What does it mean to receive a Reading First Grant?

2010-2011 is the fifth year for the Reading First Grant at Alexander Elementary.    

What is the purpose of the Reading First Grant?  Reading First aims to improve K-3 instruction and ensure that all children will read at or beyond grade level by the end of third grade.  It is designed to help districts, and communities identify and adopt scientifically based reading programs. As a result of grant funds, Alexander Elementary has adopted and purchased the Scott Foresman Reading series.  Reading First also ensures that all classroom teachers can identify children at risk of reading failure, and provide effective early reading instruction.

 

Assessment windows

In order to monitor the reading progress of each individual student, Reading First Ohio requires three testing times during the year. These assessments are necessary so that our teachers can provide the highest quality instruction that meets the needs of every child.  The assessment times for the 2009-2010 school year are as follows:

 

 

Benchmark 1                            September 21 - Oct. 2

 

Benchmark 2                            January 18-29

 

Benchmark 3                            April 5-23

 

All of the Benchmarks are done using the DIBELS assessments. These are quick, one minute assessments that help teachers track the progress of each student toward the end of year goals.

 

 

If your child needs to miss during these weeks, please let the classroom teacher know in advance, so that arrangements can be made.

 

Thanks,

 

Literacy Staff 

Reading at Home

Perhaps the most valuable thing that a parent can do at home is the read aloud.  In other words, read to your children or have your children read to you.  When you do this you are modeling good reading habits to your child.  You show them reading is a valued skill that they will need as they grow older.

 

There are many ways to keep these activities new and interesting to your children.  Here are just a few.

n pick a book or article of interest

n if the child is the reader, pick a book that is on their level. (generally-if they struggle w/ more than 3 words on the page, it is too hard)    

n ask them to predict what the book will be about

n talk about things that this book reminds you of.  (ie.  “this book reminds me of the book we read last week” or “the trip we took to grandmas”

n talk about the possibility of a different ending of the book.

n Ask questions about the book.

n Just ask for them to tell you the story in their own words.

 

 

If the child is the reader and they get to a word they can’t figure out, here are some prompts that may help.

 

1. Does the picture help you figure out what the word is?
2. Sound it out.
3. Is there a little word inside that word that you do know?   For example,  “information”    in  for  mation
4. go back and reread that.
5. skip the hard word, then come back and read it again.
6. Does that make sense?

 

Parent Pointers

 Here are some quick and easy things you can do with your child to help him/her with reading skills.  We realize that many families lead busy lives and cannot always sit down and help their children as much as parents would like. Therefore, most of the following ideas can be done “on the go”.

Throughout the year, children will be given a series of one minute assessments that measure the acquisition of skills at different grade levels. These are known as DIBELS assessments. These pointers are divided by the assessments in which they could assist performance.

 

ISF (Initial Sound Fluency)

This test measures whether children are able to identify the first sound they hear in the word.  For example “Point to the picture that starts with /b/”.

 

• Let’s find ten things that start with the sound /s/ (or any sound) at the store, in the kitchen, during a car ride, etc.

 

• Exaggerate the initial sound of some object and ask children what sound they start with.

 

• Sort object by initial sound: “all the /s/ over here and the /h/ over here”

 

LNF  (Letter Naming Fluency)

This test measures the automatic recognition of upper case and lower case letters. Saying the sounds associated with them can be helpful.

 

• A-Z  I-Spy:  See if you can find all 26 letters of the alphabet during a trip, while at the store, in the house, etc.

 

• One letter I-Spy:  Count the number of times you see a “k” or let’s find 10 “F’s”.

 

• Memory game or Go fish card games with upper and lower case letters.

 

PSF (Phoneme Segmentation Fluency)

This test helps the teacher determine if the child is ready to blend letter/sounds into words. Children are asked to break words down into the smallest sounds. (Sam,  /s/ /a/ /m/)

 

• “How many sounds are in…..?   Children count each sound on their finger. “Bun…./b/ /u/ /n/ …three.

 

• Clapping with individual sound.

 

• Word train game- Person has to say a word (much), the next person has to say a word that starts with ending sound of the previous word (chair, red,…..)

 

NWF (Nonsense Word Fluency)

Measures the automatic recognition of short vowel patterns found in many words. In turn, it helps children sound out words they don’t know. (mem, vap, ik, zus, yox, for instance)

 

• Word train game- Person has to say a word (much), the next person has to say a word that starts with ending letter of the previous word (chair, red,…..)

 

• Word families- Children find words that end with the same two letters (bun, fun, run…) See how many they can get.

 

• Make a pig into a cat by changing one letter at a time(pig, pit, pat, cat).

 

ORF (Oral Reading Fluency)

Measures how smoothly the child is reading by recording the number of words read in a minute.

           

• Reading aloud- Reading things out loud provides children with a model in which to pattern themselves.

 

• Echo reading-  Read a line or two, then child reads it in an echo fashion. Funny voices can make this more fun.

 

• Mute the TV and have the child read the Closed Captioning. 

 

• The “runner” on the news, weather, or sports is a good way for children to work on fluency.

 

 

Interactive Reading Games

Looking for a fun game for your child to do on the computer?  Check out these sites for fun, interactive computer games that work on reading skills....

www.starfall.com

www.roythezebra.com

www.funbrain.com

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/interactive/literacy.html#3

http://jc-schools.net/tutorials/interactive.htm

Enjoy !!!

Alexander Reading Fellows

The Alexander Elementary Office of Literacy and the Ohio University Department of Professional Development Schools are very excited to announce a collaborative effort that will allow us to have four Reading Fellows for the 2010-2009 school year.  These fellows will be teaching at the school for 20 hours a week while working on their graduate degrees in Reading Education.  These fellows are licensed teachers that will focus on mainly intervention.  The teaching fellows are:

 

Kindergarten-  Kelly Dunick

1^st Grade-       Eileen Platzbecker

2^nd Grade-       Ashley Nickalos

3^rd Grade-       Brittany Lubbe