23 February 2014

RtI: Phonemic Awareness

phonemic awareness and phonics

We finally got in a full 5 day week at my school!  Is it too much to hope for that all the snow days are over?  

On Monday, we will finish up our baseline assessment for this cycle of RtI.  Then RtI begins the very next day.  I will have a group of kindergartners who will be working on phonemic awareness and pre-primer sight words.  The group of third graders will be working on phonics skills and improving their fluency.  Fluency for struggling readers can be a difficult skill to improve.

phonemic awareness and phonics

If you click on the pictures, you can download them so you have the links to the resources that I will be using this week.

rubberband hands

One way we work with blending and segmenting sounds and hearing phonemes is what I call rubber band hands.  We get our hands ready, like in the picture above, and then stretch the word out like we are holding a rubber band to hear the sounds.  Another great way to segment the sounds is using your arm to segment the sounds.  

For the fluency, one way to improve it is a method by Timothy Rasinski.  He suggests you model a short passage for the student so they hear what a good read should sound like.  Then they go and practice this passage out loud at least 3 times trying to sound like you.  Then they come back and you listen to them read and try to sound like you in your fluency.  It truly does work if time is spent on it and you do other activities along with it to improve word recognition.  

Is your school beginning RtI now or does it run continuously all year?  


Be sure to link up your plans with Mrs. Wills!


Hope you all have a blessed Sunday!

8 comments:

  1. I've always had good luck with repeated readings for fluency. Right now I've been using A to Z passages with students.

    Bridget
    Literacy Without Worksheets

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    1. Bridget, I like think the repeated readings work really well for fluency too. I use Reading A-Z passages for our timed readings.

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  2. I teach my kids to count the sounds when segmenting words. It's a nice little trick, in addition to the ones you mentioned.
    ❀ Tammy
    Forever in First

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    1. I like the idea of counting the sounds too, Tammy, when segmenting the words. When they go to the next step of writing the letters for the sounds, we sometimes will draw lines for each sound.

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  3. I love the rubberband hand idea! AND I love modeling fluency for the students. They love it, too. My upper level readers love it when we each read a page out loud, and I participate. I notice them trying to read like me even then. Thank you for sharing your wonderful weekly plans! :)
    Carolyn
    Kindergarten: Holding Hands and Sticking Together

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    1. Thanks so much, Carolyn! I love to hear the students when they try to sound like me and use a lot of expression. So cute!

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  4. Love the rubber band idea and bought some star stretchy things after Christmas for next to nothing just for that. I have been using them with my kindergarten students and may need to get my first graders to use them too.

    Our RtI model is done year round but is dependent on a computer program. I am working to fix it,but when the Instructional Coach from the district tells us to do something, that seems to be the way it goes.

    Andrea
    Reading Toward the Stars

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    1. I understand about having to do whatever those in charge say you must do, Andrea. Sorry that your RtI is dependent on a program. The kids like doing the "rubber band hands"!

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