The Essential Six K-1

Elkonin Boxes

http://bogglesworldesl.com/elkonin_boxes.htm 

http://www.u-46.org/dbs/roadmap/files/Appendix/5Elkonin-soundbox.pdf

Elkonin boxes can be used to teach phonemic awareness by having students listen for individual sounds and marking where they hear them in the boxes. Each box in an Elkonin box card represents one phoneme, or sound. So the word sheep, which is spelled with five letters, has only 3 phonemes: /sh/ /ee/ /p/. Segementing words is one of the more difficult skills children acquire. It is also one of the best predictors of future success in reading. Elkonin boxes are a physical segmentation of words into phonemes.

Text Talk

Text talk interactions are based on open-ended questions that the teacher poses during reading that ask children to consider the ideas in the story and talk about and connect them as the story moves along.

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http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson

_view.asp?id=25

Text talks have six components:

1.     Selecting texts that have some complexities of events for children to build meaning

2.     Interspersed open-ended questions that require students to explain and describe text ideas

3.     Follow-up questions that encourage elaboration of initial ideas

4.     Pictures, which are presented after students have responded to the text

5.     Background knowledge, which is used to support meaning building

6.     Vocabulary words, which engage students in direct discussion after the story is complete

Questioning (Think Aloud)

 http://www.literacymatters.org/content/

readandwrite/question.htm

Pre Reading: 

http://www.literacymatters.org/content/

readandwrite/question.htm#before

During Reading:

http://www.literacymatters.org/content/

readandwrite/question.htm#during

After Reading:

http://www.literacymatters.org/content/

readandwrite/question.htm#after

http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/instruction/ela/6-12/Reading/Reading%20Strategies/thinkaloud.htm

As the title implies, a think aloud is a great strategy to use to slow down the reading process and let students get a good look at how skilled readers construct meaning from a text.  Many of us developed our skills as readers implicitly, by simply doing a lot of reading of all sorts of texts; after all, reading is a passion for us. We need to keep in mind that we must take what we know and do implicitly and make it explicit for our students, especially for our struggling readers.  

Story Maps

http://www.everythingesl.net/downloads/story_map.pdf

http://www.readingquest.org/pdf/story_map.pdf

A graphic representation of a story, making clear the relationships of the story elements.

Shared Writing

http://instech.tusd.k12.az.us/balancedlit/handbook/kinder/sharedwr.doc

http://www.teachervision.fen.com/reading-and-language-arts/skill-builder/48883.html

http://www.teachersnetwork.org/ntol/howto/childlit/sharedwrite.htm

Shared Writing is a technique that allows the teacher to model good writing for his/her students. The teacher begins the writing workshop by gathering the students around an easel and starts a discussion about a shared experience--a topic they all are studying or know about. The teacher elicits information and leads a discussion. The children discuss the topic and share their ideas while the teacher records them on chart paper in story or paragraph form. As the teacher writes he/she verbalizes the skills he/she wants the children to practice during the writing session that follows. 

Reciprocal Teaching

http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/atrisk/at6lk38.htm

http://www.readingquest.org/strat/rt.html

*For complete lessons on introducing each RT strategy go the the R:Drive and search in the Reciprocal Teaching Folder.

Reciprocal teaching refers to an instructional activity that takes place in the form of a dialogue between teachers and students regarding segments of text. The dialogue is structured by the use of four strategies: summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting. The teacher and students take turns assuming the role of teacher in leading this dialogue.

Belle Terre's School Wide Reciprocal Teaching Characters

“Clink”

The Clarifier

“Pat”

The Predictor

“Quinn”

The Questioner

“Sammy”

The Sumarizer