reading fluency

CVC Interactive Notebook Templates

04/27/2024 by admin

Everything you need for emergent readers! CVC Interactive Notebook Templates are a step-by-step program that includes writing, reading, and spelling exercises, as well as review, puzzles, game boards, and folding activities. Interactive Notebooks offer flexibility in curriculum design and an excellent way to shape students’ notebook habits and student accountability.

Based on Phonics & Spelling, Book 2, by Kinney Brothers Publishing, the CVC Templates are built on a 45-word vocabulary base with nine words for each a-e-i-o-u vowel set. Each vowel set is restricted to three word families. With the goal of moving emergent readers toward reading fluency, the differentiated exercises take students step by step with reading, writing, and spelling exercises, as well as an introduction to primary sight words. Teachers can purchase each vowel unit or all five units bundled together!

You can check out the full bundle and individual units here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/CVC-Word-Interactive-Notebook-Template-Bundle-ESL-ELL-Newcomer-4622892

Be sure to check out my blog post Teaching CVC Words – What, When, & How

The Science of Reading

03/06/2023 by admin

The Science of Reading is a dynamically-evolving field of study, encompassing a wide range of research with the focus on understanding how humans learn to read and write. Exploring the cognitive, psychological, and linguistic processes involved in reading and writing, researchers are developing more effective approaches to teaching and learning these skills. This body of scientifically-based research, conducted over the last five decades across the world, is derived from studies in multiple languages and within inter-disciplinary fields, such as linguistics, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and educational research. As a science-based approach not limited to native-language speakers, the evidence informs how proficient reading and writing skills develop and can be applied in second-language programs, such as ESL courses.

One of the main findings of this body of research is that learning to read is not a single, unified process, but rather a complex and dynamic set of skills and strategies that include phonological awareness, decoding, comprehension, and fluency. When these skills and applied teaching strategies are understood, researchers are better able to evaluate and improve teaching methods and curricular materials. Instead of a “one size fits all” method, the science can be highly individualized, where different readers and writers may have discrete needs and preferences, lending itself to varied approaches to learning.

Because reading is a complex process with many different components and stages, for young children, the learning process is long and gradual, requiring patience and the right support from parents and teachers. Long before a child’s first primary steps toward learning to read, the influence of reading aloud to very young children cannot be underestimated. Exploring text and images, pointing to words and pictures as they are read, begins the process of understanding language through text. For the young mind, phonemic awareness is the first step that leads toward an understanding of the association with the text, the concept of word, and comprehension.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to recognize the individual sounds that make up words. Through picture books, games, and activities such as rhyming, sound matching, and songs, a child develops an awareness of text to sound and conceptual associations working in tandem toward a cohesive comprehension. In the case of teaching young language learners, the physical milieu is no less important. When reading to children, having them physically close allows students to hear and feel the resonance of the teacher’s voice with sounds they would otherwise not be exposed to or have the opportunity to imitate. Encouraging students to imitate these new sounds is necessary to expand their vocal repertoire in the new language. In the earliest stages of language acquisition, if children cannot hear and sense how the sounds are produced, they won’t be able to phonemically individuate, replicate, and associate the sounds to text.

The letter/sound connection is the first step in understanding how text is coded and how the teacher or parent translates text as spoken sounds associated with letters that make up words. Activities using magnetic letters, letter tracing, and primary ABC writing practice are strategies to lead young students toward phonemic awareness. In ESL courses, educators have the dual charge of teaching phonetic associations as well as the vocabulary associated with those sounds, e.g., CAT, DOG, and RUN. It is vitally important that teachers plan early by introducing a phonetically-associated vocabulary base that will eventually become the foundation for future spelling practice.

For the second-language learner, the leap from ABCs and phonetic associations to reading short CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words must be taught with deliberate and varied practice. Instructors may have students whose native-language orthographies define the concept of word very differently, e.g, syllabaries and hieroglyphics. In English, segmenting and blending are important skills that can be taught with worksheets and task cards. Once students are comfortable with sounding out letters to form words and understand their meaning, it’s time to begin putting the words into a context in sentences.

When you begin putting words in context and ask students to derive meaning, it is inevitable that you will encounter sight words. Sometimes called ‘popcorn’ words, they are commonly used words that children are encouraged to memorize as a whole by sight, such as the, is, and of. For example, teaching “A cat on a mat.” necessitates introducing children to sight words that give context and meaning. Because of the frequency of sight words in the English language, once introduced, they become an integral part of the next steps in reading fluency.

As you move from the ABCs through emergent reader activities, you’ll want to have reading goals in place. As a teacher, it is important to be able to recognize when a student has a command of the sounds of the alphabet, achieves the concept of word, is displaying rudimentary reading ability, and finally, capable of decoding and deriving meaning from connected text. These concepts must be developed in this order and practiced to achieve reading fluency. The habits that you build into the children’s learning activities will help them to acquire new words more quickly, build on their knowledge base to infer meaning, and progress more confidently in their studies.

The last step is to help the child develop fluency. This is the ability to read words quickly and accurately while maintaining a collective and concurring comprehension. Children can practice fluency through their own reading time, reading aloud, choral reading, and reading to a partner. Nurturing fluency must be just as deliberate as early CVC word practice. Silent e, digraphs, diphthongs, and categories of words that change with grammar, like pronouns and verbs, must be explicitly taught. The cumulative effect is a fluency that pushes students toward increasingly complex texts and greater academic achievement.

If you are interested in a more detailed discussion on teaching children to read, check out Teaching Sight Words in the ESL Classroom and Teaching CVC Words – How, When, and What. Looking for classroom materials aligned to the science of reading? See the full lineup of phonics-based learning materials from Kinney Brothers Publishing.

In the video below, Prof. Stanislas Dehaene, a French cognitive neuroscientist, discusses how the brain learns to read at the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE). The main body of his presentation occurs in the first 18 minutes of the video with a discussion towards the end. I recommend jumping 2:55 where he begins discussing how the brain processes reading as a function.

In summary, and to quote The Reading League website, “this research has been conducted over the last five decades across the world, and it is derived from thousands of studies conducted in multiple languages. The science of reading has culminated in a preponderance of evidence to inform how proficient reading and writing develop; why some have difficulty; and how we can most effectively assess and teach and, therefore, improve student outcomes through prevention of and intervention for reading difficulties.” I highly recommend downloading their free ebook to learn more about the science of reading.

Teaching CVC Words

04/27/2018 by admin

I hope you enjoy this post about teaching CVC words. Be sure to check out the free offer at the end!

In a previous post, I talked about sight words; what they are, when to start teaching them, and how to effectively work with a variety of learning resources. For the most part, the major points of that post also apply to teaching CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words. It bears repeating that, like sight words, when teaching CVC words, the what, when, and how are just as relevant.

A CVC word is a word that is made up of a consonant, short vowel, and consonant sound, such as cat, bed, tip, hot and rug. The goal is for students to use their knowledge of the individual sounds of each letter and ‘blend’ these letter sounds together, so they are saying the whole word and not three individual sounds. It must be explained, and repeated, that such words have a beginning, middle and ending sound that together create a word.
Before you begin teaching CVC words, a child must have a grounding in the ABCs and their phonetic associations. When students can confidently manipulate letters and identify their sounds, they are ready to begin learning CVC words.
Like sight words, CVC words can be exercised using flashcards, word-building activities, games, orthographic practice, and in-text reading exercises.

It is also important to note that, whatever the age of your students, reading fluency will only come with practice. Understanding the steps children work through to understand word constructs and words in context are necessary to determine readiness and track progress.

As you set out to teach CVC words, be prepared with a ready supply of flash cards, games, reading and writing activities, and plenty of review exercises!

CVC Flashcards

Flashcards are a mainstay for many teachers and can be used in so many ways other than flipping through deck after deck of vocabulary words. Check out my 50+ Flash Card Activities if you’re in need of a refresh with your flash card routines.

CVC Flashcards Set

Phonics & Spelling, Book 2

Sorting, matching, ordering, and discovery are the most fundamental components in many flashcard activities. When working with CVC words, it is best to have cards with vocabulary on the front and back to expand their use. Playing games with flashcards like races, relays, Q&A circles, slap games, missing cards, and game board type games, places the emphasis on activities that employ vocabulary rather than a focus on word drilling.

CVC Games

Game boards and card games will really engage your kids when reviewing CVC words. Laminating boards means they’re always ready and less prone to destruction. Boards, plus tokens, dice, and a few rules, and kids will forget that they are reviewing vocabulary! Even though the basic function may be the same across many games, it’s the engagement and the opportunity to practice in stimulating activities that brings about the most meaningful learning.

CVC Reading & Writing

Orthographic exercises that employ reading, word building, and writing activities are perfect for fluency practice and accountability. Worksheets, combined with task cards and other types of manipulatives, make repetition less arduous and more fun. Word puzzles, exit tickets, write-round-the-room activities, and interactive notebooks are just a few of the teaching resources that keep kids engaged while learning to spell. I always look for ways to bring CVC word practice together with coloring, counting, graphing, spinners, dice, random choice, and memory skills, for activities that hold students’ focus on a variety of levels.

CVC Write Around the Room

Making Sentences with CVC Words

Once students are comfortable with building and reading words and can recognize them in text, making sentences and understanding meaning in context are the next steps toward reading comprehension. Creating sentences with image and word flashcards is a great way to get kids to review learned words and learn the most rudimentary rules for sentence constructions. Here, using flashcards, not as a means to drill, but a way of exploring new connections, gives students a creative way to build on their understanding. Try keeping these kinds of flashcards available to students outside of lessons to see what kind of sentences they create on their own. You might even hear them teaching each other!

Sight Word Flashcards

It can’t be stressed enough that learning the concept of word, sounding out the phonemic components, setting learned words into sentences, and then deriving meaning from sentence context are skills that have to be taught, will occur in that order, and must be practiced for children to achieve reading fluency.

CVC Exercise & Review

One of my biggest pet peeves with many textbook series is the lack of quality exercise and review pages. Teachers are too often forced to create their own worksheets to fill in these gaps. For this reason amongst others, I created a phonics series that focuses solely on reading and writing with an abundance of exercise and review pages. I also made sure to include simple explanations, step-by-step exercises, rigorous practice pages where I could track student progress, and lots of coloring opportunities. You can learn more about this series here.

I will finish this post by quoting from Sight Words: What, When, & How:

“As you move from ABCs through emergent reader activities, you’ll want to have reading goals in place. As a teacher, it is important to be able to recognize when a student has a command of the sounds of the alphabet, achieves the concept of word, is displaying rudimentary reading ability, and finally, capable of decoding and deriving meaning from connected text. These concepts must be developed in this order and practiced to achieve reading fluency. The habits that you build into the children’s learning activities will help them to acquire new words more quickly, build on their knowledge base to infer meaning, and progress more confidently in their studies.”

Teaching kids CVC words sets the stage for future reading comprehension and language acquisition. As you move kids from relying solely on their ears and memory to reading and writing, be prepared with a variety of tools to make learning enjoyable, engaging, and productive.

If there are activities that you use in class that are not listed here, help a teacher out and leave a comment!

To help you get started, here is a CVC I Have/Who Has Activity Set you can download for free just by signing up with Kinney Brothers Publishing! Check out the video below to see all this game set has to offer! Click here or on the image above and keep up to date with Kinney Brothers Publishing!

Visit Donald’s English Classroom where you’ll find a wealth of learning materials you can download and start using in your ESL classes today!

As always, best of luck in your classes!

Donald Kinney

Kinney Brothers Publishing

kinneybrothers.com

Sight Words: What, When, and How

03/28/2018 by admin

What are Sight Words?

Whether you call them sight words, popcorn words, or high-frequency words, they are, by definition, “commonly used words that young children are encouraged to memorize as a whole or by ‘sight,’ so that they can automatically recognize these words in print without having to use any strategies to decode.” ^[1]

The Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists claims that the first 25 most frequent words make up about one-third of all printed material in English, and that the first 100 make up about one-half of all written material. Let that thought sink in. 50%! The obvious advantage of learning sight words is that it can have a powerful impact on a student’s reading fluency.

‘Sight Word’ is a bit of a misnomer because it implies that a word is learned simply by seeing it in its complete form. For this reason, flashcards are the most common way teachers will try to ‘drill’ the recognition of given words simply by repetition. If students are developmentally not ready in their spoken or orthographic skills, no matter how hard you may try, the words will not stick in their brains.

One problem with sight words is that many, though not all, lack dependable letter–sound correspondences (of = /uv/ and is = /iz/). Most words are more regular than not, especially in the consonant features. For example, the high-frequency word said is 50 percent regular; what would otherwise be a dependable ai digraph is irregular compared to the pronunciation of words like tail or paint. Nonetheless, it’s important teachers address these irregularities with students rather than avoiding them or assuming that students will eventually ‘pick up’ the differences.

In addition, high frequency words can be abstract, difficult if not impossible to represent using pictures, and especially difficult to understand where meaning may have an inferred understanding through context (something a second language learner doesn’t have the advantage of in early language development.) It can be very elusive to create a clear mental model of words like have and get, both of which can cross several different word choices in a language learner’s native language. Just as complicated is a word like was which refers to a past existential state of being. I remember trying to explain to students that “I win a prize” infers that if I win a game, I will get a prize, whereas, in Japanese, it is akin to saying “I prized a game.”

This is why students of English need to be exposed to the patterns of speech and inferred meaning of sight words early on in oral exercises, chants, and songs. Inevitably, as you move children from decoding individual words to decoding language in connected text, sight words should be a regular part of your ESL program.

Two popular sight word lists you might want to check out are Dolch’s Sight Words (by frequency) and Fry’s Sight Words (by grade level). Both of these lists are offered for free on sightwords.com.

When to Teach Sight Words

If you are teaching ESL students with the eventual goal of reading (and you should be), you need to begin thinking about sight words long before students encounter them in writing exercises. Building a vocabulary base that includes high frequency words that is not exclusive to nouns and verbs, contributes to a sense of word and meaning in context. Vocal chants and early Q&A exercises should include sight words in anticipation that these words will be encountered again in written text. Reading story books in class is also important for showing children how you read in English and, where possible, should include picture prompts and word cues so children can participate in the reading of the story.

Whether you’re teaching very young ESL students in class, or a parent trying to prepare your child for a future of reading, many of the approaches to introducing reading and books are the same. Check out this list of recommended activities for parents from SmartParentAdvice and consider how they may be applied in the classroom.

Before teaching children sight words orthographically, it is necessary that children have a solid foundation of the ABCs, phonemes and understand concepts of word. From there, learning sentence structure and decoding meaning in context should be taught in that order.

In other words, you can’t teach kids the concept of word without first teaching the ABCs. Trying to use flash cards to teach sight words, like visual designs, out of context and with no relationship to connected meaning, will NOT make the words stick nor will they transfer to automatic written understanding. Likewise, expecting a child to write and rewrite a sentence when they can’t yet decode the individual words is not going to eventually impart meaning.

When students understand the ABCs and their associated sounds, can combine those sounds into a concept of word, and are capable of understanding sentence constructs, THAT is the time to begin teaching and exercising sight words. The good news is that many children learn these concepts in their own language at a very young age and have the ability to transfer that understanding to a new language and a new set of rules.

How to Teach Sight Words

There are many ways to strengthen your students’ knowledge and recognition of sight words in text and out of text.

How do you begin to teach sight words? Again, start early by reading to your classes, and importantly, showing kids how you are reading. By simply pointing to each word as you read, you’re teaching them much more than just the words associated to colorful illustrations. You’re also teaching them about print concepts, moving from left to right, top to bottom, and the return sweep. All of these concepts can operate very differently in a child’s native written language.

Anticipating future exercises by building a targeted vocabulary and sentence pattern base is helpful when it comes time to introduce students to orthographic exercises. You will rely on that knowledge base to help them transition to written text and a speech-to-print match.

Keep in mind that eventually you’re going to be taking students beyond decoding words and into the realm of decoding sentences. The reading goals you set for your students should begin long before they start reading and writing.

If you have been teaching phonics and simple CVC words and your kids are ready to start using those words in easy sentences, you’re ready to begin teaching easy sight words. Along with your regular phonics exercises, start throwing sight words into the mix! If you want more ideas for working with flash cards, check out my 50+ Flash Card Activities post.

Writing Phrases and Patterning Mentor Texts

Children can write phrases that include high frequency words that build off patterned mentor (sample) texts. With ESL students, offering prompts and spelling can help children build sentences and understand the importance of the sight words in their placement amongst already learned words from their phonics lessons.

Matching

Using flash cards, line up a sentence and have students read the sentence until they are familiar with the order and meaning. Then cover up the sight words or pull them out and have students replace or match the words of the original sentence. This same activity works well as a worksheet with cutting and pasting to replace the missing words.

Matching is also an excellent way to reinforce learned words in out-of-text activities. The pages below, including Bingo, when reduced to their most basic skill, are simply matching activities. But, don’t tell the kids this! They think they’re playing a game or doing a puzzle! When you combine sight word matching with writing, coloring, counting, spinners, dice, random choice, and memory skills, you have activities that will engage and entertain students on a variety of levels.

Highlighting

In this example of an in-text exercise, students use a marker to highlight sight words. Like the sample at the beginning of this post, you can hand out highlighters, choose any random text, and have students highlight the words being learned. This is also a great cool down exercise for the whole class or activity for early finishers!

Pick Up

Pick Up is a super simple activity that keeps students engaged. Ask students to pick up all the words that begin with a particular consonant, vowel, or capital letter. Or have students listen to a spoken sentence and line up the words in order. Sentence Fishing is simply a pick-up type game and kids can’t get enough of it! Remember, when errors are made, it’s a rich opportunity to lead children to helpful conversations so they can articulate why a word doesn’t fit.

Sorting

Another out-of-text activity for developing sight words is sorting. Have children sort their word cards based on letters, sounds, or key words. Guide students in reflecting on what’s the same and what’s different. Grouping words with their beginning letters and then putting them in alphabetical order is another sorting plus ordering activity that will serve future dictionary work! Remember, always think ahead!

Flash Cards

Making sentences is a great way to get kids to review and use learned words to make more orthographic connections. Here, using flashcards not as a means to drill, but a way of exploring new connections gives students a creative way to build on lessons learned. Challenge your kids to see who can make the most surprising sentences!

Word Games

Word games are a fun way to reinforce sight words and can include I Have/Who Has activities, word search and crossword puzzles, and many board game type games. Introducing and playing these kinds of games in class is important. Students may be playing these kinds of games in their own language, but the only opportunity to do so in English may be in your classroom.

Sight words promote confidence. Because the first 100 sight words represent over 50% of English text, a child who has mastered the list of sight words can already recognize at least part of a sentence. Sight words provide clues to the context and promote reading comprehension.

As you move from ABCs through emergent reader activities, you’ll want to have reading goals in place. As a teacher, it is important to be able to recognize when a student has a command of the sounds of the alphabet, achieves the concept of word, is displaying rudimentary reading ability, and finally, capable of decoding and deriving meaning from connected text. These concepts must be developed in this order to achieve reading fluency. You won’t get there without teaching sight words. The habits that you build into the children’s learning activities will help them to acquire new words more quickly, build on their knowledge base to infer meaning, and progress more confidently in their studies.

If you are interested in more of the same kinds of exercises illustrated in this post, check out my Easy Sight Words worksheets for ESL students. If there are activities that you use in class that are not listed here, help a teacher out and leave a comment!

As always, best of luck in your classes!

Donald Kinney

Kinney Brothers Publishing

[1] Ravitch, Diane. (2007). EdSpeak : A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, ISBN 1416605754.