Hallelujah!

I am beginning to update my major assessments that I am using to measure progress. One is the Literacy First Phonics Assessment test. BD has made so much progress! He only has 6 more sections to master! They are *beginning consonant digraphs *vowel dipthongs *closed multisyllabic words
*open multisyllabic words * List B and C

There are a total of 22 sections. BD started the year not knowing his long or short vowel sounds and of course struggled reading CVC words!

FP has made more progress than the Lit First test shows. He would have more of the test mastered if it wasn't for those nonsence words. He just can't seem to apply the skills when the words don't make sense. My old reading coach works at Rusell Cave where they have a very high Spansih speaking population and she said they adapted the test and took out the nonsense words. I know it is important for them to be able to apply the phonics skills but ESL students struggle to understand REAL words, let along NONSENSE words.

EP just hasn't made much progress. The ESL teacher and I are discussing our next steps for her.  :(

I feel safe to say that BP and FP have benefited from multisensory learning. In an article I read for this research, Learning Styles vs. Multiple Intelligences (MI) Two Concepts for Enhancing Learning and Teaching, Prashnig (2005) explains that learning styles (LS) “can be defined as the way human beings prefer to concentrate on, store and remember new and/or difficult information” and MI as “a theoretical frame work for defining/ understanding/assessing/developing people’s different intelligence factors”. (p. 8) LS is the input of information being taught and MI is the output of what was learned. When these two concepts are understood and used correctly in the classroom, Prashnig (2005)  says, “teaching strategies become more useful and effective and learning becomes more enjoyable for students who struggle in traditional classrooms”. (p. 9)

Sight Word Check

It's Friday, so this morning I updated the students' sight word lists. EP didn't seem very excited about reading through the list. She complained and said, "That's a lot of words." She was suppoed to start List B, but didn't really want to. When she realized another student in the group started the list she asked how they did (because she is nosy like that) and said she would try List B. I put the list in front of her and she said,"These look hard!" She read 53/100 of the list.

While updating BD's list, he said, "I don't know this word. It's not in my Wikki Stix list." I explained because they are new words because he was starting List B. He was excited. He read 64/100 words from the list correctly.

While updating the lists, I realized I needed to have the students continue to practice the words they've mastered because they are missing some words they knew the week before. I will make a couple of sets of List A and List B sight words tot he students to practice when they finish work.

Letter Tiles Take 2

After reflecting on my "letter tiles gone bad" lesson, I only put the letter tiles they needed to make their spelling words in their individual baggy. Today EP is absent. The group was so much more focused. EP tends to talk A LOT and get the whole group off track. Students got out their tiles and made sure they were all facing up. We practiced making spelling words again (ui,ue, and ew word families). This time they did not have the spelling list to look off of. I said a word aloud and the students needed to make the word.  BD was the first to make the words first. About half of the time he was correct. HS was consistantly one of the last ones to make words and he was looking around at what the other students were doing. All of the students made "glue" and "blue" correctly. "Fruit" and "suit" were also spelled correctly by almost the whole group. "Clue", "threw" and "knew" were the most missed.

• Clue was spelled as "klue", "clui", and "cluew".

This let me know that it would be helpful to review the different sounds "c" makes. It also shows that on Wednesday, the students have not practiced enough to remember which vowel pair goes with each word. Maybe 3 word families was too much,

• Threw was spelled as "thui", "thrue", "thru", and "thrui".

The student that spelled "thui" often leaved out important sounds when spelling words. They have been working with "th" sounds with the ESL teacher so I was glad to see that they all made the digrah correctly.

• Knew was spelled "new".

This would be a good time to go over multiple meaning words again with this group. (threw also). I also need to expose them to more silent "k" words.

At the end of the lesson, all the students said they had a lot of fun. I was hoping spelling test scores would have been better than they were. the scores ranged from 2/10 to 6/10. They usually have higher scores, but the words were more difficult this week.