From the Principal's Desk

After reading the summary from each chapter, please address the following topics:

• How will I implement the information from this chapter into my lessons on an ongoing basis?
• How will I evaluate the effectiveness of these activities?

You may also choose to politely agree or disagree with the information presented, or you my add other pertinent comments.

Thank you in advance for your participation.

Chapter 1 (Glenn/Skaggs)

Chapter 1

Pages 1-5

Chapter one discusses how teachers must try to plan to fit in small group instruction just as you might plan to fit exercise in your daily life. It says that teachers usually try to make the “perfect schedule”, but suggest that they have a flexible one for balance considering kids needs. This chapter goes into detail on how whole group, small group and one on one instruction work together in meeting the needs of all students in the classroom.

The purpose of whole group instruction is to model reading and writing strategies. Students are exposed to on-grade level reading material and standards. Teachers model mini lessons that teach children how to think.

The purpose of small group instruction is to meet the needs of students in a way that accelerates their learning. In small groups teachers support and scaffold the reader. The focus is to have the student problem solve and do more of the work than the teacher.
Each student should be included in a small group on a weekly basis.

During one-on one instruction, teachers have reading confers with the student and listen to them read during independent reading time.

Pages 6 - 11

Choose a Lesson-Plan Form

• Choose a form that matches what you want to focus on.
• Choose a focus based on your assessments.

Before Reading

• Preselect a student to listen to while other students read familiar books.
• Take a few notes on one child per group

Introduce the Book

• Plan a short book introduction.
• Set a specific purpose for reading.
• Remind students what they are expected to try as readers that day.
• Plan ahead for early finishers.

During Reading

• Have students read silently, ask one child to read quietly to you.
• Have a short conversation with each child that you listen to.
• Write notes about things you noticed.

After Reading

• Ask good questions that are connected to the purpose that was set for the reading.
• Allow students to discuss what they read.
• Refer back to the focus of the lesson.

Link Small Group to the Rest of the Day

• During whole-group instruction watch for things to reinforce with small groups.
• During small-group instruction reinforce what was taught in whole-group instruction.

Chapter 2 Summary-Organizing for Small Groups (Patterson)

This chapter can be summarized into three main categories:

1.) Choosing & Organizing the Small Group Space
A. Ensure that you’ll be able to see every child from where you’ll be working with your small group.
B. Place your space by a set of built-in shelves or use clear stacking drawers.
C. Place the area by a bulletin board or portable tri-fold project board.
D. Make sure that you have all your materials at your fingertips, and keep them there all of the time.

2.) Organizing to Minimize Student Interruptions
A. Teach routines well, such as bathroom, Kleenex, pencil sharpening, etc.
B. Assign a student as a materials manager.
C. Do not begin small group instruction until you know that the other students can work independently.
D. Have a physical object, such as a “Do Not Disturb” or a red STOP sign, to remind students not to interrupt during small group sessions.
E. Place a chair or two by the small group table to seat the student(s) that misbehave or interrupt, constantly.
3.) Record Keeping and Notes
A. Use a 3-ring binder or folder as a Small Group Planning Notebook.
B. Use 4-5 color-coded dividers/tabs with pockets, to keep anecdotal notes and/or running records for each child.
C. Develop focused lesson plans for the small groups.
D. Clean the notebook out (once a month). Store lessons for future use.

GROUPING
Chapter 3 - B. McKinney

Trying to see every group everyday will not yield quality teaching. Remember, quality, not quantity. Meeting with every group everyday, will burn you out quickly. When moving a student from out of a group use a combination of both formal and informal assessments. As you meet with students in small group, you will get to know them much better than if you worked with them only in whole group. You will know who is improving in fluency or phonics skill. The teacher will see who needs help. Monitor your struggling students progress every few weeks.

Pay attention to what students are doing as readers with regard to phonemic awareness, phonics, comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency, as well as what they do as writers. Make decisions.

1. Is the student able to do this on his or her own?
2. Must I give support to the student?

When a student consistently demonstrates use of the skill and strategy at a level with increasing independence try the student at a higher level.

Chapter 4: Comprehension Summary (Farrell/Williams/Lopez)


This chapter is about teaching comprehension utilizing small group instruction. Debbie Miller impresses upon the reader that “reading is thinking” and comprehension is critical for students to have true understanding of what is read. She differentiates between basic recall and deeper understanding, with explicit instruction into all areas of comprehension stressed. There is a lot of research provided to demonstrate the effects of quality comprehension instruction, which can serve as a guide into what we could do as teachers in our groups. Ms. Miller also provides thoughts into which students would need small group instruction in comprehension. Basically, it is her belief that every student can benefit from it. Comprehension is “the ultimate goal” each time she meets with a group.
Some helpful ideas include the type and difficulty of text to use with certain groups. Texts should be easily decoded so the real work and energy can be spent on the deeper thinking and extending the student’s understanding. Ms. Miller spells out instructional reading level, so if the teacher has an awareness of each student’s level (i.e. fluency and WCPM, and accuracy), then materials can be effectively selected. Interest is, of course, also very important when choosing texts.
Writing is also mentioned as a tool to deepen comprehension, with ideas and connections being important. Students writing their own questions, especially inferential-type questions that delve deeper. Vocabulary is also a consideration, as meaning is easily lost if there is a struggle.
There are some sample lessons provided to demonstrate different comprehension skills and lessons, such as Text Structure, Monitoring, and Schema/Characters. The author breaks each lesson down with some background, a “Before the Lesson” section, followed by “During the Lesson” and “After the Lesson” sections. (Farrell)

Monitoring Lesson Comprehension
Things to Think About
• Monitoring means checking
• Stop and Think about what you’ve read
• Monitoring is used in combination with other strategies

Before the Lesson
• Choose a book for which the students have lots of background knowledge (Families)
• It’s difficult for students to understand things that they don’t know about
• Use sticky notes to jot down their thinking as they read
• Limit the amount of sticky notes given students to avoid playing (limit 3)
• Model in a read-a-loud how to use the sticky notes.
• The goal of this strategy is to get students to stop and think about what they are reading.

During the Lesson
• Read the title and show the cover to the students
• Ask the student what they know about the subject
• Ask the student how is the family in the book like theirs
• Request as the student are reading, write down your thoughts.
• Helps students to understand what they have read.

After the Lesson
• After the lesson discussion revealed that comprehension was improved by jotting down what you are thinking

Schema/Characters We Know Lesson
Things to Think About• Books in a series work well for this lesson
• Students are anxious to read the next book after the first
• Some books have character listed in front with a sketch
• For lower grades choose books with fewer characters
• Scheme relates to anything students know that can help them better understand
• Use more than one strategyBefore the Lesson
• Guide the student in making a connection
• Have the student create character maps

During the Lesson
• Student will make predictions and discuss what they already know
• Complete character maps
• Discuss the book after readingAfter the Lesson
• Compare and contrast this book with the others
• Discuss the characters
• How did your schema help you understand the characters

Using Graphic Organizer Lesson
Things to Think About

Before the Lesson
• Discuss the Genre
• Read the title and make predictions
• Set a purpose for readingDuring the Lesson
• Create discussion question for the groupAfter the Lesson
• Discuss the characters
• How did you keep the characters straigh
• Share your graphic organizer

Asking Questions Lesson
Things to Think About
• Lesson will help student stop and reflect on the question in their minds

Before the Lesson
• Read and discuss the title
• Jot down questions you have as a reader
• Write captions for the photosDuring the Lesson
• Jot down questions as you read
• Did the author answer your questions
• What questions do you still haveAfter the Lesson
• What question did you have, how were they answered
• What do you still want to know
• How does asking question help you understand the book
P. Williams

How do I access check for understanding?The best way to find out if students comprehend what they read is to talk with them. Having a conversation about what they read gives valuable information about the depth of their understanding. Ask questions as needed, but try to avoid turning the discussion into a question answer session.

Struggling comprehenders often learn to sit back and let the teacher do all the talking. A teacher should patiently wait on students to discuss their understanding of the reading material.

The use of sticky notes can be used to check for understanding. Have students jot down their thoughts and after the small group session you can collect the notes and look over them.Multiple choice formal objective comprehension measures are time consuming and do not totally assess the comprehension of the students.

It is better to give students a worksheet with an on-grade level passage and comprehension questions that you haven’t already “taught with.” This will give you a better picture of their reading comprehension of on grade-level text.A retelling rubric can be used to access comprehension. One is included with the DRA.What to Look for and How to take Notes on Comprehension

A teacher might find it helpful to take anecdotal notes on comprehension.Some Prompts for comprehensionWhen a reader gets stuck, it is helpful to have some things to say to help prompt the child to take action (rather than the teacher just giving the student the word or the answer).

Links to Whole-Group InstructionSmall group lessons move faster when they are linked to lessons previously taught in whole group.A teacher should model for the students how to do activity.

MonitoringDuring reading or lesson, stop occasionally and have students to check for understanding by talking with a partner.

The teacher should model how to read a section and model how you think about what you are reading.

The teacher should model how to self-correct when an error is made.Using Schema/Making Connections

The teacher should share some connections being made with the text but not over do it.The teacher should model how to jot down notes about the text.

The teacher should explain how making connections helps a reader better understand the text.

Asking QuestionsThe teacher should model how you ask questions about the text during reading aloud.

Write question marks on sticky notes and post them on the page where reading where it made you ask a question. Remove the sticky notes when the questions are answered.Focus on questions with multi-layered response possibilities.VisualizingA quick sketch on the board will model what the teacher is visualizing.

Read aloud a page or two from a picture book. Have students think about what the pictures look like in their minds, and then compare illustrator’s pictures with thoughts of the students.Use poetry to teach visualizing. Highlight words that help paint a visual image while doing shared reading.InferenceInference is a combination of background knowledge, schema, and what the word or pictures say.Have kids infer using pictures with no words. Show them they used what they know plus the clues from the picture.

Model inferring and call it inferring when students help you do so.SummarizingWrite summaries together in shared writing to model the process.

Have students practice telling what happened in the story by pretending they are talking to someone that hasn’t read the book.

Have students summarize by telling a sentence about the beginning, a sentence about the middle, and a sentence about the end.

Using Text StructureModel for students how both fiction and nonfiction work by charting with students what each may include.Using Graphic OrganizersModel how you fill out graphic organizers as you read aloud fiction and nonfiction.

Think aloud about why it is beneficial to use a particular organizer.Deeper MeaningModel how to think at a deeper level by generalizing, determining importance, synthesizing, and analyzing what was read.Use quality questioning to push deeper thinking.Links to Literacy Work Stations PracticeIt is beneficial to give students additional practice with comprehension at literacy work stations.

Links to Standardized and State TestingLearning the academic language used in standardized tests can help some children comprehend better on those tests. This will help the students become familiar with the terminology they will encounter in tests.

Use release tests to help you prepare the students.Comprehension CautionStudent comprehension suffers when the student can’t decode.Reading fluency has been shown to increase comprehension.

Vocabulary has a huge influence on comprehension.Comprehension and vocabulary should be focused on simultaneously.

Chapter 5: Fluency (Meador/Simpson)

#1 Fluency is a combination of several factors-rate or speed, prosody or phasing, expression, intonation, and pacing-along with comprehension. Ideally, students should be able to read at approximately 95 to 99 percent accuracy when developing fluency. Another component of fluency is whwn developing fluency. Another component of fluency is automatically (or quickness) in word recognition. This is extremely important because it frees up the brain for comprehension of the text. Students that read with expression, intonation, phrasing, pacing, and pausing usually show evidence of greater comprehension.

#2 Research offers some findings you might find helpful when planning instruction.

• The more attention a reader devotes to decoding, the less attention they have for comprehension.
• Students with reading difficulties are most often not fluent.
• Fluent readers simply read more texxt.
• Repeated oral reading with feedback is one of the best teaching methods.
• Round-robin reading has not been proven successful.

#3 Students that struggle over decoding long or new words, reading in a monotone voice, reading superfast but have no expression, and skip punctuation are prime candidates for small group instruction. When working with these students, one should consider the following possible focuses for lessons.

1. Decoding words effortlessly and automatically
2. High-frequency-word work
3. Reading with punctuation.
4. Reading in phrases.
5. Reading with intonation and expression.
6. Reading dialogue.
7. Regulating the speed of reading.

Consult "Making the Most of Small Group", Chapter 5: Fluency, for additional information on materials and strategies for implementing the identified lesson(s).

#4 Fluency is a bridge between phonics and comprehension.

#5 A student will never get to the "Promised Text" (fully aprrciating the value, riches and enjoyment of written text) unless they are able to cross that brdge; be the light that leads their way.

Chapter 6 Phonemic Awareness (Loftis/Bitner)

The basic premise of this chapter is that phonemic awareness (the sound a a letter makes) and phonological awareness (the word that is then created by combining those sounds) are the two most basic building blocks of literacy. Like Ms. Bird says to her students, "that boys and girls who know their sounds can use them to learn how to read." (p. 87). The chapter then goes on to cite research that indicates that letter-sound awareness is the biggest indicator as to whether or not a child will be a successful reader. The question that we must ask ourselves is what is the best way to do this?

According to the Chapter, a teacher who works with a small group of no more than 4 students for 20 minutes, 3 times a week, will see improvement in their students' reading and spelling (p.92-93).

There are several focuses for a lesson including rhyming, sound segmenting (which the author points out is the most effective phonemic/phonological exercise) blending, alliteration, etc. Then as we all know there are lesson exemplars, tools and hints for teaching phonemic awareness. While I know I have strayed from the questions as hand, I am trying to give you the most comprehensive view of the reading.

We believe that given the fact that phonemic/phonological awareness is a skill that is generally mastered in Kindergarten or First Grade the best way to increase our children's mastery of this skill is to teach it in tutoring, especially for a student that has very limited phonemic awareness.

There are however other lessons that we can take away from this: first is that children need a a whole language classroom. This means that they must be able to use language in all three of its forms; spoken, heard and written. They must then be able to practice this in a meaningful way. For us (especially the Bilingual teacher) what this chapter boiled down to is this: children must find language enjoyable and useful to even want to learn it. In both classrooms the games with the cubes and letters and even the use of the Big Book are all strategies that are encouraged in a bilingual classroom, because they help students learn how to group words and how they are related. Ms. Loftis could even use these same tools to introduce a math unit, and also to encourage the learning of number families and multiplication facts. Once put in place these activities (rolling a di with a sound) could be modified and used to prime students before a lesson or to review them at the end of the class. More importantly this chapter was useful for the fact that it would be helpful in developing a set tutoring curriculum, and also provided these two teachers with ideas on how to help those students that would benefit most from remediation.

Chapter 7 PHONICS - Pages 114 - 138

SUMMARY

of

CHAPTER 7 - PHONICS (Crawley/Le)

Phonics is a method of teaching reading that emphasizes letter-sound relationships to decode words. Researchers have identified at least five different ways to approach teaching phonics. They are provided below.

• Synthetic phonics involves explicitly teaching children letter-sound relationships, and teaching children to break written words apart sound by sound.
• Analogy phonics focuses on teaching about word families such as cat, hat, mat, and bat.
• Analytic phonics relates to teaching children how to sort words and look at spelling patterns that make different sounds such as ar, er, ir, ur, and or.
• Phonics through spelling involves children learning about phonics during writing experiences.
• Embedded phonics is a method is which children are taught phonics through real reading experiences.
• The key to successful phonics teaching is a systematic approach that has a planned, sequential set of phonics elements that are taught explicitly and methodically.

Research has identified the following information about teaching phonics.

• Systematic phonics instruction introduced early in children's school experience seemed to produce stronger reading achievement than later.
• Directly teaching the letter-sound system can speed up learning how to read.
• Children need a rich variety of reading and writing experiences that include, but are not limited to, phonics instruction.
• Instruction in phonics facilitates early reading acquisition.
• Systematic phonics instruction produces significant benefits for students in kindergarten through sixth grade, and for children having difficulty learning to rad.
• The effects of systematic early phonics instruction were greatest for children in kindergarten and first grade.
• Systematic synthetic phonics instruction had a significant effect on the reading skills of struggling readers. It benefited students with learning disabilities, low-achieving students with no learning disabilities, and low socioeconomic status students.

Phonics lessons involve the following.

• Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (CVC) Patterns and Blending Words (for Beginning Readers)
• Using Initial Letter Sounds in Reading (for Beginning Readers)
• Using Initial and Final Sounds in Writing
• Using Long Vowel Patterns
• Using Funky Chunks (ou, ough, oi, oy, au, and augh)
• Using Short (or Long) Vowel Sounds in Writing
• Consonant-Vowel_Consonant (CVC) Patterns and Blending Words in Reading
• Vowel Plus "r" Patterns in Writing (ir, ur, and er)
• Reading Long Words

Phonics can be a very effective foundational tool for learning critical reading, spelling, and writing skills. Success in life is directly proportionate to the level of mastery of these skills.

Chapter 8 - Vocabulary (A. Williams/Coach)

Chapter 8 lists four kinds of vocabulary:

1. Speaking (words we use in conversation).
2.Listening (words we understand through hearing).
3.Reading (words we read and comprehend).
4. Writing (words we can write to convey messages).

There are different levels of knowing words, so possessing a large oral vocabulary can help the students to better understand what they are reading. Their word knowledge combined with their knowledge of the topic helps comprehension. The four levels of knowing words include the following.

1. I've never seen the word before.
2. I've heard of it, but I don't know what it means.
3. I recognize it in context and I can tell you what it means.
4. I know the word well.

Our goal should be for the students to move through these levels of knowing by teaching lessons that include the following aspects of vocabulary learning.

Word Consciousness/Being Interested in Words and Word Learning.
We can help our students develop an awareness and love of new words through daily read-alouds of high quality children's literature (fiction and nonfiction), reading and speaking with rich language in meaningful contexts.
Learning Through Direct Teaching of New Words
Forget the old school method of copying dictionary definitions or having students memorize words for a test. The author's suggestion is to connect new words to contex and encourage the students to use them in their oral and print vocabularies.
Word Learning Strategies (for Indirect Learning)
Many students have not learned to pay attention to new words because they have not been exposed to rich vocabulary. The students should be taught word-learning strategies so they can add to their repertoire of vocabulary words more rapidly. Strategies to teach the students to try to determine the meaning of a new word or phrase include:

1. Using the pictures.
2. Looking at other words/context clues located before and after the new word.
3. Substituting another word that makes sense in place of the the new word.
4. Asking someone its meaning.
5. Using a dictionary or glossary.

Once the students have learned about a new word, they need to be encouraged and given opportunities to use it in a variety of ways before, during and after the reading.
Small Group Instruction
Focusing on vocabulary in small groups will give students additional guided practice in learning to stop and notice new words as they read, so they can learn how to learn new words. Small group lesson possibilities include teaching the students strategies 1-5 as well as:

1. Using word parts to determine meanings so they will be on the lookout for old words with new meanings or multiple meaning words.
2. Thinking about book language(figurative language) and idioms.
3. Using text features like bold and italicized words in informational text.
Choosing Materials
Think about the word-learning strategies you want your students to use in the lesson to be sure those kinds of opportunities exists in the book, story or passage you select.

WELCOME!

Welcome Russell Family to our new book study format. It is our hope that all of us will have the many learning opportunities through this collaborative effort. We will be learning a great deal about small group instruction, and some of us will be learning a few new technology skills. All of us have a vast amount of knowledge to share. Remember, the more you share, the more you learn.
Specific instructions about which chapters to read, and what form your comments should take will be coming soon. Until then we look forward to our new learning journey.
Educationally Yours,
Dee Skaggs