students get reteaching the following week with word building and decodable readers! 

*Students successful with the skill dive into small group reading focused on the weekly comprehension skill using a GRADE level text!

WAIT...what about words that you can't sound out?  Like sight words? 

Well, HEART WORDS of course!  Teaching students that there are parts of words that you have to know by heart.  Some words you can use parts of your phonics knowledge to decode but other parts you must know by ❤️!
Check out this site with TONS of great videos and activities to teach HEART words!

Little steps!  We can do this. Let's keep talking and sharing what we are learning about what science says about how students learn to read.