Newsletter: September 17th

Qualities of Read Aloud That We Appreciate: (1) Reader puts themself IN the story. This helps
us not just hear the story but FEEL the story. Like it's real!, (2) Creates character voices, (3) Animated sound effects, (4) Speaks clearly, smoothly (rhythmically), and loudly, (5) Makes funny faces and voices for parts, (6) Speaks with the emotion of the story, (7) Stretches out some words, and (8) Slows down, pauses, and speeds up at times for effect.

Wow, what a great start to the week! Last week we focused our reading workshop on various strategies we use to figure out words we don't know. The kids often like to say they "sound it out," but there is so much more they do than this. In fact, it's a phrase I would never offer to any of the kids when finding them puzzling over a word.

Why?

 Because our twenty-six letters produce a total of forty different sounds. Add to that the new sounds introduced by letter combinations (blends, dipthongs, etc) and you have a whole lot more than forty. Now add the fact that a small vocabulary of 6,000 common words requires over 200 rules (yes, 200!!!) to account for all the ways individual letters are related to individual sounds. Considering all of this, the probability of a reader correctly producing the actual sounds of a four-letter word they don't know is barely one in four. We, as more experienced readers, can produce the correct sounds easily - largely because we already know what the word is or because we have a much larger vocabulary from which to draw patterns. When confronted with the word "circumvent" we will already know whether that "c" will make the /k/ sound or the /s/ sound because we recognize the word or because we see that it begins the same as the word "circle." To expect an emerging, or less experienced, reader to do this same work without the context of text around it can only serve to frustrate them and turn reading into a chore.

Then how do we talk about solving unknown words if not telling them to "sound it out"? We help them to use the context clues around the word. When the kids were reading more picture books than they are now we talked a lot about using picture clues. However, now everyone is largely reading chapter books. Strategies discussed for these have included, but are not limited to: (1) backing up and reading the passage again, (2) reading ahead and then coming back and rereading the whole passage, and (3) thinking about what makes sense. In reality, they do these each of these - drawing on multiple strategies at the same time.

One of the activities we do together is to look at a piece of text that is missing some of its words. With no phonemic (letter sound) clues available what-so-ever the kids are still able to guess the word or to substitute the word with an identical or similar meaning. They do this successfully almost every single time. Go ahead and give it a try yourself...

Robert ____________ into the store and grabbed a cart from the bin. He was in a _________ to get what he needed because his wife was expecting him home soon. He looked down each ________ trying to find the shampoo but couldn't figure out where it was.

There are many things going on in your head as you do this. Just like your kids, you are using the context of the passage to create possibilities that would make sense. You're also considering which part of speech structurally fits there. For instance, the first sentence obviously needs a verb of some sort in the blank. You know this and the kids do too. They may not articulate it as such but their instinct helps them to know an action word sounds right based on all the speech they've heard throughout their lives. Now imagine doing this work of creating meaning and layering in the phonemic clues.

Robert w_______ed into the store and grabbed a cart from the bin. He was in a  h______y to get what he needed because his wife was expecting him home soon. He looked down each ________ trying to find the shampoo but couldn't figure out where it was.

Now you're drawing on ALL the information available to you to solve the words. This is not "sounding it out." No, this is being strategic!

Yesterday we shifted our focus to how we want our reading to sound. Next week we'll begin working with 1st grade reading buddies from Mrs. Klosterman's class. In preparation for this work we're doing an inquiry into the qualities of a strong read aloud. We've been watching videos of actors and actresses reading picture books aloud and taking notes. The photo at the top of this post shows what we've found so far. Teachers like to refer to this as "fluency." It's not a word we're using in the room but we are working with great intention to think of new ways to challenge ourselves as readers so we'll be ready to really grab the attention of our reading buddies. Doing so will also help with our silent reading since reading fluency helps us to better make sense of the text - which, of course, is the whole point! As a part of this study, we'll soon begin to think about how punctuation and text features help guide our reading. We'll consider the subtle changes in tone and cadence produced by question marks, commas, italics, ALL CAPS, etc. As part of this study (and in preparation for our work with 1st grade reading buddies) the kids will be selecting favorite picture books to practice reading aloud. Next week they'll bring these home to "perform" for you.

We've also launched a new study in writing workshop I'm excited to talk about but I'm going to wait til next week to pass that along. Be sure to keep an eye on the blog, however, because the kids are now hard at work posting daily updates on our work. Alex, Chloe, Dominique, and Eli got us off to a great start these past two days!

Have a great rest of your week,

Chris