Spelling and Sight Words

     Tonight's discussion on the importance of teaching spelling and how to go about that task in a way that will be most effective for each individual student had me thinking about two components of my classroom.
     First:  My class uses Fundations to teach spelling through phonics.  I have very mixed feelings about this program.  I understand the thought behind teaching students spelling through sounds, tapping out words, and a variety of activities to supplement that learning.  Still, I feel that Fundations is not as engaging as a program like Words Their Way could be for my students.  I work with a group of eight students who are not as strong at spelling as the remainder of the class.  I find that the loose structure of the program and reliance on white boards and magnets works for a certain kind of student, but not very well for my students.  The students view these learning tools as both a treat and a distraction.  Give a first-grader a white board and the immediate response is "I need to draw a heart right now."  I just don't feel that they are getting all that they should out of the program.  For students who are so interested in kinesthetic learning, Words Their Way seems like a better solution.  In the future, I'll try to supplement Fundations with activities from Words Their Way.
     Second:  I'm currently assessing my students' sight word knowledge with Dolch lists.  After identifying the words that students do not know on the spot, I'm making flashcards for them to work on at home for a week.  After a week of practice outside of the classroom, I will go through the words with them to see if they now know the words.  If they do, they get another ten words to learn, and continue with this until they have made it through the third grade list.  Rather than recall the spelling of these words, students just need to recognize them, but I like the idea of this kind of spelling assessment rather than a traditional test.  Students learn "just right" words at their "just right" pace and are not put through the stress of a traditional spelling list/test situation.  Something to think about...

Writing Workshop

     Last week's discussion on writing conferences was perfectly timed for me--our class started writer's workshop and conferences the very next day.  We had been conferencing with the kids the past two weeks or so in reader's workshop, and although they seemed very willing to work with us, their enthusiasm in reader's workshop was nothing compared to writer's workshop.  My class of twenty-three first graders worked on writing in complete silence for thirty straight minutes on day one--amazing!  My students were instructed to write about something that has happened to them--a vacation, a special event, a funny moment.  After receiving instructions, the kids went straight to work.  I had never seen the work so diligently before.  It was clear that they are so excited to become "authors."  They drew pictures, wrote sentences, and eagerly raised their hands to show off their creations.  We had writer's workshop three times after that last week, and it's becoming my favorite subject of the day.
     The conferencing with the kids was pretty straightforward this week.  The two main teaching points we addressed were making your pictures match your story and to tell the full story, or, more simply, add details.  A lot of the conferencing consisted of us asking them "And then what happened???" or more pointed questions like "How did that make you feel? Excited? Nervous?"  Rather than being shy about answering, the kids were very eager to fill the gaps in their writing with extra details.  They loved sharing their stories on paper.  On my morning message one day last week, I asked the students to check off which subject had been their favorite the day before, and fifteen out of twenty-three students chose writer's workshop.  I'm so glad that writer's workshop has been such a hit in our classroom, and I can't wait to see the results of my students' efforts as they improve over the course of the year.

Read Alouds

        I found that the reading on working to synthesize the text in read alouds validated the methods I have been using in the classroom, but also provided me with more ways to have the students really think about the text that they are reading.  My students are only in first grade, so they are still working on learning to read text more than meaning, but read alouds are a good way for them to not have to worry about deciphering the words and just think about the story.  Usually when we do read alouds, I read the book to the students and at the end we discuss it, typically with some guiding questions from me so they will get the point of the reading more easily.  Still, they have managed to come up with some very thoughtful responses to books that we have read all on their own.  As we work through the year, I'm sure they will get better and better and figuring out the point of a book without so much help from their teachers.
     One way that I feel I have somewhat followed Sunday and Cate's methods is through our "Me Book" unit.  The kids are writing very simple books about themselves in which they complete sentence starters like "When I grow up I want to be a..." or "My favorite food is..."  As a way to introduce this project, my lead teacher and I read them books about self-confidence and learning to like you.  This included Todd Parr's It's Okay to Be Different.  In our discussion about the book, one student said that "if we were all the same, life would be boring."  The students learned from the book that differences are good to have.  One page of the students' Me Books is a drawing of the students' families.  Our classroom has a wide variety of family units (students with two dads, students with divorced parents, students with just a mom), so it was really important to make all students feel comfortable drawing their families.  We read a book called Families Are Different, and after reading, we discussed that if it's okay to be different (like we learned from Todd Parr's book), and families are different, then it's okay for families to be different.  In this way, the students were able to synthesize the information they received from multiple read alouds in order to understand the main points of the readings.
     I really liked Sunday and Cate's analogy of baking a cake and reading a book.  Later in the year when my students' reading skills are more advanced, I would love to try this method with them, including the drawing of the cake ingredients and matching those up with facts from the text.  This might be good to incorporate into science lessons or social studies lessons so that we can sneak those topics into reading lessons.