NEISD Reading Academy News

Per House Bill 3 , passed by the 86th Texas Legislature in June of 2019, all kindergarten through third grade teachers and principals must complete a Texas Reading Academy by the end of the 2022-2023 school year. The goal of the Texas Reading Academies is to equip educators with the knowledge and skills needed to implement evidence-based literacy instruction, assess student progress, and use data to inform instruction so that all Texas children develop a strong foundation in reading and writing.

With 50 participants, NEISD Reading Academy Cohort 14 includes participants from six elementary campuses. The pictures below show evidence-based literacy instruction in action! Cohort 14 teachers have learned about the role of oral language and phonological awareness in literacy, how to assess student progress, and how to use data to inform instruction so that students develop a strong foundation in reading and writing.

Bailey Nealy

First Grade Teacher

Tuscany Heights

"At first, taking on Reading Academy seemed like a very daunting task. By now, we had all heard the horror stories of artifacts, observations, and of course having to prepare to be out of the classroom! As classroom teachers, we have so much on our plates already, so I was honestly very nervous about having to scrap everything I thought I knew about literacy and start from scratch with a brand-new approach. However, I have been pleasantly surprised at just how much Reading Academy aligns to the foundations of phonological awareness and best practices we already implement at the primary levels. It has been very validating to see that what we are doing instructionally is science-based and proven to be effective...especially when it comes to our students receiving tier 2 and 3 interventions.

To anyone starting Reading Academies next year, I implore you not to overcomplicate it. So much of Reading Academy can be simplifying your instruction to the foundational level. Utilize your Cohort Leader, because they want to help you incorporate these high quality practices in your daily routines. Work smarter, not harder! As devoted educators, we spend so much time setting goals, planning, differentiating, and analyzing data- to the point where it can feel as though we have to reinvent the wheel to be effective. But at the end of the day ALL students benefit from consistency, a solid foundation, and feeling empowered as learners."

-Bailey Nealy

The main objective of this module is to ensure that teachers have the knowledge and skills to implement phonological awareness instruction, so students develop strong decoding and encoding skills. To support teachers' understanding, this module provides information about the phonological awareness continuum and the relationship between phonological awareness and reading. This module also provides assistance in the form of routines and instructional practices that teachers can incorporate in classroom instruction for all students, including those who speak multiple languages. -TEA

As we worked through the Module 6 content on phonological awareness, participants created and recorded a lesson that provided direct instruction on phoneme manipulation in single syllable words. This lesson contains the same components of effective direct instruction described in the NASOT text since evidence-based practices are not specific to a single resource. The lesson included stating the objective, connecting to previous learning, explaining and modeling the skill, providing opportunities for processing and responding through guided practice, and delivering specific feedback. While much of the work students do with phonological awareness involves oral response, students can also represent their understanding through the use of Elkonin boxes. By using tiles or discs, students can represent the individual sounds they hear in a word. Similarly, pieces of foam or felt can represent onset and rime or the individual words in a sentence. Remember, the end goal of teaching phonological awareness skills is to pair sounds to letters, so as students develop letter knowledge throughout kindergarten, the representing process will move towards letters and shift to phonics instruction, which is the focus of Module 8.

According to research, unless students learn to read by the end of first grade, they are highly likely to remain poor readers and suffer academic difficulties across all subject areas. However, we now know how students learn to read, what goes wrong if they struggle, and what can be done to help students of all abilities improve their reading skills. Texas Reading Academy will provide you with the tools needed to ensure the literacy growth of all your students. Without a doubt, informed teachers are the best assurance against reading failure. To help support teacher development of literacy instruction, this section of the newsletter will provide resources for teachers to blend their Reading Academy learning with NEISD resources!

Spanish Rhyme Activity

Spanish Syllable Activity

Syllable blending, isolating, and manipulating are activities that support early phonological awareness. These activities are most appropriate in Pre-K and the very beginning of Kindergarten. Pre-K and Kindergarten teachers may include work at the syllable level to encourage children's ears to "tune in" to hearing language: However, mastering awareness of syllables is not a necessary step to get to the phonemic awareness level. It is the awareness of and ability to manipulate phonemes, or individual speech sounds, that best supports the alphabetic principle.

Elkonin boxes build phonemic awareness skills by segmenting words into individual sounds, or phonemes. To use Elkonin boxes, a student listens to a word and moves a chip into a box for each sound or phoneme. In some cases, different colored tokens may be used for consonants and vowels or just for each phoneme in the word.

Spanish Version

This implementation guide provides a suggested sequence and script for introducing sounds. Teachers may begin sound wall instruction by introducing one sound a day, then gradually increase the number of sounds introduced in a single day. If possible, when introducing multiple sounds a day, introduce them at different times of the day. Kinder may choose to introduce sounds at a much slower rate; however, all students K-2 should receive articulation instruction on all 44 phonemes.

Once you have explicitly taught students how to identify the individual sounds in words, consider adding a phoneme practice activity as part of your weekly stations. In the linked activity, students select a picture card and say the name of the picture, then tap the number of phonemes while saying the word. Students state the number of phonemes and place the picture card under the correct number.

Idea for Administrators:

As you lead your campus through MAP Growth and MAP Fluency MOY data analysis, consider the following points to help you determine the best course of action for students:

• Some students may have yet to master the skills of identifying rhymes and syllables in words. These students will benefit most from instruction focused at the individual sound level of words, along with instruction that connects letter(s) to sounds.
• If a student is at the Below or Approaches Level, the best next step is to administer an informal diagnostic to determine whether the student has a weakness in letter/sound correspondence. Informal diagnostics can be found on page 2 of the ELAR MTSS flowchart.

Tools for Administrators:

• Module 6 Phonological Awareness Support

Inspiration for Administrators:

• Season 6, Episode 5. Leading with the head and the heart: Enacting lasting literacy change with Mitchell Brookins
  

Reading Comprehension and Autism in the Primary General Education Classroom

Teaching children with autism to comprehend text can be challenging. The linked article above provides some strategies educators can incorporate into daily lessons to meet the literacy needs of their students. We'll take a closer look at reading comprehension in Module 10 scheduled for the spring semester.

-Lily

by Dr. Louisa Moats

The early stages of phonological sensitivity development, typical of preschoolers, encompass word play, rhyme recognition, rhyme production, syllable identification, segmentation, blending, and first sound matching. If kids are on track, they are adept at these tasks by about age 5. Typically, they will move into the “later alphabetic” phase during kindergarten, recognizing and segmenting all single phonemes in words with two to four phonemes. This phase is best described by Dr. Linnea Ehri in her four phases of word reading.

What if rhyme production is a stumbling block and kids just can’t come up with a word that rhymes with "block"? Must rhyming be mastered before instruction moves to individual phonemes? No, and here’s why. The tasks associated with early phonological awareness, while serving as “red flags” or indicators of potential reading problems, are only moderately associated with early reading and spelling. Learning to be better at them is not necessarily going to lead to proficiency in what really counts. It is phoneme awareness – specifically, the ability to say the individual phonemes in words, to pull them apart, and to put them together – that enables kids to read and spell in an alphabetic writing system like English. That is what instruction should focus on, especially from mid-kindergarten onward.

Students who are weak on indicators of phonological awareness development will benefit most from instruction aimed at systematic strengthening of the skills that are most closely related to understanding how letters represent spoken language. While rhyming might be in the mix, the tasks with the biggest pay-off will be those focused on phonemes.

Tiffany Camacho, Longs Creek

Amanda Jacobs, Wetmore

Theresa Rodriguez, Canyon Ridge

Website: tinyurl.com/neisdliteracy
Twitter: @ReadingNEISD

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