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Poetry Close Reading

Poetry as a Close Read When I was a student, poetry was the literacy genre that I hated the most. Why? Most of the poetry used was dry, confusing, or too hard. I don´t really remember being taught how to read it or what the elements of poetry were for.  But now, poetry has become more enjoyable for kids. The topics are rich, sometimes funny, and also thought-provoking.  At my school, poetry is a favorite unit. We look forward to it and read it every month.  Structures of poetry We spend time learning about the s tructures of poetry such as rhythm, rhymes, alliterations, and stanzas.  This is part of our first read.  This helps us to practice fluency and prosody as we read. Some ways to practice are choral reading, partner reads, and independent reads.  imagery:  Next, we analyze the meaning of the poems.  I usually start by discussing the imagery in the poem.  This happens in your 2nd and 3rd reads.  What words evoke your senses? Sight? Smell? Touch? Sounds? Taste?  We search for s
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Vocabulary - it's more crucial than you may think!

  Just like phonics, direct, explicit instruction is the best way to teach vocabulary.  Explicitly teach a New Word -  pronounce, write and read the word tell students what it means - using student friendly definition, props or actions say the words multiple times while giving examples, sentences, or asking questions using it ask yes or no questions ask students to use the words during the day How to Practice Vocabulary Words dimensions of word knowledge - look at synonyms, antonyms, categories of examples, multiple meanings, etc..  Four Squares are great graphic organizers for analyzing words in depth.  Multiple Meanings - one of the biggest confusions with students are words that have more than one meaning.  As you get into the Upper Grades, there becomes more and more examples in grade level text.  One way to practice, is by taking the word and using a web to show the various meanings.  Classification into Categories - sometimes we spend more time looking at the meaning of words th

Winter Read Aloud using the Science of Reading for Comprehension

  Winter Read Aloud I found this book recently and fell in love with it for many reasons -  family relationships diverse family (from Lebanon) sensory details - which connects to onomatopoeias character traits and points of view and most of all SNOW...       In switching from the old idea of reading multiple books for exposure to isolated skills, I designed this mini-unit around the fundamentals of the comprehension side of the Science of Reading.   Verbal reasoning  is woven into the unit in several ways. T his unit includes opportunities for inferencing as well as Visible Thinking Routines like  See, Think, Wonder , and the  Circle of Viewpoints.  Some are used to build background knowledge and some are used to reflect on the learning.   The lessons are broken into three parts -  Before Reading Background Knowledge - this book can be read in isolation or with other winter read-aloud books to build knowledge about a snowy day.  You could read this before a big snowstorm, as part of

Isolated Skills or Multiple Skills?

  We are coming off about ten years of teaching skills in isolation.  At the time, it seemed like a sound idea. Struggling with the main idea? Spend more time on the main idea. We spent a lot of time focused on three-week units around one skill. But what teachers noticed was, it didn't work! They still didn't get the main idea!!!        Fast forward to 2019 and the Science of Reading movement....the first book I read that changed my thinking was Natalie Wexler's the Knowledge Gap.    I will spend another blog post synthesizing takeaways from this later.  In all honesty, this book made sense to me. Why weren't the kids getting these skills in isolation? We had taught many, many lessons on them!  Wexler says it's not because of the skill, it has more to do with the information in the text they are reading. If you have no background knowledge, then you can't decipher the meaning of the text.         Students need to be exposed to multiple skills in a passage or st

A New Way of thinking about comprehension

How many times have we, teachers, worried about testing to determine whether our students understand a comprehension skill or strategy?  In LETRS, Moats and Tolman talk about the many hidden mental activities that happen in comprehension. In other words, comprehension is more of a process than a product.  Well, that makes sense.  So what are those processes of comprehension ?  Monitoring comprehension - my favorite strategy for this is STP (Stop, Think, Paraphrase) Reading with appropriate pace - pacing actually correlates to understanding text Making inferences as you read - what are the characters thinking or feeling?  Making a mental model to organize thinking  and understanding Making connections in the text with views and background knowledge  How can we support those processes of comprehension?  Reading multiple texts  around one topic helps to build background knowledge.  In another blog I will talk moe about this critical component of learning. A final component that will b

Twas the Night Before Christmas

         One of my favorite traditions as a child, was to sit and listen to this famous poem snuggled up with my mom or grandmother.  They both introduced me to the beautiful artwork that went with this poem, by GrandMa Moses, and we spent hours looking at the tiny details in her paintings.        Most teachers like to take a break for the daily grind right before the holidays.  When I have looked for resources before, they are usually very cute and very fun! While I love cute and fun, as a Reading Specialist I want to add meaningful to the list as well.        This unit is designed to take five days.  You will read two stories about the Night Before Christmas - one is the actual poem and is told from the viewpoint of the father in the house.  The second is told from a mouse's  perspective - a lonely mouse none the less.  Each story has two days of shared reading in which we explore multiple skills - Characters, Setting, Events and Perspective/Point of View.  It is a two day close

Thanksgiving Tradition - a mini shared reading unit

  Thanksgiving i s fast upon us...are you looking for a quick mini unit that uses three Thanksgiving books centered around the topic of  Community Thanksgiving Traditions.   In our Kindergarten classrooms, we are learning about communities and neighborhoods currently and suddenly found Thanksgiving was knocking on the door.  In order to continue to build background knowledge and connections to our community, we decided to create a mini-unit about how American families celebrate Thanksgiving. Even though this was created with Kindergarten in mind, it could easily be used in grades K-2.