Making Words 3-7-13

This week in our making words activity, I chose one that had a few plural words as we were dealing with those endings.  The students are getting much more efficient with the routines of this activity.  Again, they responded with a cheer when I informed them that they could use partners for this activity, though it cracks me up because they don't confer with a partner at all.  Nate had a few hiccups with some of the words, especially the ones with blends at the beginning such as class, stale, and scale.  Those have always been hard for him to segment.  One more thing about Nate worth noting is that he was constantly giving me words that he thought we could make, but most of the words contained letters that we did not have to work with.  What does that say about his knowledge of letters and the sounds they make to construct words?  Or was he just excited and saying things before thinking?  Becca was on target during this activity, she was busy making sure her partner had everything right as well.  Not only were the kids very successful at making the words, they are also getting really good at finding the patterns and commonalities within the words that we make.  Jack stated that sale, stale, scale, scales all followed the vowel, consonant, e pattern.  Connor said that eat, seat, least, all followed ea spelling pattern for the long e sound.  Eric pointed out that eats, scales, and castles were plural.  I had to correct about eats and then we got into that discussion, but what a good teaching point!  I really feel good about their progress.

Plural Ending Word Sorts

Word Sort 5
This week we worked on plural endings of words.  There were three main rules that the phonics book outlined for use. 
Rule 1:  If a word ends in ch, sh, s, or x you add es
Rule 2:  If a word ends in a consonant and y, change the y to i and add es.  If a word ends in a vowel and y, just add s.
Rule 3:  If a word ends in f or fe, you usually change the f or fe to v and add es.  If a word ends in ff, just add s.
The kids did really well with remembering these rules, but words that end in silent e really threw them off.  They would put words like place, pages, and badges in the es category instead of recognizing that the base word ends in silent e, so only an s is added to make it plural.  I tried to teach them to recognize the base word and then determine the ending, but they couldn't grasp it.  This leads me to think that I may need to go back and review vowel, consonant, e spelling patterns once again.  We have been doing these in our sorts for some time now, but I think they are used to seeing that e as a final letter and the s after it is what was confusing them. 
We had a snow day on Wednesday, so we combined two days worth of work into one.  Thursday when we did our partner sorts, we also recorded them in our word study notebooks.  The kids weren't going above and beyond like they did last week because we didn't have the time for it.  They still very much enjoyed working with a partner and helping their partner with the spelling patterns.  I like this partner activity in particular because it allows each partner to be successful even if the student doesn't have much knowledge on the words because he has the words right in front of him to refer to the spelling pattern to correct his partner if needed.  This really boosts self-esteem, which some of my students need in order to gain the confidence to be successful.  I have noticed that Emily has come a long way.  She used to be so cautious when she read for fear that she would read a word incorrectly.  Now, she has a much faster reading rate and reads more words correctly.  I would gather that these hands on phonics activities and confidence building collaborative learning play a big role in her improvement.  I also notice that Nate's reading fluency has much improved and I feel that he enjoys reading more now.  I will find out soon enough when I give the student progress and attitude surveys this week.

Partner Sort 2-28

During their partner sort, I was excited to hear the students distinguishing between week and weak.  Their knowledge of homophones is increasing.  They were very successful remembering ee, ea, short e spelling patterns without looking at the words.  This should increase their spelling abilities.  Partners correct each other if the other is incorrect.  Becca asked me how to read the words team and teach.  I don't know why.  She is perfectly capable.  I think that she didn't want to take the time to think about how the spelling is related to the sound.  I have noticed this in her reading as well.  Overall, the partners were all engaged and focused on the task at hand. 

Making Words and Themes 2-28

I am so excited!!  All the kids were so enthusiastic this week about the "mystery word."  Also, they are getting the concept of homophones because they can identify them without prompting.  I don't know that this has anything to do with the phonics instruction and their fluency, but they do have some useful information to help them understand what they are reading.  Success again when I told them they could have partners during this activity.  It's weird, though, because they don't actually use them.  Just the thought of a partner activity excites them. One theme I am finding is that having social interaction/cooperative learning motivates them and they perform better, going above and beyond my expectations.  One example is when several students add more words to their word sort categories in their word study notebooks. Nate was successful again.  I showed him hw to just switch the begining letter in pale to sale instead of moving all the letters.  He didn't make that connection that they rhymed so they probably have the same ending letters.  All the students were focused and engaged.  I had to redirect only Becca a couple of times.

Word Sort Success!!!

Today's word sort went very well.  After some of the students had some trouble last week with long o spelling patterns, I thought they would have an equally difficult time, but Nate did awesome.  It was the first week that he got all correct and finished in average time.  I can't figure out why he was so much more successful with this one than others.  Could it be that having double letters /ee/ helped him?  Since there aren't as many different letters to get mixed up.  Ken's mix up was an organizational issue and not a confusion between letters and sounds.  I can really tell that in the last couple of weeks, their fluency has improved greatly, except for Becca's for some unknown reason.

Word Sort recording sheet

Word Sorts

Another recording form for long o vowel patterns. 
I noticed that the students were all very successful with this sort.  I can't tell why they were more successful on long o spelling patterns than last week's long a spelling pattern.  I think that I do need to watch Becca's motivation.  Although I don't know if the confusion is due to that or a lack of organizational skills.  That is something for me to watch more closely.

Word Sort Recording Form

2-13-13
Word Sort Recording Form
This was day 2 of the word sort with long a spelling patterns.  Most of the students either remained the same as yesterday or they improved their accuracy and time.  Only Sally had a decrease in accuracy which was a common mistake among the students. 

Continuing Data

Here is one of the word sort recording forms.  It seems as though all of my students are getting good practice with this to help them recognize those vowel patterns in words.  I think not only will their reading improve but also their spelling.  Also, there are some students who are getting finished with their sort really fast (which is good) but it makes me think that I should give them a harder sort or some other variation of the activity.  I will have to reference my word sort book for more ideas.  Becca exhibited behavior characteristic of her normal actions.  She would have rather read her story book than sort these words.  I actually took that as a good thing because that shows me that she is becoming more confident and independent in her reading and that she enjoys it.  Which, really, isn't that why we are doing these word sorts?  Nate, on the other hand, really struggled with these words.  He just can't see the patterns.  He often jumbles the letters around and I have to cue him to cover all but a few letters at a time so as not to distract his eye.  When he does that, he can sound them out fine.  I know he can't do that when he is reading a book, so we focus on repeated reading and he does really well with that.  He is coming to be a successful reader.  It is just harder for him than the rest of the kids.
Word Sort recording form

Raw Data

Interview-Transcribed           2-21-13
E.
Which would you rather do-phonics book or Making Words and Word Sorts?
Making Words and Word Sorts because it helps you learn to read.
Which is your favorite, Making Words or Word Sorts?
The one we did today (blind partner word sort)
What do you like about Word Sorts?
They help you learn.
How
I don't know.  I just know they help you learn to read.
Have they helped you be a better reader this year?
Yes

M.
Do you like word sorts?
Yes.  It's fun.
What's fun about it?
You get to learn things about it.
What do you learn?
Sounding out.  Figuring out what the word says.
What about Making Words?
We are learning about things.
What?
Making Words.
Do you feel like you are doing better in reading?
Yes, reading is fun.  You get to sound out words.
How has making words and word sortss made you be a better reader?
because...it helps you sound out words and makes you a better reader.
What's your favorite activity during reading?
Word sorts
Which?
Partner sort.

Thick Description 2

Partner Word Blind Sorts 2-14-13
As I sat back at my table and listened to the discussion in the room, this is what I heard:

• Discussion/Arguing over whether words were read correctly.  This is actually a good thing.  To me, this means that the students are analyzing the words and using the patterns to read them correctly.
• Encouraging/Helpful words.  This is obviously a good thing.  On several occasions I heard partners helping each other read the words and more often, determine the correct category for the word.  Providing the chance for students to be the teachers is beneficial to them applying and retaining this information.  One thing I note is that I need to teach them to be more patient with each other. 
• Lots of reminders for long a spelling patterns and tricks to determine which one, "Is it at the end or in the middle?"
• Nate is doing better at reading the words today after having a hard time making ay words during the making words activity yesterday.  Maybe because he has read these words four times now and he doesn't have to physically move the letters to make the words.  They are already written for him.

Here are a few things that I saw:

• Everyone following procedure.  This is the third time we have done the partner/blind sort activity and everyone is following procedure very well and staying on task.  I did have to redirect Madison just once to stay focused.  She was supposed to be reading, but was looking around the room. 
• Students pointing to the category the words are to go in.  Most of the time getting it right.  Sometimes needed to be corrected by partner.
• Students were fully engaged with partner and most did not pay attention to the environment around them.

Conclusions:  It seems that the students really respond well to the word sorts especially when it involves working with a partner.  Due to the poor response in the making words activity yesterday, I may make that a partner activity too. It also seems that repitition is the key.  Students sort the same words 3-4 times weekly so that they become fluent at reading them and recognizing their spelling patterns.  Reminder to use a book with long a words for next week's running record.

Thick Description

Making Words 2-13-13
During our weekly making words lesson, the students were getting excited trying to discover the mystery word before we even get started.  All the students find the letter cards for the letters: e,y,b,o,k, a, d, r.  I picked this particular activity because students will be making words with endings: ay and oy which we have studied in previous weeks.  We started making our two letter words and quickly went through or, ad, and do.  The class was engaged, remembering to give me the thumbs up signal when they had made the word.  Sally was always first to do this.  Then, I look over at Nate and his frustration begins.  He confuses the order of the letters in day as well as many other three letter words such as red, bed, bad, bay, Roy.  I dedicate much of my circulating time to him for support. I try to scaffold for him, carefully walking the line between helping him and doing it for him.  The more time I am spending at his side, the louder the noise level gets in my class.  With the slow pace, the students are finding other ways of entertaining themselves between words and becoming increasing unfocused in the Making Words activity.  Everytime I would call out a new word to make, Nate would look hopelessly at me, chin in hand, straight face, disconnected, until I walked over to him and helped him organize his thinking.  I would segment the sounds in the words and point to where he needed to put the letters so that all he needed to do was put the letters to the sounds I was making in the correct spot.  I noticed that his difficulty seems to be visual.  He was having trouble even looking at the word on the board and making it in front of him.  In particular, I noticed that Nate couldn't apply the ay spelling pattern we had learned several weeks prior and dealt with in word sorts one week prior (which he did really well with). 
   
Many times in this Making Words activity students were required to make words such as doe, rye, bray.  The students weren't interested in making these words because they had never heard of these words.  So Making Words needs to be correlated with the students' vocabularies.

The activity was longer than others we have done in the past.  We started to focus on homophones, a making the words bored, board, rode, road, boar, bore.  Normally, I feel the students would have been very interested in this, but since it was toward the end of the activity, they did not fully engage.

Conclusions:  For the next Making Words activity, I may partner Nate up with a higher level student so that he has more support and I can more closely monitor the rest of the class.  I hope that this will help with his frustration level as well as his motivation.  I also need to make it a point to further review some of these common spelling patterns so that Nate can apply them more effectively.  Perhaps a mat with boxes on which to lay his letter cards will help with visual orientation.  Also, I will monitor the time and length of the lesson, making longer lessons into two day lessons so that students can be fully engaged in what they are doing. 

Running Records

At the end of our three day weeks, I will be conducting running records to check if the phonics instruction I am providing is affecting my students' reading fluency.  Here is a look at the recording form I gathered for this week.  Student's names are pseudonyms. 
Click here for the running record recording form
Looking at this and analyzing the results made me see what a gap I have in my classroom.  Two of my students are below level and need extra interventions.  I didn't do a formal miscue analysis, but I did try to note the types of miscues that I saw.  These two students relied very heavily on visual cues to read unknown words, but didn't pay much attention to the meaning or structure of the text.  Because of this, I will do some Cloze activities as well as Guess The Covered Word to help them think more about structure and meaning when they are reading.  My goal is to increase fluency through phonics instruction, so I will tie these exercises to phonics by forcing the students to examine not only meaning and structure, but once they guess a word with meaning and structure in mind, to consider the letters and sounds of those words to determine the accuracy of the guess.

Pictures of Our Word Sorts

Here are some pictures of our word sorts to better explain what we are doing.

This is a three day process.  Day 1 I introduce the sort by calling small groups down to the carpet.  We read the words together, then I tell them the categories for sorting.  We sort some of the words as a group, then I send them back to their tables to sort independently.  In these pictures, we were sorting by long vowel sounds, so we had five categories.  Some of the students were finished in 5 minutes with 100% correct.  Others took more time and got confused, especially on the long u sound.  These students had a hard time distinguishing between sorting for the sound and looking at the spelling.  For example, they wanted to put the word "pool" with the words, "sold, and hold" because those words had the letters o and l.  Pool should have actually gone with the long u group because long u says it's name like in mute, but also says /oo/ like in school.

Day 2 we sort independently again and then record our words in the correct categories in our word study journals.  I also encourage the kids to think of other words to go in these categories that were not in our sort.  Surprisingly, the kids were really motivated and most wrote more than the required amount in their journals.  Understanding of the sorts seem to be a lot more consistent on this day as well.  I think repetition is the key.

On Day 3, we will get with a partner and have a blind sort.  This is when one partner reads the word and the other partner has to indicate which category it will go it without looking at the word.  We may also choose to sort our words in a different way on this day as well.

Starting Word Sorts

So this week we started our word sorting routine.  These are activities which involve sorting words based on their category, sound, spelling, etc. to get students familiar with spelling and phonics conventions.  There are many different sorting activities that you can do.  The first day was a disaster.  I didn't really have a plan for implementation, organization, and introducing the process to my students.  Needless to say, the students didn't learn anything, were bored, and we wasted 30 min. of reading instruction time.  Upon reflection here is what I did wrong:

• No clear goals/objectives for the lesson
• No organizational plan
• No plan for the structure of instruction (scaffolding)

That night, I went home and consulted my Words Their Way book for more strategies.  Today, I came back with a plan and it went great!!  I started the sort in a small group and modeled for them.  We were sorting the /ow/, /ou/ word patterns.  The students helped me do a few then I sent them to their seats to do their own independent sort.  After all the words were sorted, the students recorded them in their word study journals.  I will have a picture soon.  Tomorrow, we will work with the same words and do a partner activity called a blind sort.  Yesterday aside, I saw the wheels turning in many students during this activity.  The students were really reading the words and noticing the patterns within the spelling.  During reading groups, students were reading and decoding words with this spelling pattern.  I could tell the students were actively engaged in this word study and through interactive practice and manipulation, the students learned more and retained more than by simply doing a page in their phonics book. 

My Timeline

In an effort to organize my thoughts and make the most of my research and time I have attempted to create a timeline for my action research project.
Click here for my timeline

A Picture of My Class

Just to give you a little background on my unique teaching situation: 
I teach first graders in a Christian school located in rural Kentucky.  The school is very new and only has 90 students from preschool to grade 5.  In my class, there are 10 students, 6 boys and 4 girls.  All of the students but one were in the same kindergarten class at this Christian school.  The other student was homeschooled prior to first grade.  Although the school teaches Christian concepts and relates to the Bible across content areas, not all of the students are actively attending church.  Academically speaking, 5 out of the 10 students are above first grade reading level while 3 are at grade level and 2 are slightly below grade level.  The school has adopted a very strict, traditional curriculum which contains a very systematic phonics-based approach to reading instruction.  My classroom setting is a bit different than public schools in a sense that we are only in session three days a week.  We have a combined private and home-school setting.  Teachers guide the instruction, but we rely heavily on the parents to compliment our in-class instruction.  We have strong parental support, but the parents' level of comfort with instruction is minimal in comparison with an educator.  This leads to worksheet practice in the homes of my students during the home-school portion of the school week.  This is not the way I want to teach my students to read.  Nor is it effective, so I am conducting research on various hands-on phonics strategies to see if these will have a positive impact on the reading fluency of my students.

Research Question

As a first grade teacher, phonics instruction is a major component of my literacy block.  Through interactions and seven years of experience, I have noted that some students "get" the phonics concepts I explicitly teach them, yet some of my students have a much harder time with this.  I was on a quest to find answers as to why this may be and it led me to examine my own instructional strategies.  Was I addressing all learning styles and differentiating my instruction to meet the needs of all my students?  If I have students who are struggling to become more fluent readers due to a lack of phonics skills, the answer would be no.  I realized I had a lot to learn about best practices in phonics instruction, so I came up the with this research question:  How do various phonics instructional strategies help my students to become more proficient readers?  This blog will be evidence of my journey in search of the answer to this question.