Word work and reading

Over the past two weeks, we have looked closely at defining the Daily 5™, shared strategies for rollout of the first two components, “Read to Self” and “Work on Writing,” and collected useful teacher resources on our Pre-K–6 Reading & Literacy Pinterest board. This week, as we close out this series, we turn to the remaining three rotations—“Read to Someone,” “Listen to Reading,” and “Word Work.”

As the final components of a balanced literacy framework, these three elements also leave room to be reinterpreted and leveled appropriately to meet the needs of your students. Keep reading to uncover best practices about how these three components can take shape in your classroom.

Read to Someone

Often a Daily 5 favorite, “Read to Someone” offers children the opportunity to pair up and share a book of their choosing. This rotation is sometimes referred to as partner reading, buddy reading, or read with a friend. No matter what you choose to call it, “Read to Someone” provides a meaningful time for developing readers to increase their comprehension, fluency, and accuracy. Explore a few ways to set up this round successfully:

• Become a good reading partner

Setting expectations for good reading partners in your classroom involves defining what it sounds and looks like. Because volume control can often feel like an uphill battle, we’ll start there. Research shows that the loudest voice in the room is the one that often regulates the noise level. Keep your voice down when conferring with students to set the appropriate tone and expectations in your room.

Hand in hand with voice level, our primary learners often need direction as to what “Read to Someone” should look like. WIth “EEKK” (elbow to elbow, knee to knee), a model subscribed to by the Daily 5 creators (Gail Boushey and Joan Moser), students are taught to sit side by side to easily share their text and read aloud together.

• Check for understanding

It’s not enough to practice fluent reading during “Read to Someone;” your students also should be concentrating on comprehending text. To check for understanding, set a standard practice for readers to restate aloud the “what” and “who” of what they just read or heard. Additional comprehension questions can be added for older students. Check out a few examples of how this strategy can be brought to life on our Pinterest board.

Listen to Reading

“Listen to Reading” can take many different forms, including online audiobooks and Web-based solutions. For emerging readers, time spent listening to fluent reading models is invaluable to building reading pronunciation and expression. Struggling readers also find this rotation beneficial, as it allows them to access texts that meet their listening comprehension level, even if that exceeds their reading level. Keep these strategies in mind when incorporating this rotation:

• Ensure smooth technology rollout

If you find yourself among one of those lucky few with a set of state-of-the-art devices for class, adding “Listen to Reading” to your daily rotation should be fairly straightforward. If a set of four to five “cross your fingers and hope they work today” computers is more in line with the current state of your classroom technology, rest assured that there’s no reason to lose hope! Between audiobooks from your campus or city library and your school’s computer lab, you can still give your students the opportunity to experience this rotation regularly. 

Additionally, make the most of time spent at this station by ensuring that your students have the technology skills to log in quickly and treat equipment appropriately. Early on, it’s also a good idea to appoint a student to be your “tech-support helper,” so that you aren’t pulled away from working with students to assist with technology issues.

• Determine appropriate activities based on reading ability

Listening to reading is often so engaging for children, that most have no problem building stamina. You can keep this rotation exciting by providing your students with a wide variety of books to enjoy. Our online literacy solutions, Reading Eggs and Reading Eggspress, can be hugely helpful with this. Within the programs’ Online Library Catalog, students can select from over 2,000 different titles with full audio support.

For those no longer in need of “Listen to Reading,” “Computer Time” is often substituted to focus on other reading skills in an engaging environment. In Reading Eggs and Reading Eggspress, students can work through an individualized learning path of reading lessons. Each lesson contains pre-reading activities, a focus book, book quiz, and motivational rewards to keep students engaged and learning.

Word Work

The “Word Work” component of the Daily 5 focuses on spelling and vocabulary by creating a print-rich environment and offering learning manipulatives for students to experiment and develop an interest in language. Students are able to select from a variety of materials to play with words, word patterns, word families, and so on to hone their knowledge and increase their writing skills. Consider several suggestions below to make your “Word Work” area a success:

• Define procedures for materials

With such things as sand, playdough, markers, and glitter glue, the variety of materials involved in “Word Work” is often tailored to meet the needs of your kinesthetic learners. The activities in this rotation also involve a fair bit of rule following and sometimes even a watchful eye to keep them running smoothly.

Gauging the maturity of your learners is a good place to start, followed closely by rolling out new materials one at a time. Model how each is used in the context of “Word Work,” and ask students to help demonstrate proper application to build letters, words, and sentences. Making it clear that each new manipulative is a privilege in your classroom can help keep even your most active learners in line during this rotation.

• Motivate learning with focused, yet fun, activities

“Word Work” can provide excellent practice of manipulating words and developing language skills, but when involving enticing materials, it can also quickly descend into anarchy. Incorporate a variety of “Word Work” activities that motivate students to stay on task.

Using Reading Eggs, students can practice phonics skills, content vocabulary, and sight words in a game-based environment. Leveled activities align content to individualized ability levels, while Golden Egg rewards entice students to stay motivated. Reading Eggspress similarly provides an English skills area for students to practice more complex spelling patterns while earning redeemable rewards.

Ready to start using the Daily 5 framework in your classroom -or take your current use to the next level? Check out our Pinterest board of useful literacy resources, and make the Daily 5 a classroom success this year! Interested in finding out more about Edmentum’s foundational literacy solutions? Learn about Reading Eggs and Reading Eggspress!

Two years ago when my I finished up my degree, and I was contacted by my current principal, that she had a KG and a 1st grade opening, and which would I prefer? I had a panic attack.

First of all, even though I’ve always wanted to be a teacher, and now I was done with school, and getting offered a position, it was all becoming so real. BUT kindergarten or 1st grade——don’t they learn to read in KG and 1st grade, how am I going to get kids to read, what if I can’t get them to read, what if what I do has no impact at all, what if after 180 days of instruction, they can’t read whatsoever?—all these thoughts were racing through my mind.

My student teaching experience was in grade 5th and 2nd, so going off experience, I went with 1st. My first year teaching was a whirl-wind. I was a brand new teacher, I had a baby, I feel like I seriously have no recollection of what happened that year.

Then this year started, and if you have read my other posts you know we started a departmentalized model. I teach a certain subject to the entire 1st grade, each marking period this subject changes. First marking period I taught reading, then writing, then math, now I’m closing up the year teaching the reading again. Specifically FUNdations, which is the phonics program from Wilson, and then I pull 2 small groups daily.

The FUNdations program is a very scripted program, however, I truly believe in the power it has had with the progress of our students. During the small group rotation time, the students that aren’t working with me are either reading to themselves, or a buddy, on the computers, or doing word work that reinforces the concepts taught that day in FUNdations.

I try to mix it up with the word work for my kiddos, so they don’t get bored with the same activity.

 Mondays students play «KA-BOOM» If you aren’t familiar with KA-BOOM, you have to try it out. It can be done with anything really from math to reading concepts! I used old Crystal Light tubs, then took popsicle sticks and wrote words on them. I have different ‘tubs’ for different skills—Kaboom Sight words, Kaboom words with vowel teams, Kaboom words with suffixes, Kaboom words with silent e, Kaboom words with blends and digraphs, and Kaboom words with R-controlled vowel words. My kiddos LOVE these games!! You write Ka-boom on about 2-3 sticks, then the rest of the sticks you write words (or equations for math), then students pull sticks to read them. The sticks they are able to read, they keep, the ones they can’t they put back. If they happen to pick one of the Ka-boom sticks, they put all their sticks back, except keeping the Ka-boom stick out (otherwise the game will go on forever!!)

 Tuesdays are spent doing some sort of work with sight words. This week, I had the kiddos write their sight words in shaving cream on their desk. I also have sight word dominos, flashcards, or sight word match up. You can find the Domino Sight Words

 Wednesdays are for building words. I got this really fun construction building words activity from my Scholastic Book Order (with my points of course!) They also enjoy building words with magnetic letters and playdoh, which I alternate every week which way they build their words.

Thursdays are our day to be detectives. During their word work time, they have these 1/2 sheets of paper, and they look through their independent reading materials to fill in words that have the pattern that they are looking for. I apologize I don’t have any pics of this word work activity in action, I just added it this past week, and didn’t get a chance to snap any photos! I have it printed on card stock and laminated so to reduce paper usage (which is a problem in my school). You can find the Word detective Recording Sheets

On Fridays, I consider that my accountability and formative assessment day. I give them a paper that has a sight word search on one side, and a small reading passage that they have to mark up and identify the words or word patterns we have worked on that week. I collect this, and then am able to reteach as necessary.You can find the Reading Passages here and the Sight Word Search Puzzles

I think whatever the word work you choose for your kiddos, it’s important that it matches the skills that you are teaching, that way they are able to connect from things you’ve said or they have seen into what they are doing.

Some additional word work ideas I have used are «Make a sentence», where students use pocket charts and there is a single word on an index sized card. They can create their own sentences. Fluency reading, where the students read their sentences (on a ring) to a partner 3 times and check it off each time they read. ABC order—helps students to recognize the importance of how to order words so they are in alphabetical order. I have also done task cards that go with what I have introduced, like adding silent e to the word.

It has been amazing to see the progress with all the kiddos from the beginning of the year to now!! I am so excited to watch them grow during these last few weeks of school. Hopefully, you have got some new ideas to add to your word work rotation or center.