Hello to the Busy Bee Kindergarten Community!
I will start each post with a link to my summer schedule so you can easily see what’s been posted, what’s coming up, and where we are in that sequence.
Also, I will be offering some of the posts—like this one—in an audio format. So, if you prefer to listen rather than read, please click on the arrow at the top of the post.
Teaching is often divided into “what” needs to be taught and then “how” we’re going to teach it. Standards and curriculum often define the “what” for us. School goals, your own personal goals or insight as a teacher, or current student needs might place more emphasis on certain components of the “what.” But, mostly the “what” remains consistent from school district to school district, school to school, classroom to classroom, and student to student.
The “how” is more ambiguous and thus more flexible and creative and typically why we were drawn to this profession in the first place (in my opinion). The “how” is for future blogs. This blog is about the “what.”
When it comes to reading, two models help clarify the “what” of teaching reading. The Simple View of Reading model shows, quite simply, that decoding x language comprehension = reading comprehension (see image below). The other model—Hollis Scarborough’s reading rope (from 2001)—clarifies the “what” in a bit more detail.
The reading rope consists of lower and upper strands. The lower strands—phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition of familiar words—all fall under word recognition. When properly addressed, readers should become more accurate, fluent, and increasingly automatic with words. The upper strands—background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge—address language (and thus reading) comprehension. The upper comprehension strands reinforce one another and then weave together with the lower word-recognition strands to produce a skilled reader. This does not happen overnight; it requires intentional instruction and practice for years.
It’s important to understand each of the strands on the reading rope and ensure that you have structures in place to address each of them. It is important to know about and understand the reading rope and to revisit it at least yearly. I am, once again, taking a good hard look at the rope and thinking about how and when I am addressing each of the strands. I recommend that you do this, too. Perhaps my thinking and analysis will give you ideas on how to analyze your own practices.
Starting at the top with the language comprehension strands:
Background Knowledge
I feel I do a good job of addressing this with weekly themes, at least two read alouds each day, weekly vocabulary, and allowing time for conversation and explanations as topics and questions arise. Of course, I am always looking for additional ways to build up more background knowledge in my students.
Note: Weekly themes, read alouds, and vocabulary will all be topics of future posts this summer.
Vocabulary
My teammate and I plan the school year around weekly themes. Weekly themes are effective in developing schema and vocabulary. Last summer we made a conscious effort to incorporate more nonfiction titles into our read alouds each week. From these, we explicitly teach vocabulary. We adhere to two main tenets of developing vocabulary—defining words in language that kindergartners understand and then providing many opportunities to review and use the words in authentic conversation.
Note: Weekly themes, read alouds, and vocabulary will all be topics of future posts this summer.
Language Structures
Language structures such as syntax and semantics are addressed through regular opportunities to talk, listen, read, and write. Some students come to us with limited language skills. “Reading” a book with repeated language supports their language development. For those students who are barely speaking, spitting out sentences with repeating language is a huge start in making gains in this area. Hearing authentic texts (i.e., read alouds) twice a day reinforces proper syntax and semantics. Daily opportunities to write encourage students to formulate sentences that make sense. It is also helpful to occasionally use sentence stems. I am making a concerted effort, too, to establish routines that allow more student talk. For example, if I ask a question, I sometimes have students turn and talk about it so everyone is engaged in the conversation. Also when questioning, if I call on one student to answer, I then ask the question again and have all students answer. I feel I have this strand covered, but it’s good to be aware of it and try to sneak in as many opportunities to work on syntax and semantics as possible.
Note: Examining your daily schedule will help determine when these opportunities are available throughout the day. We’ll look at daily schedules in a post later this summer.
Verbal Reasoning
At this young age, exposure to inferences and metaphors often happens during conversation and discussion. Oh, if we only had more time to just talk, talk, talk with our students. Still, as long as we are reading quality read aloud books on a regular basis and stopping often to discuss what we are seeing and hearing in books, kindergartners will have opportunities to make inferences, hear metaphors, and begin to understand all the nuances of language and their effects on our understanding and feelings.
Literacy Knowledge
It is important that students have many opportunities to interact with letters, sounds, words, various texts, and books. I’m sure we all feel that we are doing this. Equally important, however, is that we explicitly teach the concepts of print and other book concepts and terminology that arise as we expose our students to literature. In many ways, this strand overlaps with the vocabulary strand as we use terminology like first, last, space, beginning, middle, end, fiction, nonfiction, author, illustrator, song, poem, chant, rhyme, character, setting, problem, solution, events, etc.
And now moving on to the word recognition strands:
Phonological Awareness
Though I’ve only been aware of the terms phonological awareness and phonemic awareness for about eight years, I feel I’ve been teaching them all along. Phonological awareness is interesting to me and I’ve trained students at various grade levels to listen for and playfully manipulate word parts. I’ve been teaching kindergarten students to write for nearly 20 years and there is no doing this without incorporating phonemic awareness, whether you put a name to it or not. Students have been listening to, segmenting, and counting sounds all along in order to figure out which letters to write on their paper. For the past six years, phonemic awareness has been an important part of my daily whole group phonics routine. Of course, now that we know how crucial phonemic awareness is for learning to read, I am much more intentional with it. This past school year I dropped whole group Heggerty from my daily schedule and relied heavily upon the ideas in David Kilpatrick’s Equipped for Reading Success (2016) to implement individualized phonological awareness training during small group instruction, including omitting and substituting sounds. Now, with my most recent learning from the last post I did for you—namely, the summary of Adapting Classroom Practice to Reflect Recent Reading Research—I will change my routines this coming school year to incorporate more phonics into my phonemic awareness training (this year I did not bring phonics into phonemic awareness training time unless students were really struggling with what it was I was asking them to do). In addition, I am constantly reminding myself—and incorporating the technique of—backing it up to phonemic awareness when students are struggling with phonics.
Note: We will cover so much in this area in future posts, not just with summer planning but with weekly lesson plans, whole group learning activities, and small group instruction throughout the entire next school year.
Decoding
This strand could also be called phonics. First, we must systematically and explicitly teach phonics. I feel I’ve got this covered as I have been doing this for years; have my own scope and sequence that goes above and beyond most kindergarten requirements; and have a daily prevention/intervention time when I work with students who come in with no letter name knowledge and are not picking up on letters and sounds as quickly as the other students. My kindergartners read and write daily, wherein they get to apply what they are learning. My students typically show good growth on mid-year and end-of-year DIBELS testing, with 100% at or above level this past spring. This past year, with my learning about the science of reading, I taught with far fewer leveled texts and more decodable/readable texts and passages, most of the latter created by me. Still, I look forward to incorporating more of the science in the upcoming school year and doing an even better job.
Note: There will be many posts about phonics instruction and application during reading and writing. The latter (application) is, to me, sometimes the missing piece in kindergarten classrooms, especially when it comes to writing. We will also talk about decodable texts and ways in which you are going (or not going) to use the leveled books you most likely have in your classroom.
Sight Recognition
Though this strand is called sight recognition, be cognizant of the fact that students do not learn words by sight. A sight vocabulary is the group of words that students recognize instantly, but realize that they are processing all of the letters they see and not looking at the word as one whole unit. The brain research that confirms that is presented here or summarized for you in this post. My regrouping of about 300 high frequency words into lists based on spelling patterns worked fabulously this past school year as did the work we did with heart words (irregular high frequency words). And I know my understanding of how students commit words to memory will influence my teaching all along the way.
Note: Stay tuned for future blog posts about how students commit words to memory (orthographic mapping), how to teach heart words, and how to move students through reading and spelling all the different phonics patterns using the 34 word lists.
By looking closely at each of the strands of Scarborough’s reading rope and thinking about what you have in place in your classroom and what you would like to change based on your ever-growing knowledge about the science of reading, you can start to formulate some goals for yourself, broad now and more specific as we get closer to the new school year starting. These were my goals for this past school year (2021-2022):
Instead of teaching common words in order of their frequency for appearing in the English language, I will group them and teach them based on spelling patterns. This goal comes with the realization that a large percentage of the high frequency words follow phonics rules and are fairly easy to decode once those phonics have been taught.
Irregularly spelled high frequency words should not be grouped with those that follow phonics rules. I will separate them out and call them heart words and teach them more explicitly and systematically.
I will have students work on blending sounds and decoding words earlier in the school year than I typically do. I will then use more decodable/readable text to reinforce the skills. I do not, however, plan on abandoning all leveled books. I still see value in them and will learn how to incorporate them, in a new way and for a new purpose, into my instruction.
I will be more intentional with vocabulary development. I will find several words each week that are associated with our weekly themes and our read alouds and explicitly teach them and give the students opportunities to use them on a regular basis.
I want to give students more opportunities for intentional talking and will find ways to fit this into each school day.
Hearing about my five big goals from last year, which, by the way, all got implemented and proved very effective, might help you think now (this summer) about some of the big changes you want to make in your classroom based on Scarborough’s reading rope and your increasing knowledge of the science of reading.
THANK YOU for giving Busy Bee Kindergarten your inbox space, time, and attention. Let me know if you have any comments or questions!
Randee
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