Word Work During Guided Reading

Hey everyone. It’s Deirdre from Mrs. Garcia’s Super Scholars here today, and I am so excited to share how I incorporate targeted word work into my guided reading lessons.

Like Breanna mentioned last week, IF YOU DO NOT HAVE THIS BOOK YOU NEED TO GET ON THAT RIGHT NOW. This book is my GR bible.

In every single GR session, I use targeted word building geared towards that level. There are 3 tools I use for this.

Letter magnets. I have this awesome set from Lakeshore. I love that they are color-coded by consonants and vowels, and that they are easily organized and accessible. In the past I’ve also used letter tiles, wikki stix, and letter stickers, but I like how easily magnets move.

Magnetic whiteboards. I love these because they stack well without letters sticking to other boards, and I can write on them as well. Some of my kids need the support of Elkonin boxes, and I can quickly draw these on the board. I have used cookie sheets from the Dollar Tree as well, they work especially well if you're on budget! Having all the letters at the bottom also helps them practice ABC order as they put them back in place. After reading, we usually use the top of the board for writing dictated sentences.

Word Building Cards. Using Jan Richardson’s suggestions for each level, I’ve made word building cards to help me easily set up for my GR teams. I have the word card “ladders” on a ribbon for each level that I use while working with my groups, as well as a cheat sheet for which letters to grab out of my magnet box.  I usually have letters for both my groups for that day on the board so we can transition quickly.

Once my boards are set up, I can quickly start my GR groups. My team comes to my table and has a minute or two to build the sight words that are on my easel as I settle the rest of the class into stations. When I get to my table, I have them clear their workspace (top of the board) and we go through the word ladder for their level.

Word Work takes about 2 minutes, but it packs a huge punch! We have a large Scholastic guided reading library of book sets (PTL), and I will usually use a word card that has some words from that day's books. My kids are already acquainted to words before they start reading, and they have those word decoding strategies fresh in their mind before we start.

Here’s a quick snippet of what it looks like in action. This is an D-level group so they are pretty independent and need much less prompting than very beginning readers. Please excuse my awful voice! 

How do you incorporate word work into your GR lessons? I’d love to hear about it!

What Worked Well Wednesday - Kindergarten Spelling Program

Hi everyone! 

 It's Cori from Mrs. B's Beehive, for our weekly What Worked Well Wednesday post!  Today I wanted to share with you the resources I use for my spelling program!

When I first started teaching, I created a spelling program based on sight words.  As the years went by, I began to feel that a program based on sight words was only encouraging memorization.  I felt like that strategy wasn't getting to the core of what a spelling program should be, which in my opinion was to apply the phonics and language skills that they had learned in my language arts program to spell unknown words.

I searched around TPT for a product that might meet my needs, and came across this one from Khrys Bosland:

My school does not use Reading Street, but the set-up and the structure of the spelling lists were perfect, and I believe that this is a resource that could be used in any classroom, regardless of what basal program you use.

The product comes with spelling lists for each week.  I don't begin my lists until week 7 of the school year, when the students are just starting to get some letter sound knowledge, and we've already established homework packet routines.

The program starts out with 4 words, and by the end of the year, it increases to 10.  Many of the words used for the spelling lists are common CVC, CCVC, and CVCe words.  I take this opportunity to also review word families.  I use Marsha Maguire's word family posters to display words that we have already went over in our spelling program.  At the end of each week, we add the words that we worked on to our word family wall.

During the week, the students have a practice sheet, where they can choose different ways to practice writing their spelling words.  This sheet is turned in at the end of the week.  If  you would like a free copy of this spelling word practice sheet to use, just click on the image below!

On Friday we take our spelling tests.  We are just starting for this year, so some students are easily writing all the words, some students are just getting the beginning sounds, and some students are writing jibberish : ) The joys of teaching kindergarten, and all the different levels that our students enter into our class with! : )

After setting up my spelling program like this, I noticed a HUGE jump in my students reading scores at the end of the year!  I had all but two students at first grade reading level and many above that at the end of the year.  Every year, my class is comprised of 100% ELL's, some know more English than others.  Their capacity to learn not only how to speak a new language, but to read and write in it as well never ceases to amaze me.  The two that were below, came in with zero English at the beginning of the year, and even though they did not get to first grade level, they made ENORMOUS strides in their reading and writing.  I credit the increase in my students' reading scores to this new spelling program, that encompasses so much of the phonics and word family skills they need to be successful, and utilizes very little class time to reinforce these skills!

I hope this spelling information can be of use to you!  Please link up below with the Kinder Tribe to share what worked well for you in your classrooms!!

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