Extra Special Teaching

Chunk It! and a Great Resource

This week I'll be working with my students on the strategy of finding chunks that you do know in words. I made this page of words to practice this skill with them. These are words that my students probably can't read on their own, but I'm hoping this practice will show them how to they can figure out how to read bigger words. Click on the picture to get your own copy.

A FABULOUS resource I've found for teaching reading comprehension is Read Works. The best part is that it's FREE!!! You guys all know that I love free! You do have to sign up for an account to access some of the stuff though. There are lesson plans by grade level and comprehension skill, along with reading passages with comprehension questions that start at grade 2. The reading passages are difficult for my kids to read, but I've used them to model the skill and talk about it as a class. I highly recommend everyone checking out this website.

We have a teacher planning day (aka I'll be in training all day) tomorrow and then a 3rd grade field trip on Tuesday. Since it's a short week, we're not going to start a new word study pattern this week. I have made 2 of the games for the next pattern (Long O CVVC, Long O CVCe, and Short O). I'm going to try and make the 3rd game this week and then I'll actually be ahead! I'll post them when I get done.

Long A CVVC games (FREEBIE!)

I'm a little late getting my stuff ready for this week, because my husband came back from a 2 month school he went to in VA. It's been nice to have him home and get some back up with all these kids that outnumber just me!

This week we'll be learning about the Long A CVVC pattern and continue practicing reading and writing words that have the Short A and Long A CVCe pattern.

At the end of the week, I always give my students a cloze sentence test that includes different words that they have learned using the week's word study patterns. Would anyone be interested in me posting these tests? Most of my students do fairly well each week. I try to keep the sentences fairly simple and use patterns we've already studied, sight words they should know, and short vowel words. But I have one student who has failed the test the last 3 weeks in a row! I don't know why. He can read the words whenever he slows down and pays attention. I even reminded him to slow down before giving him the test this past Friday. I looked at it when he was done and he had gotten 2 right out of 10. I gave it back to him and told him to go back over it carefully. He then got 5 out of 10 right the 2nd time.

I'm not sure what to do with him about this and get him to slow down, think about the words and what the sentence means. His dad is worried about this also. I'm going to go through the test again with him this week and try to figure out where he's going wrong. Any suggestions for this?

So now onto the fun stuff!!! I've made 3 games this week. I decided to include my challenge words in the weekly games from now on. For the majority of my students, these words will be very difficult to read but there's only 10 of them added. I figure it will help the ones who do get the challenge list (really just 1 student who is an excellent speller) and will give my other students exposure to some higher level words. I've also included the oddball words want and said in 2 of the games for additional practice.

Click on the Switch picture below to get your own FREE copy!