After each unit (or phase of a unit) in my intervention groups, I like to have some kind of culminating experience to build on what we've learned. Here's our hallway display for conference week from our "Build-a-Bird" activity. @goyenfoundation @SoRclassroom #KnowledgeMatters
At the end of our bird unit's first phase, our culminating activity was a readers' theater (like @ClassroomD4 I often use ChatGPT to create content-related readers' theater scripts.) We practiced reading with fluency, using vocab and concepts we'd learned about.
(If you want to read more about the unit, start here:)
After Phase 2 of the bird unit, reading "Spit Nests, Puke Power..." by @lmperdew, we extended an activity in the back of the book - creating our own bird species adapted to specific habitats.
The purpose of this culminating activity:
-apply our understanding of adaptations
- experience personal joy and ownership over our work
- share our writing and learning with others.
Here are a couple of masterpieces - the Desert Crow (aka Hunter) and the Tookalooco.
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My students have just finished a study of bird adaptations, and they have each created an imaginary bird adapted to a specific habitat, synthesizing their understanding of adaptations. (1/5) @SoRclassroom #KnowledgeMatters
Here are a few of their opening sentences using appositive phrases. (We drafted on white boards and I gave feedback, then students transferred to a final copy, a very quick writing process in the limited time of an intervention block.) (2/5)
Do students need to know the word "appositive"? This episode of Literacy Talks explored what teachers need to know vs. students. My position is similar to what @LindsayKemeny
discusses on the ep: I use the terminology, but the goal is for ... (3/5) literacytalks.buzzsprout.com/1903769/147148…
@ksirach asked this question today so I thought I'd elaborate on how I've scaffolded this strategy for my striving readers, supporting them to identify that most elusive of creatures ... the main idea. (1/9)
I have had so many teachers tell me kids struggle with "main idea." This strategy provides scaffolds so kids can be successful. Below, I lay out how I use gradual release to teach this strategy. (2/x)
(It's called "paragraph shrinking" in peer-assisted learning strategies - PALS; "get the gist" in collaborative strategic reading - CSR. They are very similar. I usually call it "get the gist." ) (3/x)
My planning has changed a lot over the years, and much of the change is due to the writings of @ReadingShanahan, who has written that reading comp is "the ability to negotiate the linguistic and conceptual barriers or affordances of a text." (2019)
Knowledge building and challenging text in intervention, Part 1: Text Choice
When I started as an interventionist, I wanted to bring more knowledge/vocab building to my students who no longer need an intensive focus on foundational skills. @SoRclassroom #KnowledgeMatters (1/6)
I began to develop units - similar to those in the gen ed classroom. This is our unit on birds.
I begin with simple texts to build general knowledge of the topic. Our first guiding question: What do all birds have in common? (2/6)
For this phase of the unit, we read three texts from Readworks and Newsela, starting with the simplest text at the lower end of the grade 2-3 CCSS Lexile band, and moving to more complex texts. (3/6)
What does it look like to plan instruction while considering the "science of reading" (SOR)? There is a perception that SOR advocates teach only-or mostly-phonics. That's a misrepresentation.
Come along as I explain how I plan instruction for my 3-5 intervention students. (1/x)
Backstory: In response to @ehanford's podcast "Sold a Story," 58 literacy folks gave the critique that the pod focused too much on phonics, neglecting other aspects of literacy. So one might ask: do SOR advocates teach those aspects? (2/x)
Of course! Let's see what it means to consider multiple facets of evidence-based practice. (3/x)
🧵So, I thought I'd share how I came to be an advocate for explicit, systematic phonics instruction as part of comprehensive, evidence-based literacy instruction.
See, at first: I was not a fan. (1/x)
I was a hippie girl who grew up in the woods and didn't really love school. I also learned to read by watching Sesame Street. So when I learned about everything constellated around the term balanced literacy (BL), it spoke to my hippie girl soul. (2/x)
Yes! Surround kids with books and read-aloud and guide them like a coach while reading "just right books." I mean, who doesn't like things that are "just right"?
At my school we had a scripted phonics program. Almost nothing was required at my school except this program. (3/x)