Vocabulary Cartoons

• Teaching Strategies to use with book
• Example of techniques demonstrated in cartoon

Vocabulary Cartoons works on the principle of mnemonics. A mnemonic is a device that helps you remember something by associating what you are trying to remember with something you already know. A mnemonic device could be in many different forms like; rhymes, songs, pictures to name a few. For example, "Columbus sailed the ocean blue in fourteen hundred ninety-two" is a classic mnemonic rhyme which helps you remember when Columbus discovered America.

Following the mnemonic principle of association, Vocabulary Cartoons link together an auditory (rhyming) word association and a visual association in the form of a humorous cartoon. These powerful mnemonics help students retain the meanings of words longer and with less effort than trying to memorize definitions straight out of a dictionary.

Headsprout

Click here for sample lessons from HEADSPROUT! Also, Home Free Trial available for your preview!

• Free READY TO READ downloadable stories.


• Online Materials
  • 80 adaptive online episodes• Ability to repeat or reset episodes• 80 online stories and over 400 printable flash cards• Secure, automated assessment and performance reports• Email and telephone instructional and technical support

Purchase subscription prices:

Home - single copy of lessons 1-40 ($99 with installment plan available)

Into the Book

http://reading.ecb.org/index.html

This highly interactive site will engage students while teaching them about comprehension strategies. The student pages introduce:

• PRIOR KNOWLEDGE
• MAKING CONNECTIONS
• QUESTIONING
• VISUALIZING
• INFERRING
• SUMMARIZING
• EVALUATING
• SYNTHESIZING
• USING STRATEGIES TOGETHER

The teacher pages give lesson ideas (Gradual Release Lesson Plan ), extra demonstration videos, downloads for songs and lyrics, previews of the student interactive activity, and much more.

For example, the lesson plan to introduce PRIOR KNOWLEDGE incorporates a STUDENT VIDEO with a featured text, viewing timing and discussion questions, and a themed song. Program Synopsis: In this episode, Mrs. Pingel teaches the students the strategy of activating prior knowledge. During a read-aloud of The Story of Kate Shelley, Emmet is so engaged that he goes "into the book" and helps Kate. He then uses the strategy to help him with his rock climbing.

Literactive

LITERACTIVE is the leading provider of reading material for pre-school, kindergarten and grade 1 students available online. The program is comprised of carefully leveled guided readers, comprehensive phonic activities and a wealth of supplemental reading material which gradually develop a child's reading skills in a sequential and enjoyable manner. Developed and approved by teachers and parents across the United States, Literactive is the acknowledged leader in early learning online. All the material is available for FREE from this site but you need to register.


Online read-aloud books with activities are available to view live after registering. (Select GUIDED READING on the left frame!)

Carl's Corner

CARL'S CORNER MAIN PAGE!

Carl's Corner offers books in PDF suitable for SmartBoard along with many activity sheets focused on vocabulary and phonics. (Click here for 2nd grade Scott Foresman series.)

I enjoyed the layout of the site - - very easy to navigate and large format for SmartBoard of all materials.





Games Boards , certificates, Reading Racers materials, and so much more! \



Check out this site to use with primary reading lessons!

Vocabulary and Pictures

Santa-Maria Bonita Schools page lists basal titles for the Houghton/Mifflin series with vocabulary matched with pictures for grades 1-6. These tools are suitable for SMARTBOARD use!


Click here for more strategies to teach vocabulary!

Chase's Picks of the Day

Alfy's Pics for Learning ABC's

These are links provided by Alfy's Pics for the Theme: Language Arts. Click on the link for ABC's!

ABCs Creative Writing Eric Carle Author Study Fairy Tales Harry Potter Poetry & Rhyme Sign Language One of the pics is ALPHABET ACTION hosted on the Learning Planet site.

Great Leaps

The Great Leaps Fluency Program offers short reading passages highlighting some favorite chapter books for grade levels 3-up.

Download these as PDF's.

Repeated Readings

• Click here for a WORD Document Lesson Plan Template!
• Great Leaps Fluency Progress Chart

Brief Overview

The guided repeated oral reading technique consists of three main components:

1. student practice reading a weekly passage
2. ongoing teacher feedback
3. biweekly progress monitoring

Typically, the student practices orally reading a passage for 1 week or until a predetermined criteria is met, such as an improvement in reading rate (Samuels, 1979; Therrien, 2004) or three successive improvements (Weinstein & Cooke, 1992).

Ongoing corrective teacher feedback is provided through teacher modeling, direct instruction, and positive comments or suggestions regarding reading with expression, sentence segmentation, and fluency.

Biweekly progress monitoring involves having students read material one grade level above their current level.

Many students with disabilities require specialized instructional interventions and frequent progress monitoring in reading. The guided repeated oral reading technique promotes oral reading fluency while providing a reliable data-based monitoring system.

This reading technique, an adaptation of repeated readings (Samuels, 1979), typically includes the following steps.

• Monday: Conduct the Cold Read . . . .The student is given a new weekly practice passage of about 50 to 200 words at his or her instructional level (level read with about 95% accuracy). The "cold read" is the first time the student views and orally reads the passage. After the student orally reads the passage within 1 minute, the teacher records the number of words read correctly and the number of errors. For example, if James read 54 words in 1 minute with 6 errors, subtract the error amount (6) from the total number of words read in one minute (54) to calculate the number of words he correctly read in one minute (48). Next, the teacher orally reads the passage to the student to provide a model that the student can imitate. Teacher modeling consists of
  
• attending to expression
• reading in phrases and clauses
• using a finger to follow along if needed
• reading at a slightly faster pace than the student
  
• (Meyer & Felton, 1999; National Reading Panel, 2001; Therrien, 2004).
  

• Finally, the student orally rereads the passage with assistance from the teacher. During this read, when the student comes to an unknown word, the teacher encourages the student to apply a known strategy. If the student does not know a word within 3 seconds, the teacher provides the word.
  

• Tuesday: Monitor Progress and Practice Weekly Passage to monitor progress, the student orally reads an unfamiliar passage one grade level above his or her instructional reading level. Therefore, teachers using this approach must have access to reading passages for student weekly practice as well as progress monitoring. For example, the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS; Good & Kaminski, 2005) can be used for biweekly reading and graphing using passages one grade level above the student's instructional level, and the Read Naturally program (Read Naturally, 2005) can be used to record cold and hot reads for passages at the student's instructional level.
  
• Following this read, the teacher records the student's data on a progress monitoring graph, Instructional decision making should include data analysis. Generally, the teacher can estimate one or two words gained for each week of instruction above the baseline (Scott & Weishaar, 2003). Fuchs (1989) recommended that instructional modifications are warranted when the student's performance falls below the aim line on three consecutive points (Mercer & Pullen, 2005).
• Also, the student also orally reads the weekly practice passage as a "good reader," with good expression and adequate speed and phrasing, and as a "fast reader" at a slightly faster pace. Repeatedly reading the same passage at a faster pace provides opportunities to embed the faster pace. The student may also chorally read the passage with a group of 3 to 5 students. Students are typically reminded to read along with their finger to avoid losing their place, carefully track the words, and group phrases.
• Wednesday: . . . . .Practice. Practice. Practice. The student practices orally reading the new passage at least twice, and the teacher provides immediate and corrective feedback.
  
• Thursday:. . . . Monitor Progress and Practice Weekly Passage. The process from Tuesday is repeated by having the student read a new (unfamiliar) passage from the progress monitoring curriculum. This data are also graphed. The student also orally reads the weekly passage at least twice, as a good reader and as a fast reader.
  
• Friday: . . . .Conduct the "Hot Read" The student reads the weekly passage aloud to the teacher, and the data are again recorded. Teachers should share the difference from the cold and hot read data with the student, as an increase in words per minute on the hot read is very motivating for students.
  
• Many programs, such as the Great Leaps Program (Great Leaps Reading, n.d.) and Jamestown Reading (Jamestown Education, n.d.) suggested graphing the student's reading data to provide a visual of success and to involve the student in noting improvements toward their reading goal (Dudley, 2005).

Also, this article describes a repeated reading/fluency lesson plan. It details how to make activities function with different levels within the classroom.

Here is a portion of the article:

Educators value the importance of reading fluency practice. High fluency scores are positively correlated with high comprehension scores. However, practicing repetitive reading passages with one-size fits all fluency recordings does not meet the diverse needs of your students. Instead, save some money on expensive fluency programs and truly differentiate your fluency instruction.

First of all, find multiple reading level fluency passages on the web or from your favorite educational bookstore. Assess fluency rates of your students at their instructional reading level (85-95% word accuracy). I suggest two-minute timings to insure accurate assessment. Then, form ability groups of 4–7 students based upon their reading levels and fluency scores on these assessments. Separate students who can’t cooperate or who will disrupt the class. (click here to read entire article!)

Smart Tutor

• Smart Tutor Freebies
• Smart Tutor Free Reading Activities
• Smart Tutor Free Sample Lessons
• Free 14-Day Trial Sign-up
• Pricing = $17.99 per child for Home
  

Time 4 Learning

Time 4 Learning gives students practice with math, language arts, science, and more!

http://www.time4learning.com/seo/elementary-games.shtml

Letter Launch is one of the FREE GAME ACTIVITIES on the Time 4 Learning Site. Click the graphic to play.




This is an example of a FREE LESSON (Click the link to view more choices.) offered by Time 4 Learning. Click the graphic to play the activity.

Time 4 Learning offers a FREE 14-day trial. The regular subscription for HOME is $19.91 per month with no long-term contracts.

Older Students with Reading Difficulties

What do you do when older students have reading difficulties. This article on the LD online site offers suggestions and teaching ideas. (Click here for entire article!)

Here's a portion of the article:

Most reading scientists agree that a core linguistic deficit underlies poor reading at all ages (Catts et al., 1999; Shaywitz et al., 1999). At any age, poor readers as a group exhibit weaknesses in phonological processing and word recognition speed and accuracy, as do younger poor readers (Stanovich & Siegel, 1994; Shankweiler et al., 1995). At any age, when an individual's reading comprehension is more impaired than his or her listening comprehension, inaccurate and slow word recognition is the most likely cause (Shankweiler et al., 1999).



Here are some more research sites with lesson ideas:

This article describes lesson ideas and activities to teach vocabulary and phonics.
Read here for a portion of the article on DICK AND JANE reading theory!

So, although I learned to read with the Dick and Jane series, the problem is that this approach does not seem to be as successful when students come from less literate households. In sum, the “Look-Say Method” probably would work for 80% of our population, but systematic phonics instruction seems to work to some degree for everyone.

My practical experience validates this conclusion. Teaching reading intervention students from fourth grade up through community college has helped me identify one common denominator of students who struggle with reading: they don’t know and can’t apply the alphabetic code. Diagnostic assessments almost always lead to this conclusion.

(Click here to read entire article and much more from the Penning Publishing Blog!)

Ticket to Read

Ticket to Read gives students instruction in Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension. Click here to find out more and watch a VIDEO.

*****I have previewed this online subscription and found it contains several favorable attributes.

• Students are not allowed to "fly" through the reading passages. If a student goes too quickly, the program forces them to "reread."
• Each passage activity gives the student a fluency rate.
  
• The program is accessible from school or home.
• The price is reasonable. ($269 for a class of 30 students, or $29 per individual child.)

Click here for information on STIMULUS FUNDING!

Renaissance Learning Vocabulary Labels

Vocabulary instruction reigns as my research project this year. Students with reading difficulty need explicit instruction on phonics, prefixes, suffixes and core reading components - - - even in the upper grades! The classroom library is an important resource to increase vocabulary with independent reading. But, how does a teacher ensure that students actually READ the books? Poor readers simply flip through the pages and then take the AR test! The reward seems to be "How many can I guess correctly?"
One idea is to give students vocabulary words to find in the text while they are reading. Then, they can copy the sentence from the book that uses the word. This activity gives independent reading a student-based product. Both handwriting and grammar can be strengthened by requiring an exact, readable copy.

Renaissance Learning offers vocabulary labels for all book quizzes saving the teacher time required to find the chosen words. To order the label, simply find the quiz number, select the book, and order labels. The labels currently costs 10 cents each! As an assessment, students can then take the vocabulary quiz after taking the AR reading quiz!


Here's a graphic for the Checked Label. Just right click to save. Insert the graphic into a page of labels to print. IDEA: A student could be assigned to check the vocabulary sentences. Checker would place a label on the sentence sheet and give to back to reader allowing them to take the test. The reader places the AR score on the sheet. The vocabulary sentence sheet with score could be sent home for parent signature.

Let's Go Learn

Let's Go Learn is the online product of Curriculum Associates!

These online tools are pricey, (ORDER INFORMATION) but available to individuals as well as classrooms. They offer opportunities to access individual student needs, such as SSMT data modifications, etc.

Literacy Launcher

Literacy Launcher is part of SRA Technology, a unit of the McGraw-Hill Education Group, the largest pre-K through grade 12 educational publisher in the nation, and a unit of The McGraw-Hill Companies. SRA Technology develops and delivers literacy activities and assessments over the Internet to children, pre-kindergarten through grade six.

The Literacy Launcher series is based on approaches that are consistent with the developmental stage of children who are emergent readers and mathematicians. The curriculum content in Literacy Launcher supports children's development of fluency with key concepts in language and mathematics as they move from pre-kindergarten through grade three.

How does it work? The learning activities and assessments use vivid photography, brilliant animation, voice instruction from children, and real-life situations that children can relate to. These involve students in a multi-sensory learning experience. Because children bring a broad spectrum of knowledge into the classroom, Literacy Launcher curriculum content is divided into levels, rather than grades. Below is a description of each level followed by a sample Curriculum Object.

Samples for your to try!
Click on the pictures on this link to launch a learning activity or assessment demo.

Reading Eggs

http://readingeggs.com/home

Chase and I will be using this site for the next two weeks. Look for REVIEW following our experience.

ABC Reading Eggs is a new website designed to teach children how to read. Level 1 is now available.

The further levels of the ABC Reading Eggs website – levels 2, 3 and 4 are still under construction and will be added to the site as they become available. Level 2 – The Playground – will begin to be available online in September and will be finished late 2008.

There are two ways that you can continue to be a ABC Reading Eggs Eggsplorer after your 14 day Free trial is over. You can continue your subscription by using access codes found in every ABC Reading Eggs bookpack or you can buy a subscription to the site online using our secure payment facilities. You can purchase a six month subscription to the ABC Reading Eggs website for the special opening offer of $49.95

There are currently 80 online lessons in ABC Reading Eggs that take students from the very basics of recognizing letter sounds through to reading short interesting books. By mid 2009, there will be 120 lessons that will take children up to a third year of school reading and writing level.