Hitting the Ground Running: What the 1st Few Weeks are Like for a Reading Specialist

Hello again Readers,

It's been quite a busy few weeks in the world of the Reading Specialista! My school just had it's first full week of classes, and everything's starting to get into full swing for everyone! For me, I've really been able to have a new found respect for the saying that a Reading Specialist wears many hats. I decided to document what I've been up to for the past month, as many future or current Reading Specialists may want a comparison/confirmation point and many teachers and parents may be wondering, "What does that Reading Specialist do all day anyway?" In short, a lot a bit of this, and a lot a bit of that! As a bonus, I'm also including some organizational forms I used when working with different populations in the school. Feel free to use them if you are a Reading Specialist, and classroom teachers may find them useful too, especially my small group intervention forms!

Setting Up My Classroom

Just like regular classroom teachers, I had the job of setting up my classroom, but it was a bit different, because my classroom is actually our school's library, and this was the first year that I was transforming it into the Literacy Lab. This role that I have is a bit different from the traditional Reading Specialist role, because I am responsible for teaching Reading Enrichment classes for grades PreK3-5th each week. I see PreK3-Kinder two times a week, their first class focuses on alphabet knowledge, phonics, phonemic awareness, and fluency, and their second class is a comprehension lesson. I then see 1st-5th once a week to give them comprehension strategy instruction (predictions, connections, questioning, sequencing, etc.) 

Therefore, I had to transform the Library into the Literacy Lab. To do this, I reorganized the shelves, integrated my literacy supplies, selected more Literacy Learning posters and elements to put in the room, and organized the space to provide for more interactive lessons. The pictures show the result of the setup work. (I'm still kicking myself for not doing a before picture, but at least you can see the "after" ;-) ). I will say, it was harder for me to set up my classroom this year, because unlike before, I wasn't sure when I'd feel done. I knew how to set up my 3rd grade classroom so well, that it felt like I'd never be done in the Literacy Lab. I can say that after 2 weeks of working, however, it finally feels like my new little home, and it was ready for students and fully functional this past week!

Working with Admin

Another unique challenge to my year this year is that I am the first Reading Specialist we've ever had at my school. Because of this, I've worked extensively with the Administration in the past year to create my job description and responsibilities and over the past couple of weeks, I've been in communication with the Administration at my school to follow-up with those responsibilities to ensure I was covering the needs of the school.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have worked with my principal and assistant principal to make sure we were all on the same page for the literacy development needed to continue to move our school forward which I would provide for both our students and our faculty. We decided on full-group professional development topics I would give for the first few months of school which included Daily 5 workshops, Standards-Based Grading for reading teachers, DRA training, DIBELS training, and the STAR assessment training through the AR program. We also discussed the frequency with which I would meet with small groups for further instruction, and I talked about how I would be meeting with teachers to provide individual coaching and support. After these discussions and meetings, we had a good shared game plan that we could use to support our school's literacy endeavors. 

Working with Teachers

Once my classroom was set up, and the other teachers had set theirs up during inservice as well, I started to meet with the other teachers to set their goals. I used the goal setting sheet below to help facilitate these meetings. Basically, I met with every reading teacher and asked them to pick three areas of growth which they are interested in working on during this first quarter. After they chose those goals, I asked them to pick one which they are most interested in working toward for the first quarter. I did this, because it's not realistic to ask teachers to work on three areas at once, and this way, we'd have a starting point for when they wanted to make goals for the next quarter. 

Then, I asked them to tell me ways they wanted me to support them in achieving this goal. I offered modeling lessons, observation and feedback, giving resources, and being available to coplan or to just drop in every once in a while to have a conversation about what they were up to. I felt it was important for me to find out how each teacher wanted my support, so I could differentiate my professional development for them, and so they could choose a way to welcome me into their teaching that made them feel comfortable. This allowed me to build rapport instead of stepping on toes! I then organized all of the completed goal sheets in my Teacher Binder.

Feel free to use my goal planning sheet if you are a Reading Specialist at your school!

Teacher Goal Planning Sheet

Working with Students

Although many Reading Specialists do not have this opportunity, I actually do have a class of my own, Literacy Lab. Students from PreK3-5th grade come to my class, and I provide reading enrichment lessons to them, and allow them the opportunity to check out books. Because of this, I had to have my yearly plan prepared and ready to hand in, and I do plan official lesson plans each week as well in addition to my job as a Reading Specialist. 

The best part of Literacy Lab, aside from seeing all the students, is providing a place for me to model lessons and ideas for other teachers. Teachers are free to come and see what I'm up to in Literacy Lab in case they want to adapt some of these ideas in their own classroom! 

Organizing for Small Groups

The last hat I have been getting accustomed to wearing is preparing for small group intervention instruction. During the first couple of weeks of school, I met with teachers from grades PreK3-4th to get their input on students whom they think would benefit from additional small group instruction in literacy. After getting their lists, I crafted a parental consent letter both to get permission to teach these students and possibly pull them out of the classroom to do so, and to notify the parents that their children would be in small group instruction.

After this, I looked over our school schedule and picked out times to meet with these groups. I will meet with PreK3-PreK4 once a week for language development, letter recognition, and phonemic awareness instruction, and I will meet with Kinder-4th for fluency, decoding, and comprehension twice a week. To better keep my groups and student data in order, I also created the following forms that you are free to use! They all live in my binders. One is for Early Childhood, and the other is for 1st-4th grade. The first form is to track the lessons we do in small groups, so I can continually plan and keep track of what we're doing. One is for individual student work in groups, so I can annotate their progress, and a final form is to keep track of the assessments I give them throughout the year, so I can have an area to organize the data I collect on each case and show growth. My hope is that these forms will be useful for me to keep organized, and to communicate progress to both teachers and parents.

Small Group Intervention Form

Individual Small Group Comments

Individual Progress Monitoring Form


So that's just a bit of what it's like to wear the many hats of a Reading Specialist! I hope now that if you're a parent or a teacher you have a better idea of just exactly what that Reading Specialist does all day! Stay tuned for more parent tips in my next blog post, and until next time...

Yours in Literacy,

The Reading Specialista

3 Quick Tips to Get Your Kids School Reading Ready After Summer

Hey Readers,

Well it's getting to that time again, back to school! Although some of you may have already started (like me), others still have 2-3 weeks before you go back (I'm talking about you Michigan!). No matter if you've started yet or not, this is the perfect time to pump up your child's reading readiness for those early weeks of school to propel them into valuable literacy learning throughout the entire year! Whether your summer had more movies and Mickey than books and writing, or if you had your kids on a tight book reading system this summer, these three tips will help your child, not to mention impress your child's teacher!

1. Sight Word Practice

When working on fluency (how quickly, correctly, and with expression your child reads), one of the easier ways to improve this skill is to expand your child's sight word vocabulary. Sight words are basically words that children can read "at first sight." They don't have to take up precious time decoding them, and their energy can be freed up to figure out harder words. A great place to find sight words, and a widely used tool by teachers, are the Fry Words. For the individual list of words, which are arranged by grade level, you can click on the following link Fry Words. You can use these words to:

•  make flash cards to use in the car, before bed, after breakfast, any time!
• play sight word smash (lay 5-10 cards on the ground and ask your child to stomp on or slap one that you call out)
• write them on the mirror (in dry erase marker) for your child to practice when brushing their teeth

As an added help, if you're more into cutting than writing, you can follow this link to print the words and cut them out Printable Flash Cards. Remember, when you're practicing with your child, you're easing them into school again, so keep it fun, start small (10 cards at once), and then add as they learn more! Can you imagine the look on their faces when they have a whole stack of cards that they know!?

2. Comprehension Practice

A way to help your child get their comprehension (how they understand the text) muscles working is to get a little bit more involved in your reading time together. As you're reading a book together (either picture book or chapter book), you can stop every once in a while to ask students comprehension questions. These types of questions can include:

Questions about Summarizing

• What happened on this page?
• Can you tell me where we were in the story before we start? What was happening?
• What problem did the character have?
• What happened first in this story? Then what?
• What happened at the end of the story? What about the middle?

Predictions

• What do you think will happen next?
• What do you think will happen at the end of the story?
• Wow! Look at that picture on the cover! What do you think this story is about?

As an added bonus, you can actually have your child ask questions about the story to quiz you! See if they can "stump you!" Various studies have shown that when our little readers are in charge of asking questions, they actually understand the story better!

3. Text Structure and Concepts of Print

This section not only helps your child to amp up their literacy success and their ability to keep up with classroom book discussions, but if kids know these terms and use them correctly right off the bat, this really gets a "wow" factor from the teacher (I would know ;-) )! During your reading time with your child, you can easily work on these areas with them! Depending on the age of your child, they may have already mastered these areas, but keep in mind, summer is long, and review is essential! Check on the lists below to see how you can enrich your book discussions with your child by mentioning these concepts.

Text Structure (How a story/text is organized and the parts of a story/text)

• Characters (People/animals that are involved in a story)
• Main Character or Protagonist (The person/animal who most of the action happens to)
• Setting (Where/when the story takes place)
• Beginning, Middle, and End or Plot
• Problem and Solution of the story (What goes wrong and how it's fixed)
• Climax (the moment the problem is solved in the story)

Concepts of Print (Skills dealing with the understanding of the physical aspects of a book and basic structure of text in a book)

• The location of the front and back of the book
• The location of the beginning, middle, and end of a story
• The location of the author, title, and illustrator (BIG wow points when kids can use the word "illustrator")
• Understanding what a period, comma, question mark, and exclamation mark are for
• Concept of word (a child can define where a single word is in print)
• Concept of letter (a child can define a single letter within a word)
• Being able to name/point to the first and last letters in a word
• The direction we read text (left to right and then top to bottom)

When practicing these areas with your children always remember to keep it fun and interactive! We want to get them warmed up for school not burn them out before the first bell after all! The best part about these activities, is they can actually be used all year long to help your child become an even better reader! By working with your child at home while her teacher is working with her at school, you're creating a partnership with your school that will truly lead your child to amazing reading success!

Thanks for stopping by and reading, and until next time! :)

Yours in Literacy,

The Reading Specialista

Why my school is doing Daily 5 this year, and why yours should too!

My Story of the Daily 5

I'm one of the lucky ones! Daily 5 has been a part of my teaching reality since I was finishing up my certification year at Michigan State University. Under the helpful guidance of my internship teacher, I watched her unfold Daily 5. I got to slowly dip my toe into it before I backed up to cannon ball in! I loved, loved, loved it!

When I was on my own in my first year, I had a pacing guide and a basal with little wiggle room. I found that quickly the basal didn't reach all my students and the small group packs that came with the program, although "differentiated," didn't provide the resources or the structure I needed to truly meet the needs of my readers.

I was beyond thrilled when I interviewed at my school, and my principal was excited to hear more about Daily 5. He gave me the green light, and I never looked back! Two other teachers at my school also adopted it in their classrooms, and this past year, I helped to train another teacher so she could launch it as well. Daily 5 allowed me the flexibility to authentically teach! Within its structure, I launched book clubs, literature circles, held reading and writing conferences, and had the opportunity to give meaningful assessments to individuals as well as progress monitoring. What were my other students doing you might ask while I was working on these objectives? They were all meaningfully engaged in their own literacy tasks WITHOUT WORKSHEETS! They were meeting in their own book clubs before discussing with me, practicing readers' theater, reading books of their own choosing, writing what they wanted, peer editing and revising, taking AR quizzes, and reading out loud with each other.

This year, with three blissful years of teaching using Daily 5 under my belt, I had the wonderous opportunity to provide professional development for the Kinder, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade teachers at my school to teach them how to implement Daily 5. (Fifth grade was already an implementer herself!) It's truly a dream come true to see such an effective teaching structure like Daily 5 implemented school-wide, and I wanted to share with you not only the benefits that I have found from Daily 5, but also my tips for starting it in your classroom, and a professional development presentation which I used at my school and that you are free to show your staff to help them start Daily 5 in your school as well!

What is Daily 5?

The beauty about Daily 5 is that it isn't a curriculum-in-a-can program! Instead, it's an expertly thought-out STRUCTURE for you to use to teach reading and writing! When the 2 sisters, Gail Boushey and Jane Moser, thought out Daily 5, they wanted to give teachers a structure which they could use to keep students engaged in learning and doing literacy. As they stated:

“We are literacy evangelists, and our most fervent belief is that the
best way to become a better reader or writer is to practice for extended
periods of time each day. Therefore, as we designed the Daily 5, we
were committed to making sure the tasks were authentic and would
lead to measurable growth, as well as help boys and girls become
lifelong lovers of literacy” (Boushey & Moser, 2012, p.173).

Within Daily 5, there are 5 main activities students practice independently with the opportunity for teachers to work with students during each activity and to offer whole group mini-lesson between each activity.

The Daily 5 tasks include

1. Read to Self (independent student chosen and read texts)
2. Read to Someone (partner reading with student chosen texts)
3. Work on Writing (students writing on topics they choose)
4. Word Work (students independently practicing word spelling or patterns)
5. Listen to Reading (students independently listening to books on tape, CDs, or eBooks)

Boushey, G. & Moser, J. (2012) Big Ideas Behind Daily 5 and CAFE'. The Reading Teacher, 66, p.172-178.

Why it capitalizes on best practices

Daily 5 capitalizes on a wide variety of best practices of literacy! Here are the ones that have most impacted me in my teaching, and that I have found to be most helpful for other teachers at my school.

• It promotes Independent Reading practices: Students are explicitly taught how to do each activity with autonomy, told why each activity is important, and through the program are slowly given practice to build upon their existing skills.
• Student Engagement in meaningful, and authentic literacy practice is prolonged.: Throughout Daily 5, students are always engaged in doing real reading, writing, or having discussions. Time is not wasted through worksheets or sub-par basal stories.
• Students are motivated to read and write with the high variety of choice: There are many elements students can choose from including which book they want to read, who they want to read with, which activity they want to do, what they want to write, and where they want to sit to do it. As we know as educators, choice is a BIG MOTIVATOR for our kiddos, and Daily 5 certainly doesn't skimp on it!
• It allows for differentiation and small group instruction: The fact that there is so much choice allows for student chosen differentiation, and a teacher can easily offer book suggestions for students, group them by need, meet with them, and provide tier 2 interventions in the classroom! The structure is completely setup for this type of instruction and it's encouraged within the book as well!

Secret Start-Up Tips

When starting Daily 5 for the first time, I've found these tips to be most helpful for teachers whom I work with that are new to the wonderful world of Daily 5.

1. First and foremost BUY THE BOOK! There are many things you want to save on in your classroom, and believe me, I'm all about the Dollar Tree, but you cannot do this program effectively without buying the book! You can get either the first of second edition on Amazon for pretty cheap Second Edition or First Edition. Look at it as a major investment! Within the book, it gives you the exact sequence of lessons, specifically what you need to write on your anchor charts, problem shooting, and their complete tips on how to do this program! You will want to read, highlight, reread, tab, and reread those sections so you can successfully launch their program. (My school actually bought each new teacher their own book!)
2. Amp up your library! You need to make sure you have a wide variety of texts to choose from in your classroom library as your students grow in their reading throughout the year. You can check garage sales, ask for parent donations, or even ask your school library for loaners.
3. Get some book boxes! I was not able to spring for the fancy plastic book boxes, but my favorites were IKEA Flyt Magazine Files. They come in packs of 5 for $1.99, and perfectly fit my kids' books and readers' notebook. For an extra long-lasting tip, make sure to tape the bottom to reinforce it with packing tape.
4. Organize your Readers' Notebooks. You want to think of the tools you want your readers to have at all times. I've seen some people use a composition notebook and pasted various logs, graphic organizers, goals sheets in them. I personally just liked using 3-pronged plastic folders. I filled them with goal sheets, a reading log, book genre information, letter writing topics, and 40 pieces of loose leaf for them to use during Work on Writing. I also printed out a portable word wall they can use and add to as the year went on. Pinterest has tons of options for any of these items, so make sure to check there!
5. Get your cute Daily 5 signs! Teachers Pay Teachers and Pinterest all have adorable templates and already made Daily 5 classroom packs! I know you can find some for free, because of beginning of the year promotions and there are some free ones on Pinterest. It just helps to make your classroom look a little sharper as you're getting Daily 5 going, and one less thing you have to make!

Presentation to give to Faculty and Staff

As a final bonus, I've posted a presentation I made for my school this year to help teachers get a bit more oriented to Daily 5 after they read their books this summer. Feel free to click on the link below and use the presentation for your staff development or to show your principal if you're interested in implementing Daily 5 at your school!

How to Daily 5 Presentation

Thanks again for stopping by, and until next time!

Yours in Literacy,

The Reading Specialista