First Grade - Heinemann

Stephanie

Pa r s o n s Foreword by

Kathy Collins

First Grade

Readers Purchase this book now at heinemann.com

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Units of Study to Help Children See Themselves as Meaning Makers Heinemann Portsmouth, NH

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Heinemann 361 Hanover Street Portsmouth, NH 03801–3912 www.heinemann.com Offices and agents throughout the world © 2010 by Stephanie Parsons All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review, and with the exception of reproducibles (identified by the First Grade Readers copyright line), which may be photocopied for classroom use. “Dedicated to Teachers” is a trademark of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Parsons, Stephanie. First grade readers : units of study to help children see themselves as meaning makers / Stephanie Parsons ; foreword by Kathy Collins. p. cm. ISBN-13: 978-0-325-01728-0 ISBN-10: 0-325-01728-X 1. Reading (Elementary). 2. Children—Books and reading. 3. First grade (Education). I. Title. LB1573.P28 2010 372.41′2—dc22 2010009733 Editor: Margaret LaRaia Production editor: Sonja S. Chapman Typesetter: House of Equations, Inc. Cover design: Night & Day Design Cover and chapter opening photos: Angela Jimenez Manufacturing: Valerie Cooper Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 14 13 12 11 10 RRD 1 2 3 4 5

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For Huck

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Contents Foreword by Kathy Collins .............................................................................vii Acknowledgments ........................................................................................... ix Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1 Becoming a Community of Readers ............................................. 8 Chapter 2 Making Sense of Those Little Black Marks................................. 28 Chapter 3 Bringing Books to Life ................................................................ 53 Chapter 4 Reading with a Wide-Awake Mind ............................................ 70 Chapter 5 Reading to Learn ........................................................................ 93 Chapter 6 Sounding Like Readers ............................................................. 117 Chapter 7 Planning for Independence and Summer Reading .................. 136 Appendix A: Student Handouts ................................................................... 147 Appendix B: Websites to Help Foster Reading ............................................ 153

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Introduction

R

ecently I watched my two-year-old son read Go, Dog, Go, by P. D. Eastman. He stared intently at a page for a while, and then turned to stare at the next page. Sometimes he smiled, pointed to something, made a face, or said some of the words of the text. He kept himself occupied like this long enough for me to fold a whole basket of dark laundry. It gives me great pleasure so see Huck so engaged with reading on so many levels, especially given that he’s not actually decoding any of it. Engagement with reading has come so naturally to him that I sometimes wonder if formal instruction is going to compromise this. As a teacher, I see children who had previously loved to read become anxious about reading in school. Somehow school reading feels surrounded by benchmarks and levels, rather than by joy and abandon. I wish I could bottle whatever it is Huck’s doing and pour it into every primary classroom I visit.

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This book is the best way I know how to do just that. Experience has shown me (and research supports it) that reading achievement improves not with increased testing but with increased reading—and not just any reading, but repeated reading of relatively easy to decode, interesting, self-selected texts. These are the texts that children most want to engage with deeply, and you can show them the way. The seven units in this book develop children’s ability to decode and understand a variety of texts. The first unit, on setting up a strong community, supports the work in the remaining units—“Making Sense of Those Little Black Marks,” “Bringing Books to Life,” “Reading with a Wide-Awake Mind,” “Reading to Learn,” “Sounding Like Readers,” and “Planning for Independence and Summer Reading.” Each unit focuses on a different aspect of reading, all of which work together to foster complete readers. Figure I-1 is one possible calendar showing how all these units can work together. The units in this book deal with the reading skills I most want to share with you, but they are not the only choices! I did not, for example, include a unit introducing the concept of books clubs. You may want to create such a unit of study of your own based on your needs and those of your students. If you do, I highly recommend Kathy Collins’s amazing book Reading for Real. With tremendous clarity, Kathy will inspire you to lead your children to great places in their reading, thinking, and talking. And while I’m on the subject of Kathy Collins, her book, Growing Readers, is a must-have resource for any primary teacher. In choosing which units of study to teach, we must consider balance, standards, our favorite literature, and the life of our classroom. A curriculum needs balance. Some units will be genre based (nonfiction, for example), while others will focus on a skill (perhaps fluency). We may also want to vary the

Sequence and Timing

uniT of STudy

1 (September-October)

Becoming a Community of Readers

2 (October-November)

Making Sense of Those Little Black Marks

3 (December)

Bringing Books to Life

4 (January-February)

Reading with a Wide-Awake Mind

5 (March-April)

Reading to Learn

6 (May)

Sounding Like Readers

7 (June)

Planning for Independence and Summer Reading

Figure I–1 Possible Calendar for Reading Workshop

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pace, following long units with short ones and vice versa. Of course, our curriculum must also address the requirements set forth by our school, district, or state. Then, too, we should all be allowed to teach what we love, if for no other reason than to model for children how loving something makes it more fun to learn about it. Finally, the life of the classroom should be a factor in some curriculum decisions.

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How the Units Are Set Up

Every unit of study in this book is presented in a similar way: a brief overview followed by a more detailed description of the steps in planning and teaching it. These steps are discussed below.

Setting Goals The goals for each unit are divided into four categories: making meaning, decoding, habits, and community. These goals take into account not only children’s ability to decode and comprehend but also some other beliefs about young readers, namely that our classes must be communities and our children must become independent if they are going to read for life. Deciding the goals of any given unit of study can be difficult. As teachers, we want to teach it all at the same time. It’s hard to wait to teach something that we wish our kids could do now. That’s why this step is so important. We can’t teach it all at once! We have to set goals for each unit that are realistic and that build on the work of prior units so that we are able to teach it all by the end of the year.

Getting Ready to Teach Before we begin a new unit of study, we need to prepare physically and mentally for the demands posed by the curriculum. We must identify and gather the materials we will need and think about what lessons will be best for these particular children. The next step is considering the children, reflecting on the unit that came before, looking at how we guided our students toward the goals we set there, and planning how we will continue to guide them toward the goals of the next unit. Once you have gathered materials and considered your students, you are ready to prepare demonstration materials. Look through the teaching ideas in the unit and think about which books work best as tools for practicing the skills required. Some texts can be used as they are, but others may need to be prepared in some way, by enlarging a page, covering or highlighting

Introduction


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parts of the text, or writing sticky notes. The more of this you prepare ahead of time, the more smoothly the lessons will go.

A Note on Demonstration Demonstrating makes all the difference. When teaching skills or strategies, we need to keep in mind that we are not modeling but demonstrating. Demonstrating is more deliberate and focused and has certain qualities that make it an effective method for teaching strategies. The important principles of a demonstration are:

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One thing is being demonstrated or highlighted. A demonstration is most clear when the skill or strategy being taught is clearly defined. If a strategy has more than a handful of steps or is too elaborate, it needs to be broken down. It can be difficult, but we must strive to name the strategy or skill being taught in every lesson. We want students to know what they are about to learn, but we also know that putting a strategy into words forces us to be clear and succinct about what that strategy actually is and how it can be done. For example, being a good partner cannot be clearly demonstrated. It is vague and means different things to different people on different days. The small steps that children need to take to become good partners, though, can be demonstrated. Sitting hip-to-hip with the book between you can be shown clearly and unambiguously in the space of a few minutes.

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The demonstration is accompanied by a verbal description. A demonstration without an accompanying description of the action is like magic. We watch the trick and are impressed and amazed but could not possibly repeat it on our own. The purpose of this accompanying description is to demystify the process of reading and writing by sharing our insiders’ knowledge. Imagine the magician telling his audience, “There’s a hidden compartment here and that’s where I get the second coin. See?” Some people call this verbal description thinking aloud, a phrase that aptly implies a private viewing into the mind of the expert. We are naming and describing a process that has become second nature to us but is still a challenge for our students.

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The language is clear and consistent. While thinking aloud, we must remember to use language that children understand. Too many metaphors or digressions will cloud the process rather than make it clear. Where possible, we must use consistent language to describe the strategies we are demonstrating. If we say sometimes, “Sound it out,” and sometimes, “Get your

INTRODUCTION

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mouth ready,” and sometimes, “Think about the sound that letter makes,” it can be confusing. It is easier to cue children to use a strategy when we describe that strategy with a consistent phrase.

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Teaching the Units

Each unit is divided into sections of related teaching ideas. It helps children learn the larger concepts we want to teach if we spend several days focused on each one before moving to the next one. Within each section of a study, you will find guiding questions and topics for lessons, conferences, or mid-workshop focus points. Guiding questions help frame a study by launching a conversation for the community to participate in. The questions might not have immediate answers, and many of them have a variety of possible answers. The topics for lessons, conferences, or mid-workshop focus points are teaching ideas you will need to address in different ways depending on your class. Most units suggest more teaching points than there are days recommended. This is to give options based on the many different kinds of first grade class and to allow you the final decision in what your class needs most. l

If a teaching point seems right for half to three-quarters of your class, teach it as a lesson, preferably with a strong and clear demonstration.

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If just a few children need to work on a teaching point, individual conferences may be the best place to address it.

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If a teaching point seems just right for either a more novice or more advanced subset of children, teach it to them as a small-group lesson.

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If children are somewhat familiar with an idea, or it is not a tricky concept for them, you might want to introduce it simply as a reminder or a midworkshop focus point, in which you stop the whole class during their independent reading time and remind students of a particular reading behavior.

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If nobody seems ready yet for a teaching idea, write it on a sticky note and put it into the next chapter. When you get to that chapter, reevaluate that lesson’s appropriateness.

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Finally, there will be teaching ideas that just don’t work for every class every year. I wrote these ideas based on many years of teaching in scores of classrooms. A year of teaching reading shouldn’t look identical to every other year of teaching reading because the classes are never identical.

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Reflecting and Celebrating This is included in every unit. Sometimes as children share their work, and usually at the end of a unit, we need to encourage students to reflect on their learning. We might ask them questions orally or in writing. The major things we want to know are what students say they have learned, what they think they have done well, and perhaps what was difficult for them. This tells us whether we are getting our point across and helps us understand how the children perceive our teaching. More important, it encourages the children to find words to describe what they are learning to do as readers. When they can name their intentions, it becomes possible for them to judge for themselves whether they are successful. Their decisions are now motivated from within, not from us. This done, we are ready to celebrate! This is the reward for all our hard work. Celebrating is not just for writing workshop, and not every celebration has to have balloons and parents and cupcakes. Most, in fact, will be simple and intimate: just the students gathering in a circle and sharing important discoveries in their reading or offering compliments to classmates. We may make a toast with a cup of juice, congratulating ourselves for the achievement and launching ourselves into the next challenge. Of course, sometimes (maybe twice during the year) we will want to pull out all the stops and invite the children’s families and the school community to share in the joy and pride that comes from a job well done. Celebrations shouldn’t be skipped. Even a small celebration is important to the future of our reading communities. A celebration at the end of a unit of study is akin to graduation. We acknowledge and validate the progress we have made and name the new skills we have mastered or at least begun to master. We also prepare mentally for a new unit, unknown territory into which we can venture with the certainty that all our efforts will be rewarded with new learning. Celebrating is a way to help us be aware of our learning, and it helps children follow our lessons more fearlessly than they otherwise might.

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Checking In

The end of each unit is a good time to check in with the goals of that unit. You will have an opportunity to decide if some of the teaching ideas need to be taught again to the whole class or reviewed with small groups or individuals. First graders are amazing. Watching them become readers is one of the great gifts of this job. This year, with your help, they will put together the pieces

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of decoding, thinking, feeling, understanding, and responding to perform the feat of reading. I hope these units provide the rigorous curriculum you want and the fun you need to guide your students toward a lifelong love of reading.

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Professional Resources

Calkins, Lucy. 2001. The Art of Teaching Reading. New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers. Collins, Kathy. 2008. Reading for Real: Teach Students to Read with Power, Intention, and Joy in K–3 Classrooms. Portland, ME: Stenhouse. ———. 2004. Growing Readers:Units of Study in the Primary Classroom. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

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2 Making Sense of Those Little Black Marks

M

y mother loves to tell me about how I learned to read as I learned to talk. The youngest of five children who all knew how to read when I was born, and the daughter of a determined mother, I could read my own name and a few other words before I turned three. By the time I was five, I could decode most of the Los Angeles Times—emphasis on the word decode. Our neighbor, Mrs. Palmieri, thought it was the craziest thing she had ever seen, and she had me perform this feat for her skeptical friends. This was my party trick! What nobody ever asked me was, “So what is this about?” The emperor’s lack of clothes would quickly have been discovered. The part of the story my mother does not love so much is that at six I refused to read outside of what was absolutely required at school and did not read for pleasure for a couple of years. Decoding was a cool trick, but it lost its appeal pretty quickly. It’s true that my primary teachers all referred to me as a reader because I could decode at such a high level. It was not until I got the hang of comprehension that I became what I call a reader. 28

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This experience has given me a cautious approach to the teaching of decoding. A unit of study on decoding is vital at this time in first grade, but I think that print strategies have to be part of a balanced plan that recognizes the goal of teaching children to make meaning. As soon as a community has started to form, we must dig right into the work of translating print into meaning. While some children come to first grade reading comfortably, the vast majority is just at the brink. They know the alphabet and can spell some words but are lost when faced with an actual book, no matter how simple the text. In this unit, we give children lots of ways to turn those black squiggles on the page into words. We can’t stop there, though. The words have to go together meaningfully and interact with children’s own thoughts and experiences. Many teachers find decoding easier to teach and assess than comprehension. It is. If we stop here, though, we contribute to children’s and parents’ already too common confusion of decoding with reading. We must teach a whole host of strategies for getting and making meaning. This includes decoding strategies that encourage children to use meaning as a source of information (rather than always using phonics) as well as strategies to slow down and notice their thoughts as they read. The more attention children pay to their thoughts, the more their reading becomes a satisfying dialogue between reader and text. This is the state where we can really teach children to dig into meatier comprehension work. Children’s regular use of language is another largely untapped source of information for reading. Most native speakers of Standard English have a well-developed ear for how book language should sound, which can help them predict words as they read. Those children who are learning Standard English can learn to use syntax not to predict but to confirm. Of course, we must teach children about visual information—phonics. Children who already know how to use meaning and language structure as sources of information use phonics much more effectively than those who are taught only phonics or are taught phonics first. Putting these three together—making meaning, using language knowledge, and decoding—leads to well-rounded readers who decode and comprehend texts. A small part of this unit also focuses on incorporating dramatic play into children’s reading work, encouraging them to act out parts of books, pretend to be characters, or imagine dialogue for characters they see in their books.

■ Overview Even though this unit is primarily about print work, we need to make sure to hold onto the connection to meaning. It is common for early readers to get so caught up in decoding that they forget to pay attention to what their books Making Sense of Those Little Black Marks

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are about. Of course this is natural, and it’s the reason we ask our students to reread their books. Still, children need to know that when it comes to reading, the act of making meaning is important. Our teaching must reflect this value. The unit begins with an emphasis on using meaning as a source of information for reading. The strategies we teach in the first section of the study involve developing an understanding of the text, so children have this to fall back on when words get hard. The second section of the study is a short one that focuses on teaching children to use their own natural language structures as a source of information, so children learn the habit of making their reading sound like language should sound. This is hard for speakers of languages or dialects other than Standard English. These students will need a lot of explicit support in shared reading. The third section of the study outlines strategies for using visual (mostly graphophonic) information. You will not see the phrase “sound it out” anywhere in this unit. The strategies here are more specific and more tailored to the book levels children are likely to be reading early in first grade. Hopefully, after being taught about using meaning and syntax as sources of information, children will use the visual information supported by strong comprehension. Finally, the unit ends with a day or so of reflection and maybe even a small celebration. Congratulating ourselves for hard work and accomplishment is not just for writing workshop!

■ Goals/Outcomes While we always want our students to be well-rounded readers, the emphasis of this unit is primarily on decoding. We must also attend to comprehension, of course, but our comprehension work here is framed as a means to the end of figuring out what the little black marks in our books are trying to tell us. We also continue our work with building good reading habits. Many of the community goals from the previous unit have carried over into this one and will continue to carry over through the year.

Making Meaning We hope children will

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orient themselves to their books before reading

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show a literal understanding of texts by retelling or saying what books are mostly about

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think about what is happening or what they are learning in their books while they read (though this may not happen the first time reading a given book)

Decoding We hope children will l

regularly and independently use pictures as a source of information while reading

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use visual/phonics cues where appropriate to figure out new words

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monitor their reading to see that it makes sense

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monitor their reading to see that it sounds right

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confirm their reading against the visual information as appropriate

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automatically read a growing repertoire of sight words

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use analogy as a means of figuring out new words that look like familiar words

Reading Habits We hope children will l

choose books at an appropriate level, or have a good reason for choosing books above or below this level

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explore a variety of texts

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get started quickly during reading time

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have a few ways to be productive during reading time (for twenty to twenty-five minutes by the end of the unit)

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talk about their books

Community We hope children will l

discuss books with partners

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participate in lessons and discussions Making Sense of Those Little Black Marks

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respect the range of abilities in the class

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treat other readers’ time, ideas, and space with respect

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work together to decode

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help one another learn or remember to use strategies to decode (rather than just telling one another words)

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share their learning processes and make helpful or encouraging questions or comments during share sessions

■ Getting Ready to Teach As you prepare to teach this unit, think about your students and what they need. This information will help you choose what to teach to the whole class and how to plan for small-group instruction. Next, gather and prepare the materials you’ll need to teach these lessons. In order to demonstrate the strategies in this unit, and indeed in most of this book, you will have to role-play being someone who reads like a first grader. Kathy Collins approached this by calling on a much earlier version of herself to help with lessons. Her students knew whether they were watching First grade Kathy or grown-Up Kathy. Whether or not you create an alter ego, it helps to let children know they are watching you handle text not as an adult reader, but as a reader just like them.

Considering Students It is vital to have at least an informal assessment of your students’ reading levels and habits going into this unit. Choose what to teach based on what your children are ready for, which is probably going to change from year to year. One year you may find yourself teaching children how to manage pointing to words with one-to-one correspondence, while the next year’s class has mastered this. In order to choose the best lessons for this unit, you should have an idea of what levels your students are reading independently. You may also want to gather some other information about them as readers, such as whether they monitor for meaning or sense, how they choose books to read, or how they talk about their books.

Preparing Demonstration Materials For this unit, you need several big books that resemble the books children will be reading. If you have access to a document camera or an overhead pro32

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jector, you will be able to use any book in your library. Choose some books ahead of time that allow you to teach the print strategies described later in this chapter. You will want to keep these out of the library for a little while so that children can try the strategy in a text they have not seen before. Look through the books, imagining how you will demonstrate using the strategy, explain it in a way children can follow, and think aloud about what you are doing. Think also about how you will ask children to try the strategy right there in the lesson. Perhaps you’ll demonstrate on the first few pages and then ask children to try on the next couple of pages. Some of these lessons may be made easier if you prepare the text in some way. For example, if you want children to look at the picture to figure out an unknown word, you may want to cover that word. If you want children to act out what they see in the pictures before attending to the print, you’ll have to cover all the words. If you have these materials prepared and set aside ahead of time, you can do the lesson right when you need it. Sometimes we plan to do a particular lesson on Thursday, but then we notice something in our students that tells us to teach it today. It’s good to be ready for that!

Choosing Texts to Help You Teach The books you use for lessons and shared reading in this unit will depend on what you have available and on which publishers your school prefers. rather than mentioning specific titles, I’ll give some helpful guidelines for choosing appropriate texts. Because the unit focuses on print strategies, use books that are on similar levels to those of most of your students. This likely means levels A to E/F. Keep a stack of big books at these levels handy so you will be ready to demonstrate a variety of strategies as needed. It helps to go through your big books with a pack of sticky notes. Write down the strategies that can easily be taught with each book. This is not a substitute for thoughtful lesson planning, but it does get you ready to respond to children’s needs as they arise. Though you will continue to read aloud rich books at higher levels, make a point of reading aloud books at levels A to F also. Show children how to think and talk well about these books. Too many of us think of the earlier levels as a necessary hurdle to jump over on the way to real reading. This is a disservice to the students who need our help in making meaning right from the beginning of their reading lives. Choosing these books to read aloud and engaging students in purposeful talk about them will help children see that this is real reading. Making Sense of Those Little Black Marks

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■ Teaching

Using Meaning as a Source of Information Children need a lot of effective strategies right from the beginning. It’s hard to prioritize when you wish you could teach all of the strategies at once, just to get kids up and running. At this point in the year, I find myself tempted to focus on decoding to such a degree that meaning goes to the back burner. This is especially easy if you think of the earliest levels of books as having no real substance, as I definitely used to. I mean, how much meat can be dug out of “I like to run, I like to play”? We sell our children short if we think of level A and B books merely as an annoying hurdle children have to clear before they can really read. In this section of the study, we can teach children how to use the pictures, the words, and their own thoughts to construct meaning that’s bigger and deeper than that of the words alone.

time frame

section of study

what children do

what we teach

5–7 days

Using meaning as a source of information

• Read books for meaning • Use what they know about their books and information in pictures to help them decode unfamiliar words • Think about character • Begin to monitor for meaning, making sure their reading makes sense

Topics for lessons, conferences, or mid-workshop focus points • Readers figure out as much as they can about a book before they read it. • It can help to look through a book and imagine what it might say before you read it. • Many books have word patterns on every page, which helps us read them. • Often pictures in books tell us what some of the words are. • One thing to try when you get to a new word is think, “What would make sense here?” • Sometimes the word pattern changes, so we have to look carefully at the picture and think about what’s going on to figure out the new words. • When we read, it’s always good to notice when things don’t make sense. • As we read, we can also imagine what the characters in our books are thinking.

2–3 days

Using syntax as a source of information

• Use their knowledge of how Standard English sounds to help them read • Begin to monitor for sense, making sure their reading sounds right

Topics for lessons, conferences, or mid-workshop focus points • One thing to try when you get to a word you don’t know is think, “What would sound right here?” • When we read, it’s always good to notice when things don’t sound right.

Figure 2–1 Unit at a glance

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time frame

section of study

what children do

what we teach

5–7 days

Using visual cues as a source of information

• Use graphophonic information, as appropriate, to decode new words • Use strategies for blending sounds, isolating groups of letters on paper, and making analogies between new words and known words • Begin to monitor visually, making sure their reading looks like what they see on the paper

Topics for lessons, conferences, or mid-workshop focus points • Pointing to the words makes it easier to read them. • When you use the picture to help you read, make sure to look back at the beginning of the word to see if the sounds match. • If you know some words by heart, they can help you figure out a pattern. • The words you know by heart can help you keep your finger in the right place. • If you have trouble figuring out a word, it can help to see if you know something about part of that word. • Using your fingers to frame one word can help you see it better. • When you stop to figure out a new word, rereading the whole sentence helps you understand what you’ve read. • Looking at the end of a word can help us figure out what it is.

2–3 days

Putting it all together

• Try to use strategies more flexibly • Use an alternate strategy if the first one doesn’t work

Topics for lessons, conferences, or mid-workshop focus points • One reason to reread a book is to make it sound smooth. • If one strategy isn’t helping you figure out a word, try another one. • Readers make sure their reading makes sense, sounds right, and looks right.

1 day

Reflecting and celebrating

• Come together to share and congratulate one another on work well done

Guiding questions • What new strategy did you learn this month? • Is there a book you can read now that you couldn’t read before? How were you able to do it? • How do you feel more grown-up now than you did the last time we celebrated?

Figure 2–1 continued

As you begin to teach the strategies for reading print, think about creating some charts for children’s reference. You might start with only one item, adding each strategy only as you teach it. It helps to include a small picture or icon to help children remember the strategy. See Figure 2–2 for an example. After all, if they could read the chart, they wouldn’t need to look at it! Figure 2–3 shows a possible chart to create over the course of the unit.


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Figure 2–2 Creating Charts: Try to use charts that include small pictures or icons.

Topics for Lessons, Conferences, or Mid-Workshop Focus Points l Readers figure out as much as they can about a book before they read it. This lesson was also in the first unit, but it may need repeating. Children need to develop a habit of orienting themselves toward their books before they read. Show them how to think about the title and cover and what clues they give about the contents of the book. Children should also at least glance at some of the pages to predict vocabulary they are likely to see inside. This activates schema, so children’s minds are sort of swirling with the kinds of words and ideas they’ll be trying to decode when they read the text.

It can help to look through a book and imagine what it might say before you read it. I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time convincing children to take picture walks before reading their books. Maybe they don’t see the purpose as clearly as I do, so it seems to be an empty task to them. I have started to show children how to look through a book, acting out what they see on each page. They look at the picture and talk as they imagine the characters might. This can feel fun for children and still achieves the purpose of orienting their minds toward the book. l

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Figure 2–3 Chart of reading Strategies

After watching children do this, I gained a new respect for What Is a Huggles? by Joy Cowley. This simple story is easy to dismiss as silly or frivolous. Even the simplest of stories can carry a theme, as I saw when I watched children collaboratively move beyond a literal understanding of the book through dramatization. The children I was observing role-played a Huggles examining all the animals in the zoo, looking unsuccessfully for something like himself (herself?),


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and the animals reacting to the Huggles. Then the children acted out the part where another Huggles appears outside the gates of the zoo, the first Huggles sees him/her, and they hug one another. In order to understand this as a story about two Huggles overcoming alienation to find a sense of belonging, children had to really think beyond the text. They would never have done this amazing work without having been taught the strategy of role-playing what they saw in the pictures, and now I’m a believer, too. Many books have word patterns on every page, which help us read them. This may sound like using syntax as a source of information, but bear with me for a minute. We do not just want kids parroting the repeating words. They need also to tap into what those words mean. The patterns in their early books are usually tied closely to the main ideas, so holding onto the meaning of the pattern helps children understand their books. As you teach this concept, then, demonstrate how knowing the pattern helps you decode each page. Then demonstrate how you think about what the book is about using the words of the pattern. (For example if the pattern is “I like to . . . ,” you might say, “This book is about all the things the character likes to do.”)

l

l Often pictures in books tell us what some of the words are. As soon as children can handle using patterns, we can teach them how to approach the words that do not repeat. These are usually hinted at in the picture. Depending on the level of the book, the picture is more or less supportive. For very early books, the picture usually unambiguously indicates the changing word. In later levels, the picture contains increasingly more detail. To demonstrate this, choose a book at a level appropriate for most of your class. Show them how you confidently read your way through the pattern, then get stuck at the word that changes. Then think aloud as you study the picture, trying out words to fit into the pattern: “‘Bare feet in the . . .’ hmm. What is that? I’m going to look at the feet in the picture to see what they are in. It’s brown. Could it be dirt? ‘Bare feet in the dirt.’ Yes! That makes sense.”

One thing to try when you get to a new word is think, “What would make sense here?” If children are in the habit of engaging with their books and holding onto meaning as they read, they build a growing understanding of each book the further they get into it. They can rely on this growing understanding to help them think of what would make sense if they encounter an unfamiliar word. The great thing about this strategy is that even if children cannot come up with the exact word they may be looking for, they will come up with something that makes sense, thereby keeping their comprehension intact: “‘You can find a dolphin. You can find a shark. You can find a ship. You can find a . . .’ l

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I don’t know what that word is, but I see a big box of jewels and coins. Well, I know that sometimes I’ve heard of people finding buried treasure in big trunks like this one. Would it make sense if it said treasure? Let’s see. ‘You can find a treasure.’ Yes! It makes sense.” Sometimes the word pattern changes, so we have to look carefully at the picture and think about what’s going on to figure out the new words. In about level C, books have predictable, patterned text until the last page, which changes entirely. Children are used to reading with the help of a pattern because this is what they did in levels A and B. A pattern change can make them feel like their safety net has been removed. Teach them to expect the change in pattern, notice it, and use meaning as well as print to figure it out. You could demonstrate this by thinking aloud about the pattern as you read a big book containing this challenge. On the last page, show children how you might initially get flustered because the words are not the same ones you’ve been reading this whole time. Then let them see how you dramatically regain your composure as you discover that, in fact, you have what it takes to read the text! “Wait! I know this word, and I can see what’s happening in the picture, too! This page must say something like, ‘My whole family loves me back’ or ‘And my family loves me, too.’ Let me see if one of those makes sense. Hmmm. There are still some words I’m not sure of, but I know I at least understand what the book is trying to tell me. And that’s important.” This strategy may not result in a perfect decoding of the last page every time, but if children understand that their job is to hold onto meaning, it can help get them closer and tide them over until they get help or until they have the necessary print strategies. l

l When we read, it’s always good to notice when things don’t make sense. No matter how we emphasize comprehension, there’s a degree to which early readers can become so focused on print as to forget that they are constructing meaning. Learning to read must be a bit like spinning plates. Children have to be so deliberate about things that come automatically to us grown-ups. So while they’re trying to get that decoding plate up and spinning, the meaning plate may just come crashing down. given this, you will want to teach children a lesson on how to listen to themselves as they read, noticing when things don’t make sense. You can teach fix-up strategies separately from this, but this lesson is merely about noticing.

As we read, we can also imagine what the characters in our books are thinking. Children tend to get the hang of following what characters in their books are doing, but imagining what they may be thinking or feeling does not l


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come so naturally to everyone. Even in the earliest levels, invite children to explore and discuss what the characters in their books might be thinking. After every page or section of text, have children stop and pretend to be the character for a second, sketch or jot on a sticky note, or share with a partner what they imagine a character is thinking.

Using Syntax as a Source of Information Children sometimes need to use syntax to read new words and, maybe more important, to monitor that what they are reading sounds like it should. Here again is another spinning plate that children have to negotiate. It can require so much effort to decode the words that children may not have anything left for listening to themselves as they read. They might fail to notice miscues that do not sound like their natural language at all. Speakers of languages or dialects other than Standard English may have some difficulty using syntax as a source of information. What sounds right to their ears may not, in fact, be what is written in the text. It may even behoove us to think of a cue that uses a word other than right if we are working with a lot of children who face this challenge. Maybe, “Does this sound like books usually sound?” could be an alternative. If you have a lot of students who are just beginning to read and are speakers of languages or dialects other than Standard English, you may also consider skipping these lessons for now, instead supporting children with shared reading that explicitly points out how Standard English sounds (noun/verb agreement, tense agreement, etc.).

Topics for Lessons, Conferences, or Mid-Workshop Focus Points l One thing to try when you get to a word you don’t know is to think “What would sound right here?” This is akin to the earlier strategy of asking oneself, “What would make sense here?” The focus is on syntax, or language structure, rather than on meaning. This strategy works best with words that cannot be determined by looking at the picture—words like have, with, when, but, and so on. Show children how saying “blank” in the place of the word and reading to the end can help. See Figure 2–4 for a chart that shows this strategy as one way to tackle tricky words.

Let’s see, this page has a word I don’t know. I covered it with a sticky note so I could show you this strategy. Of course, the words in your books aren’t covered, but you might have to do this with a word you just don’t know. Watch what I do. “Mom blank sweeping.” Hmmm. It could say, 40

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Figure 2–4 Tackling Tricky Words: The last strategy on this chart serves as a reminder to students to read the whole line saying “blank” instead of the tricky word.

“Mom is sweeping,” or, “Mom was sweeping.” Those both sound right. It wouldn’t say, “Mom the sweeping,” or, “Mom were sweeping.” Those just don’t sound like something I’ve heard before. When we read, it’s always good to notice when things don’t sound right. Sometimes I say to children, “You know how when I read aloud, you all listen so carefully so you can enjoy the story? Well, guess what? We are all doing the job of reading. Not just me. I’m doing one important job, which is reading the words, and you are doing another important job, which involves listening, thinking, and enjoying. When you read to yourselves, you need to do both of those jobs. You need to read the words and you also need to listen to yourselves.” When I frame it this way, it clarifies the purpose for children. It also likens monitoring their own reading to something they already do well, which is monitor my reading. You have probably all had that experience where you make a mistake while reading aloud and all your students notice, right? So you already know they can monitor. They just have to learn to monitor while they are the ones doing the decoding. You can help them do this by reading some books to them at their level, intentionally making the kinds of error they might make, and asking them to signal when they hear something that doesn’t sound right: “I see a apple.” “My dog like to play.” “I runned to the park.” l


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It will be much easier for them to hear and self-correct this kind of error if they have had a chance to hear and correct you.

Using Visual Cues as a Source of Information I have chosen teaching points based on the assumption that most children will be reading levels between B and E this month. Of course, the full range of most first grade classes could span from not really knowing many letters to reading level M or so. These teaching points are aimed at the majority. Any outliers, either before or after these levels, will need extra attention individually or in small groups. This is one of the few times when I consider the possibility that not all children need to come to the meeting area for all lessons. I once had a student in my first grade class who could comfortably read at a third grade level. Did she really need to sit for a lesson on one-to-one matching? really? I just don’t think so. Her time was better spent reading. Instead, I met with her individually to teach her comprehension strategies that the rest of the class was not yet ready for. Especially in this section of the study, it is important to choose your teaching points based on what you know about your class. If most students need a strategy, teach it to the whole class by all means. If only a few students need a particular strategy, teach it to just that small group.

Topics for Lessons, Conferences, or Mid-Workshop Focus Points l Pointing to the words makes it easier to read them. Children must learn to match printed words with spoken words early on. Some children point once for every syllable, others point haphazardly, while others just keep on pointing to empty space if they get to the end of the printed words but not to the end of the sentence they are saying. Show them how to point crisply under each word, moving their finger with precision across the space and stopping crisply under the next word.

When you use the picture to help you read, make sure to look back at the beginning of the word to see if the sounds match. You have taught children to look at the picture for help figuring out the word or phrase that is not part of a repeating pattern. In early levels of books, children may do this without really even looking at the word. This lesson now directs their eyes back to the print. You might show children a page with a rabbit but with the word bunny, for example. You may even cover words with sticky notes and ask children to l

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predict which letter they expect to see based on their assessment of the picture. When you remove the note, they are forced to analyze the print. When they do this on their own, of course there won’t be sticky notes in their books, so you will have to remind them to look at the picture and the words. If you know some words by heart, they can help you figure out a pattern. When my niece, Katie, was just learning to read and write, she proudly told me, “I know how to write cat!” She carefully wrote down the letters C, A, T and beamed at me. “Wow, Katie! That’s amazing! Now you can read me what you wrote, too!” Not missing a beat, she answered, “Oh, Steffi, I don’t know how to read, yet!” Many of the words in early pattern books are, conveniently for new readers, the same high-frequency words you are probably teaching children to write and spell. You may need, however, to make an explicit connection to the act of reading them! Just because a child can write the correctly over and over again does not necessarily mean that she recognizes it in print. l

l The words you know by heart can help you keep your finger in the right place. One-to-one correspondence, or matching printed words with spoken words, is a pretty tall order for new readers. If they forget the pattern, they may end up with too many or not enough words. Teach them how to keep on the lookout for words they recognize, as those words can act as signposts guiding them through the text. For example, you can demonstrate how you work through a book that goes, “The cat went under the . . .”: “Even if some of the words are unfamiliar, if I know the, I can make sure my finger is pointing to that word right when I say it.” l Using your fingers to frame one word can help you see it better. I think of this as tuning out the background noise. Show children how to make a little frame out of their fingers, blocking out the words before and after the word they are trying to decode. Sometimes just isolating the word makes it easier to figure out. Once they can look at the word without distraction, they can try some of the other strategies, such as looking at the beginning of the word or looking for chunks they recognize.

If you have trouble figuring out a word, it can help to see if you know something about part of that word. I find the old strategy of looking for a word within a word to be frustratingly inconsistent. Knowing to can help you read tomorrow, but knowing me does not help you read came or met, for example. Instead of asking children to look for words they know, I ask them to look for parts of words they may know. This way they can identify chunks, or groups l


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of letters, that appear together frequently but may not be words, such is ch, ing, re, or er. As in the above lesson, isolating these chunks by placing their fingers over the rest of the word makes it easier to decode them. l When you stop to figure out a new word, rereading the whole sentence helps you understand what you’ve read. When children pause their reading to decode a new word, they may lose track of what they’ve read up to that point. It’s important any time children have to pause that they go back and reread the whole line with fluency. This way they can hold on to the meaning of the whole text. l Looking at the end of a word can help us figure out what it is. Your students may be getting pretty good at looking through the first few letters of a word. Some children may be ready to look at the end of a word and use that information to help them. This is especially helpful with longer words that end in familiar chunks, or letter groups. A long word may be intimidating but if you see that it ends in ing, it may seem a little more approachable.

Putting It All Together You have taught a lot of decoding strategies in this unit. Children may have certain favorite or comfortable strategies, which they go to first regardless of what might be most helpful for solving a given word. It is also one thing to practice a strategy in isolation and quite a different one to use multiple strategies in concert. This is why we must follow up with some explicit teaching of how to use all these strategies together.

Topics for Lessons, Conferences, or Mid-Workshop Focus Points One reason to reread a book is to make it sound smooth. When children first read books at the earliest levels, their reading is often a bit choppy. First of all, they are working on one-to-one matching so their reading is naturally word by word. Second, a first reading at these levels is mostly about decoding. There’s not a lot of mental energy left for fluency or even comprehension. In subsequent readings, children can apply their minds to these skills. l

If one strategy isn’t helping you figure out a word, try another one. Have you ever watched a child try to blend phonemes together over and over in a word that just can’t be sounded out? It’s painful! I wonder if they think they are somehow deficient when it doesn’t work like it so magically did in your lesson. I understand what they’re going through and I hope I’m giving them a l

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Figure 2–5 Using Multiple Decoding Strategies

whole-life skill when I remind them of the charts full of strategies that might yield better results. I want my students to become flexible and nimble in their choice of strategies. With an enlarged text, demonstrate trying an inappropriate strategy, getting almost to the point of frustration, and then remembering your classroom chart of strategies. You might even try one or two before you settle on the one that works: “The truck w . . . w . . . a . . . wah . . .wass . . .” Umm, that’s not working. Let me look at the picture. I see the truck right there at the corner. I still don’t know this word, though. Oh, maybe it’s on the word wall. OK, I have to look by the W. There it is! Was! “The truck was stuck at the corner.” Did you see how I tried to blend the sounds and that didn’t help, so I tried to look at the picture and that didn’t help either? So I had to try a third strategy? Sometimes that’s how it goes in reading. I wanted to give up! I’m glad I didn’t, though. It will do children good to know they are not alone in this. Readers make sure their reading makes sense, sounds right, and looks right. Sometimes I read with students who will make an obvious miscue and keep right on reading. When I ask them about it, they are often aware of the error, but not sure what to do. remind children of what you taught them about l


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Figure 2–6 Self-Monitoring

listening to themselves as carefully as they listen to you when you read aloud to them. Let them know that all readers make mistakes when they read. Their job is not to read without error, but to notice and try to fix the error using every tool at their fingertips to do so. If they can do this consciously now, it has a good chance of becoming a habit later.

Reflecting and Celebrating By the end of this unit, you have probably completed a round of fairly comprehensive assessments, so you know what books children should be reading. Your students have probably also developed a pretty good sense of which books are just right for them. This is a good time to ask them to reflect on their use of print strategies. I like to have everyone come together in a circle to share something that has made them proud in this unit. It could be a new strategy they learned, a book they are now able to read, or any other way they feel more grown up as readers than they did at the start of the unit. Their responses will tell you how confident they are feeling as well as what concepts may need a little more attention in coming units.

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■ Checking In The next unit focuses on comprehension, but the need to reinforce print work does not go away just because the calendar changes. Take a minute to use this assessment information to help you plan conferences and small-group instruction to support and reinforce children’s use of print strategies in the units to come.

■ Professional Resources Nichols, Maria. 2006. Comprehension Through Conversation: The Power of Purposeful Talk in the Reading Workshop. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.


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Help one another learn or remember to use strategies to decode (rather than just telling one another words) Share their learning processes and make helpful or encouraging questions or comments during share sessions

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Supporting the Unit Read-Aloud Behaviors If your students are able to listen to one another, they are ready to have their conversations sound a little more like conversations. My dream is always to move away from a teacher-led, hand-raising model of whole-class conversation. In order to get to a place where children can participate in a conversation like this, we have to teach some conversational behaviors. For more extensive information, I highly recommend Comprehension Through Conversation by Maria Nichols. In the meantime, here are some basic behaviors to foster in your classroom: • Children can add onto one another’s ideas, rather than introducing lots of new ideas. • It is OK to disagree, and there are respectful ways to do this. • Children can give reasons for thinking the way they do (using the word because is helpful). In preparation for the next unit, it is helpful to introduce some dramatization work through the read-aloud in this unit. • At key points in some of your books, ask the class to “become” the character. (“Everybody be Peter right now. What do you think his face and body look like? OK, now be Peter’s mom. She looks different, doesn’t she?”)

Shared Reading: Practicing Print Strategies Shared reading in this unit is a great place to try some print strategies in a highly supported way. Of course, your joyful songs and poems will continue. Your focus on print work won’t take over completely but may replace a couple of your shared reading sessions. You may also use some big books or enlarged texts you have already read joyfully, and use just a page or two of those in a reading lesson. • Continue to choose songs or poems that are fun to sing together. • Choose some big books that are similar to the books most of your children are reading this month, or make a color copy of a small book, or use a document camera to enlarge a book. The books should be at the same level as most of the students, so you can use it to teach strategies appropriate for that level. 50

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• For some strategies (such as using the picture and first sound together to figure out an unknown word), you will need to use a book children have never seen before. Other strategies (such as looking at chunks you know or finger framing) can be demonstrated and practiced in books with which children are familiar.

Partnership Routines As soon as your initial assessments are done, you will be able to set up longterm partnerships. I prefer to have partners reading at or close to the same level, though this may not always be feasible. It’s preferable to be able to have students swap books and work on the same strategies together. • Partners should remind one another of strategies, not just tell what the word is. • Partners can echo read (you read a page, I read the same page after you, and so on). • Partners can take turns reading whole books. • Partners can take turns saying which page they thought was most important. • Partners can tell one another what they think the whole book is about.

Working with More Advanced Readers If you happen to have children in your class reading significantly higher levels than the majority, you might need to pull those more advanced students aside for some separate teaching. One danger with early decoders is that they do not get comprehension instruction that matches the books they are reading. Consult your second grade colleagues for some ideas on teaching into early chapter books. In the meantime, here are some thoughts you can share with your students: • Your job at the end of every chapter is to read the chapter title, if there is one, and think about what important things happened in that chapter. If you are putting down the book until later, jot down your thinking on a sticky note and leave it at the end of the chapter. • Your job before you start reading a new chapter is to read your sticky note and remind yourself of what was just happening when you put the book down.


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at

• Try reading dialogue with appropriate expression. • When there’s a part that doesn’t make sense, put a sticky note there to talk about it later with your partner or teacher. • Pay attention to the main characters, what they want, and how they are changing.

Working with Readers Who Are Having a Hard Time You may have readers in your class who are struggling for a number of reasons—they may need more background work, they may not speak English, they may not see what’s on the paper the same way most of us do. Each of these reasons for having difficulty merits further exploration and may require additional support. You can set up children with materials that are more suited to what they can do with success. • Have small-group shared reading sessions (this may take the place of a guided reading group for a while, if you use a guided reading model), using popular books from kindergarten or from earlier in the year. Invite children to help you point to the words. • Find books that were favorites in kindergarten so children can engage with safe and familiar texts. Don’t fall into the common trap of giving the lowest readers the most boring materials. I know they need simple texts sometimes, as I mention below, but they also need to engage with rich storybook language. • get lots of different ABC charts, placemats, strips, or books. Sometimes children need a little more time getting to know the letters, their names, and the sounds they make.

Purchase this book now heinemann.com

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Stephanie

Help first graders become


Kathy Collins

readers First Grade

Readers

Units of Study to Help Children See Themselves as Meaning Makers

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First graders are amazing. Watching them become readers is one of the great gifts of this job. This year, with your help, they will put together the pieces of decoding, thinking, feeling, understanding, and responding to perform the feat of reading. I hope these units provide the

”

rigorous curriculum you want, and the fun you need to guide your students toward a lifelong love of reading.

—Stephanie Parsons

Visit www.heinemann.com to read Sample Chapters of our books and order online. To order by phone call 800.225.5800 or fax 877.231.6980. Dedicated to Teachers

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Stephanie


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make the road to independence shorter for your students. Reading achievement improves not with increased testing but with increased reading of relatively easy to decode, interesting, self-selected texts. First Grade Readers is a year of classroom-ready, developmentally appropriate instruction for reading workshop. Seven units are filled with the language and lessons of a master teacher and include detailed support structures for:

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just that; words that invite students to read, growing sophistication, and opportunities for

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and then to outgrow their thinking.

—Kathy Collins Author of Growing Readers

Stephanie Parsons knows the big goals we have for first graders—and the joy and pride we feel when they reach them. As a literacy consultant, a former staff developer with Lucy Calkins and the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, and a former teacher, she loves working alongside teachers and children to discover new ways of teaching. She hopes you will feel the power of transformative teaching along with your students.

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