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.