Jennifer Novak’s November Blog
I
have really enjoyed working with my 5 “Focus Group” students. We have been reading 3 times a week for about
15 minutes from a leveled decodable book.
This book has the same words we are working on from our class basal and
basic K and 1st grade sight words.
There are lots of beginning blends and short vowels. The 5 students I selected all read below the
1st grade level. Using this decodable
book has given them so much confidence in sounding out words and fluency. I feel very confident that they all know
their beginning sounds. Still working on
short vowel sounds. I have used this
knowledge to do some mini lessons on short vowel sounds-CVC words. I continue
to reinforce the reading strategies of beginning sound, sound out, look at
picture, skip and return and guess and listen to see if it makes sense. I feel at this age, learning their basic
sight words and chunks will help them become more fluent readers. Most of their errors are visual and sometimes
not thinking or listening to the word in the sentence-Does it make sense? I will continue to work on these strategies
with all my students.
I am really glad that you are enjoying your group and learning more and more about them. Wouldn't it be fun to just teach 5 students every day . . . to really invest in them and focus on their needs. Can you imagine how much more we would accomplish. :) It will be fun to see how these students grow throughout the year!
ReplyDeleteYay! I'm glad to hear you're enjoying your group and that you are able to plan instruction based on your conferencing data. I will look forward to hearing how each individual student progresses in the future! I know I always struggled with meeting individual needs in group settings--I'd love to hear more about how you are managing this in future blogs. :-)
ReplyDelete