By Dr. Elaine Roberts University of West Georgia

1. Experiencing the Joy of Students at the Benchmark School: Focusing on Phonics and Decoding with Comprehension across the Content Areas By Dr. Elaine Roberts University of West Georgia

2. What I discovered • Honoring children’s differences through differentiated literacy instruction across the content areas using a systematic instructional approach • Implementing explicit instruction with modeling and scaffolding using a balanced approach to teaching and learning • Using academic and social goals for successful learning • Using metacognition to become strategic decoders and spellers • Teaching the 4 ways to read and spell words - There are several different paths to remediation of children with reading disabilities • Teaching students to understand that reading must make sense! • “Linking mastery of decoding and children’s affective. Motivational, and volitional characteristics.” Irene Gaskins, creator and developer of the Benchmark School in Media, PA

3. Honoring students’ Differences • It is essential to understand the individual literacy needs of students through assessment, including observations of social interactions and attitudes • Attention to student characteristics in the choice of instructional activities due to poor attention, lack of flexibility, impulsivity, or poor self-regulation (Gaskins) • To cope with these characteristics teachers build into their decoding intervention a brisk pace and frequent change of activities, individual responses in writing , pointing, chanting, and manipulating materials, and metacognition for student self talk about learning (Gaskins, 2005) • Simultaneously teaching struggling readers to read words and construct meaning increases their chances of becoming confident readers. • The earlier literacy intervention occurs students are likely to be reading on level by third grade • Small group instruction and discussions about learning increase student literacy learning • Professor development and mentoring of teachers helps them understand effective teaching of reading across the content areas

4. Using Academic and Social Goals • A combination of factors effect literacy learning: student personal characteristics, reading level and phase of decoding and spelling development-retrieval of word identities, phonological processing, cognitive behavior, speed of processing, use of effective decoding and comprehension strategies, and motivation • Necessary piece - Classroom goal setting for all and individual students for academic and social goals Examples written on cards on students’ desks: 1st grade Student goal-”My goal is to participate A LOT by raising my hand.” 3rd grade Student goal-” My goal is to stop tapping my feet and leaning back in my chair.” There are also cards for reward stickers and points.

5. Graphing Learning in Notebooks for Self-Monitoring of Learning • Graphs for spelling words and dates • Graphs for oral reading rate and dates • Graphs for using six traits of writing and dates • *Students used graphic organizer frames in notebooks for use during reader response with dates

6. Using metacognition to become strategic decoders and spellers • Strategy Charts in classrooms: How do we use this strategy? What did the character, do, think and or feel?” Connect to text You infer the character trait –ex. persistent, etc. Why is the strategy important? When can you use it? What strategy are we learning? To identify character traits

7. Teaching the 4 ways to read and spell words - there are several different paths to remediation of children with reading disabilities • Ehri suggests that students learn to read words in 4 ways: • Context • Letter-sound decoding • Analogy strategy with key words • Sight-I already know the word Cunningham, 2000 found successful readers use ALL 4 ways sometimes in combination.

8. 1. Default contextual decoding • When students have a good sight vocabulary and background knowledge they can read most of the words and use the sense of text and pictures to guess the occasional unknown words. However, if students lack background knowledge about a topic the use of contextual decoding often fails. • The knowledge about additional use of the analogy with a key word strategy and other strategies is essential. Depending only on context clues is not enough!

9. 2nd Way to Read and Spell Words: Letter-sound decoding • Letter-Sound Decoding is based on matching sounds to the individual letters or letter patterns in an unknown word– word analysis. • Ex. For the word heat students learn to match sounds to letters or patterns and then blend the sounds for the letter h, the vowel pattern/vowel digraph ea, and then the letter t. Students are taught to use their fingers to represent each letter-sound and point to the word as they decode it. • Students need to learn to be flexible and try another approach if they get stuck such as the analogy with a key word strategy

10. 3rd Essential Way to Decode Words: The Analogy with key words strategy • (Refer to my class PowerPoint about the steps of the analogy with keywords strategy under phonics on CourseDen) • The analogy strategy with key words - Students learn to chunk words into onsets and rimes (rimes are called spelling patterns) to read unknown words. Students use a known word with the same spelling pattern (the vowel and letters that follow it in a syllable) and use the word parts they know to decode or spell an unknown word. For example, when decoding or spelling the word slate, the onset of the word is sl is known from the keyword slump and the spelling pattern ate is known from the keyword date. Note the consistency is important- For example, spelling patterns are underlined in words and prefixes and suffixes are circled.

11. Benchmark School Lesson Example for the analogy strategy • Think Pair Share about using decoding strategies-2 &3 grade (also used in K-1 grades) Teacher: “Write about the strategies you use to decode words.” Students write their answers. Teacher: “Talk with your partner about how you decode words.” Students discuss what they know. Teacher: “Share your answers with the class.” Student 1: “Letters and sounds and patterns”(letter sound matching) Student 2: “Key words with spelling patterns (analogy strategy) Student 3: “Be flexible-try more than 1 way.” Student 4: “Sometimes I just know it.”

12. Benchmark lesson continued • Teacher Mini lesson: Wrote the sentence on the board and read it to the class as a think aloud: Due to the rain and snow the guns would not fire, the colonists used bayonets. (The teacher acted like bayonets was a tricky word she could not decode) • The teacher used a think aloud to decode the unknown word bayonets in the sentence. She said “I see ay and will use the key word day for that chunk in the word. If I know day, then I know bay.” What key word can I use to decode the next chunk of the word? Key words used by students were go and on. They used let for et. The teacher and students discussed how to get key words stuck in their heads. They used the word wall to find other key words with the same vowel sounds or special features like affixes. They used the Talk to Yourself Chart (refer to my class powerpoint). Students made word discoveries as they noticed the similarities and changes in words.

13. Benchmark decoding and spelling Lesson Continued • Next, students read a History passage using finger pointing for each word during small groups. They used “showing off” to decode 4th and 5th grade words using the white board for strategies used. • Initially, they discussed their “reading conscience “ to discuss what will they learn in the reading group. Then they practiced Echo reading, next they read together, then they did individual oral reading-students selected sentences to read from the History passage. They discussed reading comprehension strategies, discussed the story and asked each other questions. Finally, they used spelling strategies: “I know it or just don’t know it.” They stretched the words through sound-letter matching=word analysis such as baby, army, babies, armies. They noted spelling patterns and the suffixes and focused on root words to discuss special features during think alouds.

14. Benchmark lesson continued • Writing groups - Students practiced their goal for writing and for socially interacting in groups: Teacher: “Do you have a plan in your head.” • Writing notebooks were passed out and some left the room to write with a teacher aid. The students talked about using new vocabulary for their paragraphs for History. The teacher did a mini lesson for paragraph writing with a focus on the audience trait for writing. • They individually whisper read their paragraphs 2-3 times and then read it aloud for feedback. Then they checked spelling and stretched words out to fix them.

15. Benchmark School lesson continued Spelling Strategy Chart: I just know it I tried more than 1 way I used patterns I used my visual memory Decoding Strategy Chart: I just know it I used sound-letter matching I used patterns I used the sentence

16. Benchmark lesson continued • 7 Steps to Good Spelling: • Analyze the word and check mark the vowels • Copy, chant and check and underline patterns using word cards • Write chunks • Stretch and point using fingers • Write known words like the word (key words with same spelling pattern on the word wall, special features like affixes, and discover a word you see in the word). Teacher and students finished the lesson discussing new goals and had students graph their learning for self monitoring of progress (handout)

17. Benchmark School Comprehension Strategy Chart Example • Active Readers: Survey Predict Get a purpose for reading When Reading Doe Not Make Sense We Take Action by: Rereading Reading on to get more information Asking questions Every class had a chart saying: Reading Must Make Sense

18. Analogy Strategy and Spelling • Used the same analogy strategy activities used for decoding for spelling • Use the activity Looking Through Words (Gaskins et al.-handout) • Another activity:

19. Teach students to understand that “Reading must make sense” This phrase was on posters in every room at the Benchmark School!

20. Word Detectives! • “Linking mastery of decoding and children’s affective, motivational, and volitional characteristics.” Irene Gaskins, creator and developer of the Benchmark School in Media, PA • K-1 class: Student decoded the word Shen/an/ ig/ ans with key words her can pig can plus s The students loved word discoveries and did Looking Through Words (handout) that they called university professor words-multisyllabic words!

21. Upper Grades • Focus on goals and using metacognition about learning • Review decoding and spelling strategies and vocabulary development • Special feature words - Multisyllabic words and their features such as roots and affixes (prefixes and suffixes) • Use team teaching across content areas and integrate literacy strategies • After school guided study groups for homework and book clubs plus teacher websites • Use notebooks with weekend plans for studying-students plug in times and homework based on sports, etc. • Use key word charts for new students-extra attention with mentors • Use engagement and conversations about how and why to study, what it means to be a learner, think alouds stressed during learning, create independence not dependence, multiple grades in a classroom, small groups for engagement that are flexible, challenge them to use literacy strategies for word recognition, fluency and comprehension

22. Mrs. J’s class at Benchmark School-upper grades • Mrs. J is an awesome teacher…motivating! • Reading Must Make Sense Chart and a Chart for good reader strategies: Picturing Predicting Explaining Connections • The Science and Spelling lesson started with the Think Pair Share strategy. It began with students writing about what a “spelling conscience” means, pairing with a partner ,and sharing their ideas with the class at a brisk pace. Next, students underlined any words they thought they spelled incorrectly and then used individual keyword charts to fix the words. They recorded the number of words corrected on their ”spelling conscience” graphs with the date to note their spelling progress.

23. Mrs. J’s lesson continued Note from Mom Hi! Did you get all your chores….. • Smart Board - Mrs. J. displayed the note above on the smart board. The bottom of the board was available for her to write on. She asked the students for possible word choices for the blank on the note. One student said the word was accomplished. She asked the students how to decode the word. They told her to break the word into syllables and look for key words with the same spelling patterns and other special features. This is what happened: • Ac/ com/ plish/ ed mac /Tom/ wish/ plus special feature suffix ed. • They placed a check mark above each vowel and used key words with the same spelling patterns to decode the word chunks-this is essential knowledge. They said, “If I know mac, I know ac. If I know Tom, I know com. If I know wish, I know plish.” This is the analogy strategy with key words. They discussed the meaning of the word in context. Then the students did a 3 minute write about what they learned about decoding and shared their thinking from their head (metacognition).

24. Mrs. J’s lesson continued • Smart board- She discussed that they would be learning about Mangrove Trees and asked questions to discover their background knowledge. She then showed them different pictures of Mangrove Trees and how they grew on the Smart Board. • Next, she read a text about Mangrove Trees using her finger to point to every word. She used a think aloud to share thoughts about the growth, etc. of the trees. Students all followed along on their copy of the text and pointed at each word with their fingers. • Then she had them turn over their texts. Students made statements and asked the teacher and peers high level questions about the text (evidently she had taught them how to ask high level questions of her and each other such as, explain…, what do you think?, etc.). The teacher did not have to ask any questions!! • Then students wrote notes in phrases in their Science notebooks about what was read using the comprehension frame on the next PP slide. During their writing the teacher encouraged them to use the new vocabulary in the passage. She did not write the vocabulary on the board but said the new vocabulary words. She said “try to use tropical, adaptations, germinate, etc.”

25. Mrs. J’s Comprehension Frames • Comprehension Frame using phrases: 3Big ideas:_____________________ Details:_____________________________ • After writing their frame notes for 3 minutes, the teacher had the students write paragraphs from their notes on every other line for 3 additional minutes. Then she distributed green highlighters so students could underline the words they think they misspelled for a 2 minute check. They were able to look at the passage to check their spelling and fix it. They discussed what they wrote and fixed with their partners for 3 minutes. Then they graphed their words learned on a spelling conscience graph and dated it to monitor their spelling progress. (They also had word identification graphs for phonics and vocabulary as well as words read per minute with comprehension graphs). • At the end of the lesson they discussed their literacy strategies used during the lesson and checked them off their personal strategy charts at the back of their notebooks-they were so proud of their progress!!!

26. Great Teaching Makes Happy Teachers, Caretakers and Students