My name is Abby Ross and I am a full-time Title 1 Reading Teacher at West Elementary. I work daily with 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students on improving their reading skills. I graduated from Kansas State University in 2008 and taught 4th grade in Topeka during the 2008 – 2009 school year before returning to my hometown of Wamego
My name is Phyllis Herzog and I teach Title 1 Reading at West Elementary during the afternoon. Mornings are spent at Wamego Middle School teaching the Corrective Reading program. I received my degree from Kansas Wesleyan University in Salina and my Master’s in Education from Kansas State University. Before coming to Wamego, I taught 2nd grade at the Natoma/Paradise/Waldo school district, but spent most of my career teaching 3rd , 5th & 6th grades in the Quinter school district. I began teaching in USD 320 in the 2007-08 school year. I have taught in Kansas schools for more than 25 years.
A Typical Day
During a typical day, a child receiving Title I services will be removed from their regular classroom during seat work time for twenty minutes to receive additional help with reading skills. During each lesson in Title I, the student will receive instruction on becoming fluent readers, understanding the text being read, and figuring out unknown words. The skills taught and reinforced daily in Title I support what the students are learning about reading in their regular classrooms.
Phonics for Reading
Program Explanation:
Students were tested for various MTSS (Multi-Tiered System of Supports) Interventions in May of last year, as well as the beginning of this year. The decision to test was based on a variety of factors, such as MAP scores, Jerry John’s Individual Reading Inventories, Guided Reading levels, and EasyCBM fluency tests. Information from these tests were used to determine further Intervention testing. The Phonics for Reading placement test measures each student’s decoding accuracy.
Phonics for Reading is a supplementary phonics program designed to teach phonemic decoding to students who have not yet mastered those skills. Phonics for Reading includes a clear scope and sequence that enables teachers to see the development of each lesson’s objective. The program consists of three sequential levels. Within each level, students are taught to access pronunciation of phonetically regular, one-syllable, and multi-syllable words by careful examination of a word’s internal structure using letter-sound correspondences, word endings, and units such as prefixes and suffixes. The First Level introduces students to the short vowels, double consonants, digraphs, and consonant blends. The focus of the Second Level is on long vowels, vowel combinations, CVCe words, common endings, and r-controlled vowels. The Third Level continues to develop and expand the previous level with letter and vowel combinations, prefixes and suffixes, and the variant pronunciations of vowel combinations and of c and g.
The first part of a Phonics for Reading lesson involves instruction in word recognition. To begin a lesson, a word is introduced initially and either a single letter or letter combination is highlighted. Students practice the sound in isolation and then participate in a discrimination activity with the target sound and other previously learned sounds. This is followed by oral blending or segmenting of words, which contain the target sound and the previously learned sounds. Next, students practice reading 15 new words that contain the target sound and finish this activity by matching some of the new words to an illustration. At this point, students are taught 10-18 high frequency words, which are defined as irregular words and words that contain phonic elements that have not yet been introduced. After that, students learn a specific strategy to read two syllable or multi-syllable words that contain the lesson’s target sound. The next three parts of the lesson involve passage reading, spelling, and independent activities. All of these activities are directly related to the lesson’s objective and include the target sound or sounds. These activities may vary slightly depending upon whether the focus of the lesson is on letter introduction or practice.
Each level of Phonics for Reading has features that have been demonstrated through research studies to be effective in improving student performance. Phonics for Reading is a very scripted program that is extremely direct in the instruction.
REWARDS
Program Explanation:
Students were tested for various MTSS (Multi-Tiered System of Supports) Interventions in May of last year, as well as the beginning of this year. The decision to test was based on a variety of factors, such as fall MAP scores, Kansas Assessment scores, Jerry John’s Individual Reading Inventories, and EasyCBM fluency tests. Students were given placement tests for each intervention to determine the most appropriate program for their individual needs.
REWARDS is an acronym for Reading Excellence: Word Attack and Rate Development Strategies. It is an intense, short-term (semester) intervention reading program that is specially designed for students in the fourth through twelfth grades who have mastered skills in phonics, but have difficulty reading longer words. REWARDS provides students with flexible strategies for decoding multi-syllabic words in order to build reading accuracy and fluency. This is accomplished by teaching a strategy to segment a word into parts, read the word part by part, and then read the word independently. Students also receive vocabulary instruction and practice with word families and spelling. Rewards is a scripted program that is extremely direct in the instruction. Rewards Intermediate is for students in Grades 4-6 and consists of 25 lessons. REWARDS was designed for students in Grades 4, 5 and 6 who read at or above a 2.5 grade level and have difficulty reading long words. REWARDS is a reading intervention program designed to teach intermediate students a flexible strategy for decoding long words and to increase their oral and silent reading fluency.
Corrective Reading
Program Explanation:
Students were tested for various MTSS (Multi-Tiered System of Supports) Interventions in May of last year, as well as the beginning of this year. The decision to test was based on a variety of factors, such as fall MAP scores, Kansas Assessment scores, Jerry John’s Individual Reading Inventories, and EasyCBM fluency tests. Students were given placement tests for each intervention to determine the most appropriate program for their individual needs. In Corrective Reading, the Decoding Placement test measures each student’s decoding accuracy and rate of oral reading. The Comprehension Placement test measures performance on analogies (an airplane is to air as a boat is to ____________), similarities (name 3 ways a cat is the same as a tree), recitation behavior, vocabulary, knowledge about basic information, deductions, and other skills assumed in complex comprehension activities. These placement tests provided us with the information to provide the most appropriate intervention for each child.
The Corrective Reading program is tightly sequenced, offering two distinct Intervention Strands: Decoding and Comprehension. There are four levels at each of these two strands that address varied reading skills and performance levels. The Decoding strand is appropriate for students that have trouble identifying words, understanding how the arrangement of letters in a word relates to its pronunciation, and whose reading rate is inefficient. Comprehension programs are suitable for students that have limited vocabulary, narrow background knowledge, and that need support with thinking skills. The Decoding strand lesson format incorporates word-attack skills practice, group reading, individual reading checkouts, and workbook exercises. The Comprehension strand lesson format synthesizes thinking operations, workbook exercises, information, and oral group work.
Corrective Reading is a comprehensive intervention program designed for students in Grades 3-12. The three essential goals of the program are increasing reading accuracy (decoding), developing reading fluency, and building reading comprehension. Each level of Corrective Reading has features that have been demonstrated through research studies to be effective in improving student performance. Corrective Reading is a very scripted program that is extremely direct in the instruction.
Resources:
Here are some resources you can access from home to help understand your child’s reading difficulties and how to support them.
Please use caution as you will be navigating outside of the usd 320 web site.
- Fluency
- Comprehension
- http://www.readingrockets.org/target/comprehension
This website gives information about what comprehension is, what a child who struggles with comprehension feels like, and what can be done to help. There is access to numerous articles from research that has been conducted.
- Phonics
- Syllables
- Vocabulary
Please email us if you ever have any questions about improving your child’s reading. Thanks!
