Fun in First

A Teaching Blog by Jodi Southard

Curriculum

Improve Accuracy While Reading

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We all know that reading fluency is an important part of becoming a good reader, but there are many components to fluency.  One of those important pieces of reading fluency is accuracy.  Having good accuracy is the ability to read the text with very few or no mistakes.  Accuracy truly is the most essential skill of reading fluency.  If a child is “reading” a passage quickly, but they are skipping over or changing every other word, they are not getting the full meaning and will not be able to comprehend what they have read, which is the main purpose of reading.

One important piece of reading fluency is accuracy.  Having good accuracy is the ability to read the text with very few or no mistakes.  Accuracy truly is the most essential skill of reading fluency.  If a child is "reading" a passage quickly, but they are skipping over or changing every other word, they are not getting the full meaning and will not be able to comprehend what they have read, which is the main purpose of reading.

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There are many factors that go into improving accuracy. 

First and foremost, students need to be able to decode and read words quickly.  Explicit phonics instruction is so important in improving accuracy when reading.  If students cannot quickly decode words, they will continue to struggle while reading.  Students also need to be able to quickly read undecodable sight words in order to improve their accuracy.

  • Develop letter-sound fluency.  Students must know letter sounds quickly.
  • After students are fluent with letter sounds, they need to know how to blend them together to read decodable words.
  • Students need to be able to quickly recognize and read sight words.

Strategies and Tips for Improving Accuracy 

  • Use letter sound timing sheets and word timing sheets to help students increase their fluency.  Grab these FREE Letter & Word Timing Sheets.
  • Practice sight word fluency.
  • Use fun pointers, finger highlighters, highlighter strips, etc. to help students stay focused on the word they are reading.
  • Encourage students to look for parts they know in a word.
  • Do not let students practice reading words incorrectly.  If you are focusing on accuracy, immediately stop a student when they mispronounce a word.  Say the word correctly.  Then, have the student repeat that word before continuing.
  • Teacher Tap Method – While listening to a student read, tap a pencil or your finger on the table when the student makes a mistake.  When they hear the tap, they will go back and reread to fix their error.  Praise the student for the correction.
  • Students need to listen to themselves read.  If they do not know that they are making mistakes, they will not be able to fix them.  Whisper Phones are great for letting students hear themselves read.  It’s also very helpful to record them reading and have them listen to it.

Here are some materials that I use in my classroom to help students with improving accuracy in their reading.

PHONICS READING MATS

Phonics Reading Mats are a great way to work on phonics and reading fluency. This packet includes 52 reading mats that are perfect for small group reading or a reading fluency folder.

SENTENCE TREES

Sentence Trees are an effective way for students to practice reading fluency. This bundle includes many phonics skills as well as sight word practice. These allow students to build confidence with their reading.

FLUENCY PHRASES

Building reading fluency allows students to make the shift from learning to read to reading to learn. Students need to be able to read accurately and quickly. These fluency phrases allow students to practice reading short phrases using the 220 Dolch sight words, as well as the Dolch Noun list.

As students become stronger at reading sight words and phonetically spelled words, they will not have to invest all of their thinking into decoding.  They will be able to transition into improving their reading comprehension.

One important piece of reading fluency is accuracy.  Having good accuracy is the ability to read the text with very few or no mistakes.  Accuracy truly is the most essential skill of reading fluency.  If a child is "reading" a passage quickly, but they are skipping over or changing every other word, they are not getting the full meaning and will not be able to comprehend what they have read, which is the main purpose of reading.

Making the Connection Between Phonemic Awareness and Phonics

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Teaching beginning readers is such a challenging job, but it is so rewarding to watch things start to click for our little readers.  Our students need to be able to make the connection between phonemic awareness and phonics.  Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in a word, whereas phonics is the relationship between the sounds and letters.  With our young readers, we have to make sure to build a strong foundation with these beginning reading skills.

I wanted to share an easy and engaging activity for you to try with your students to help build that connection between phonemic awareness and phonics.

This post may contain some affiliate links.  Items purchased from these links do not cost you any extra money, but they do help to support this blog.

Help your students make the connection between phonemic awareness and phonics.

You will need:

Phonemic Awareness to Phonics Lesson

Place 4 colored circles on the floor next to each child.  (I used red, orange, yellow, and green.)  Give each child a dry erase board, a marker and eraser, and the 4 colored manipulatives.  (I used red, orange, yellow, and green mini-erasers.)

Project the slide show (free download at the end of this post) and have students stretch through the sound for the picture.  Then, they will stand up and jump onto a circle for each sound.

After they jump the sounds for each word, they will place an eraser, or other manipulative, on their dry erase board.  Then, they will write the corresponding letter for each sound.  It truly is an effective way for your students to make those connections between the sounds they hear and the letters to write.

Help your students make the connection between phonemic awareness and phonics.

If you’d like to download the FREE slideshow with the pictures that I used for the lesson, click on the picture below.  For more phonemic awareness activities, you may want to check out my Phonemic Awareness at your Fingertips packet.

Help your students make connections between phonemic awareness and phonics with this free slideshow.

Could you see this working in your classroom?

Distance Learning for Guided Reading and Small Groups

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As we’ve all settled into our “new” school year, that could look different in many classrooms across the country. One thing I wanted to focus my attention on was my struggling readers. I wanted to be able to provide high quality reading instruction to my small group students even if that was remotely. Here are some great tips that you can use if you are teaching virtually and want to still provide guided reading support to your small groups. 

What technology should I use? 

Depending on what your district is using to meet with students, I would suggest Zoom or Google Meet. When you use the “gallery view,” you can view all of your students just as you would at your small group table. 

Utilizing Google Classroom has been so helpful for me and my students. I have found that sticking with one or two core platforms for my students to access their reading materials has been the key. Students are able to get into the flow of lessons, where to find things, how to interact/engage, and the same can be said for the parents. 

Digital Activities

You’ll also want to have a good set of leveled texts that you can display for your students. You can use this 1st Grade Guided Reading Bundle and share your screen with the students. 

Involving parents in the guided reading process

Parents may not know what to do with the book you send. You will want to include some tips as students read, directions and some sample questions they can ask their reader. Parents can ask them to talk about the title and make some predictions about the story and take a picture walk before reading. 

You can ask the parents to help you with the assessment. Parents can upload or send a video of their child reading a leveled text or reviewing sight words. You can also ask them questions like: 

  • Was the book too easy, on level, or did it seem hard?
  • Could your child answer the questions after they read the book a few times? 
  • Was there anything else you noticed as your child read the book? 

 

Want more resources for your guided reading lessons? My 1st Grade Guided Reading Bundle will be a great addition to your classroom this year whether you are virtual, hybrid or in person. You can save so much time planning your small group reading lessons each week! Each Guided Reading packet includes 4 differentiated nonfiction passages, and 4 differentiated fiction passages. The passages include a lesson plan example, vocabulary cards, pre-reading activity, 3 levels of reading passages with vocabulary words and comprehension questions, a comprehension graphic organizer, and a writing response page. You can grab the passages here! 

Quick and Easy Phonemic Awareness Activities

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If there is one thing I know to be certain about teaching reading instruction, it’s that students need many opportunities to learn and practice their phonemic awareness skills. Phonemic awareness sets the foundation for efficient readers and writers. Because time is always limited, I wanted to give you some phonemic awareness activities that you can use with your students that are quick and easy to implement. 

Segmentation & Blending

Some of my favorite activities to practice segmenting and blending are materials that most teachers already have in their classroom. Give students a small ball of Play Doh.

Pro tip: allow students a small set amount of time to play with the Play Doh before your instruction begins. Then let them know that once that time is up, the Play Doh becomes a learning tool and we have to use it appropriately. 

Tell your students a word and have them pull out smaller balls to determine how many sounds are in the word. Then, your students can touch each part with their finger and then blend together. Super simple, but effective and easy! You can do these activities with chips, unifix cubes, sticky notes, etc. Students can push down on the objects, push forward, drag their finger underneath or just simply touch to show the segmenting/blending. 

Phoneme Deletion & Substitution 

You don’t need to have anything fancy for this! This is a great skill for students to practice through listening. The best way to work on deleting is to say a word and then ask your student to remove the beginning or ending sound. You can also use unifix cubes for visual learners and have students delete or substitute new sounds. 

Rhyming Words

A fun, interactive game to play with students is to use a beach ball and ask students to come up with a word that rhymes with your given word. You will pass to a student, and then they can continue to pass around the ball, each coming up with an additional rhyming word. 

Phoneme Isolation

A great way to practice phoneme isolation is to have your students identify which sound you are stating. For example, if you were practicing CVC words, you can have a 1, 2, 3 card for students to show you which sound you isolated.  

Putting It All Together

I have used this Phonemic Awareness at Your Fingertips pack for years! This assessment and activity packet is perfect for small group instruction. The packet includes assessments and editable checklists for each of the phonemic awareness skills, which makes tracking super easy. You will also find numerous engaging activities for practicing each of the phonemic awareness skills with your small groups including onset and rime, phoneme blending, phoneme segmentation, phoneme deletion, phoneme substitution. You can grab the pack here! 

I hope that you and your students find these phonemic awareness activities fun and engaging! When you can start incorporating practice on a daily basis, your students will be well on their way to building their phonemic awareness skills!

 

 

Self-Checking Reading Comprehension Cards

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Over the past couple of weeks, I have been working on making Digital Task Cards through the Boom Learning™ platform, and I am now obsessed with them!  I love them all, but I am particularly fond of my reading comprehension based cards.

These Text Evidence cards are perfect for beginning readers working on going back into their text to find answers.

The students have to read each sentence.  Then, they type in the answers to the comprehension questions and drag the picture into the box to show where they found their answers.  The best part about these cards, is that if you sign up for a Boom Learning™ account, you can see how each child did and track their data.

These Boom Digital Task Cards are the perfect way to practice reading comprehension and using text evidence. Students will read each of the sentences. Then, they will answer the two comprehension questions by typing into the boxes. Next, they will drag the pictures into the box to show where they found their answers. These task cards are self-checking through the Boom Learning™️ platform.

I have also created two different Reading Comprehension sets that are perfect for more fluent readers.  The students have to read a short reading passage and click on the correct answers.  Each card also has a vocabulary question.

These Boom Digital Task Cards are the perfect way to practice reading comprehension. Students will read each of the short passages. Then, they will answer the two comprehension questions and the vocabulary question on each task card. These task cards are self-checking through the Boom Learning™️ platform.

I have both sets bundled together to give you 30 self-checking digital task cards in all or each set can be purchased separately.

These Boom Digital Task Cards are the perfect way to practice reading comprehension. Students will read each of the short passages. Then, they will answer the two comprehension questions and the vocabulary question on each task card. These task cards are self-checking through the Boom Learning™️ platform.

Did you know that Boom cards can also be used in Google Classroom and Seesaw, which makes them perfect for Distance Learning?  I have included the directions in all of my previews and products to help you out.

Click here to check out ALL of my Boom Task Cards.

Are there other sets that you would like to see me create?  Any other questions that you have about Boom cards?  Let me know.

Daily Math Notebooks

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If I had to come up with the number one thing that the majority of my students struggle with when it comes to math each year, it would definitely be story problems.  The whole process of reading through the problem, figuring out how to solve it, and explaining their thinking afterwards is so challenging for first graders.  We work on this skill over and over throughout the school year because it is such an important skill.

We use our Daily Math Notebooks to allow us to work on problem solving as well as multi-step problems, which again, are SO challenging for young minds.

This Daily Math Notebook will provide your students with daily math practice. Students will practice word problems, multi-step problems, written explanations of their answers, and many other math skills. This works well in a whole group or small group setting as well as a math intervention group.

I love these because we can quickly review our important math skills each day.  We really focus on not only solving word problems, but explaining our thinking when we solve them.

In my former school, we used two school-wide strategies everyday that I still carry over to my classroom now.  The first one was called RUTA-C. This stood for Read, Underline, Think, Attack, Check.  This is a great way to help students work their way through story problems.  There are many other acronyms that you could use as well.  Some of the ones that I have seen include:

  • CUBES (Circle important numbers, Underline the Question, Box Key Words, Evaluate and Eliminate, Solve and check your work)
  • STAR (Stop and read, Think about your strategy, Act and solve your problem, Review the Answer)
  • RISE (Read and reread the problem, Illustrate, Solve, Explain)

Whichever one you decide to use, stick with it and use it consistently.  This will really help your students with working through story problems.

This Daily Math Notebook will provide your students with daily math practice. Students will practice word problems, multi-step problems, written explanations of their answers, and many other math skills. This works well in a whole group or small group setting as well as a math intervention group.

 

Another prompt that we use in our Daily Math Notebooks is, “I know______ because ______.”  This is one of my favorite ways to have students answer questions, because it allows them to explain their thinking in a logical way.  “I know that Abby has 9 pencils, because she has 5 red pencils and 4 blue pencils and 5+4=9.”  Without this prompt, so many of my students fall into the trap of explaining how they got their answers with sentences like, “I am smart.” or “I used my fingers.”

This prompt also works well when explaining their answers during reading comprehension.  “I know that Goldilocks was scared when she saw the three bears, because she screamed and ran out of the house as fast as she could.”  It truly is a great prompt to use in many areas.  Click on the picture below to download the freebie picture to post in your classroom.

Want to add Daily Math Notebooks to your math instruction?

Check them out by heading over to my Teachers Pay Teachers store. DAILY MATH NOTEBOOKS

What are teachers saying about Daily Math Notebooks?

“LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS!!!!!!! Was hoping you had a math version of your reading comprehension and here it is!!! LOVE IT! THANK YOU!!!” -Rhonda

“Perfect for my small group and I am able to use the same packet for both my high and lows and adapt what work I ask them to show or how we think about the problem.” -Taylynn

“Quick daily review of important math concepts. Can be used in the classroom in many different ways. For me, I project it on my white board and complete it daily with my class every day during our math meeting. This has been a quick, simple, and useful addition to my daily math instruction.” -Jeffrey

Click on the picture below to head to my store, or PIN it for later 🙂

This Daily Math Notebook will provide your students with daily math practice. Students will practice word problems, multi-step problems, written explanations of their answers, and many other math skills. This works well in a whole group or small group setting as well as a math intervention group.