Do you think of phonemic awareness as baby skills? Or skills that are too easy for your students, who REALLY need to focus on real reading skills like phonics? 

     So many schools put their main focus on phonics and completely ignore phonemic awareness skills…but what if I told you that these skills really DO make a big impact on student learning? What if I told you a shocking number of students come in to schools without strong phonemic awareness skills and it impacts their entire educational career???

Even 4th graders need phonemic awareness skills.

     I had a teacher ask me a few weeks  ago… How the heck am I supposed to help these kids??? She was talking about kids who have been struggling with phonics since they were in first grade (she’s a 4th grade teacher). It seems like they haven’t made any progress, despite years of intervention. These kids are smart, they pick up on things in class. But phonics? Not working. 

     After talking about it for a while, I asked her to do a quick screener for me. I sent her a phonemic screener. She saw it and said “This is way too baby, why are you giving me this??” 

     Well, after she made fun of me for wasting her time and to prove me wrong….she did the screener. My friend lost her mind at how poorly her students did on these “baby skills”.  

     Turns out, all this time the interventions were focused on phonics, but her students had the worst time trying to blend or segment sounds in words. They literally couldn’t hear the individual sounds in the words. THAT’s why they weren’t making any progress in phonics.

     All of a sudden it clicked for both of us. We may think that we are really delving into the most basic skills when we focus on phonics. Reading doesn’t start at letters and their sounds. Reading starts with phonemic awareness.

Phonemic awareness is….

     Phonemic awareness is a smaller piece of phonological awareness. We will talk more about phonological awareness in future posts, so stay tuned in!

     Phonemic awareness skills focus on a student’s ability to identify and manipulate the individual sounds in a word. The fancy term for sounds in words is “phonemes”. 

     These skills are vitally important because they directly relate to a student’s ability to hear the individual sounds in words. Being able to here the phonemes in words is the foundation for phonics. Those students who just seem to not “get” phonics often have poor phonemic awareness skills. 

Why do we skip over phonemic awareness?

There are several reasons teachers skip past these skills:

• Phonemic awareness skills seem like “baby” skills.
• We see phonics as the “real” work in teaching reading.
• Many teachers think that phonics is the most basic skill in reading.
• There is a lot of pressure to make big gains quickly for struggling learners.
• There is a misunderstanding about the impact that poor phonemic awareness skills may have on student learning.

Does phonemic awareness really matter?

     YES!

     I hinted at it earlier, but yes, phonemic awareness skills do directly relate to much more advanced skills. Skills such as decoding, understanding word families, and writing are impacted. 

     I was speaking to an SLP a few days ago about students who struggle with articulation. We realized that phonemic awareness can also use support students in these areas. Being able to break down and put together the phonemes in a word helps students learn and use the sounds they need to articulate. 

     Students who are struggling with phonics may benefit from phonemic practice. Check those phonemic awareness skills, that’s usually the root cause of struggles with phonics.

    Some students struggling with word families, or sounding out words may not hear the phonemes in the words. 

     We will talk more about phonological awareness later on, but students who skip words when writing sentences, could could have a phonological awareness issue. We will get there in future posts. 

Ok, so phonemic awareness is important….what do I do?

     There are lots of diagnostic assessments available free from google. Use one of these screeners to determine if phonemic skills are the main issue. 

     This screener will tell you what specific phonemic awareness skill to focus on. 

Over the next 4 weeks, I will be posting about the specific phonemic awareness skills that students need. Check out the posts for specific ideas to teach and progress monitor those skills! 

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The post What is Phonemic Awareness? appeared first on Teaching Struggling Learners.

     There are many students struggling in schools. According to the NAEP only about 40% of students are reading on grade level in 4th or 8th grade. That means that students are overwhelmingly working below where they should be. This impacts their success both in school and after.

     It is important that we drill down to the most basic skill deficits and start there for remediation. 

Click the photo to learn about how to effectively close achievement gaps.

Why do we need to focus on basics?

My kids got all of these Lego sets for Christmas. My 7 year old is great at building these sets. Most of the time he dives right in and follows the directions straight through and is able to build these truly impressive things. Because he loves building so much, he also got another building set. 

For some reason, when my son opened this set up, he started trying to build from the middle of the directions. He skipped over all the basic steps, then got really REALLY frustrated when the pieces he was putting together didn’t go together right or broke apart.

When I asked him why he started in the middle he said that he thought all of those steps were too easy. He already knew how to put all of it together.

It was shocking to him that he couldn’t skip over those basic skills to get to the fun stuff, the stuff he thought was going to be the best part. He was super frustrated with me when I made him take all of the pieces apart and start over at the beginning. 

But you know what? 

Because he had the foundations of the project he was working on, the whole thing came together so much easier and in a lot less time than I had hoped. Because I was really hoping it would take longer so I could finish my coffee in peace….HA! Not Today Mommy!

That whole pre-coffee frustrating experience came to mind when I sat down to do this blog post.

It is just like us when we start working on skill deficits with our students.

We look at our students who are struggling  and try to just make it work right now. This may work in the short term, but the minute we add another more advanced level to their learning, it all falls apart again. That is because we put a band aid on the problem instead of fixing the root of the problem which is the foundational skill deficit. 

Just like when my son couldn’t put together this complicated car because he didn’t have the basic pieces put together, our students can’t build good solid understanding if they don’t have basic skills. When we keep trying to fix the grade level struggles, we prevent students from making real progress. We are taking time that could be used fixing the basic skill deficits and using it instead to try to help kids who are already behind to keep up. 

That process of focusing on the grade level, rather than the student’s skill level, is why interventions are like pulling teeth for our students and the teachers. Those groups, especially in the older grades, are almost torture. The kids know that what progress they are making is at a snail’s pace, and the teachers are fighting a losing battle with time. 

If we want to see exponential progress for our students, progress that impacts the entire subject area, we have to get down to the most basic skill deficit.

For example, in math, students who struggle with basic fact fluency struggle with almost everything else…word problems, equations, money calculations, application problems, all the way up to algebra and geometry. When we improve a student’s basic math fact fluency, their grades in their grade level math class almost immediately improve. That change doesn’t happen when we focus on the grade level information when there are basic skill deficits. The same is true for reading.

When students are taught about prefix and suffixes, their vocabulary improves, as does their comprehension and their writing almost immediately. That time is well spent working on those basic skill deficits, when we look at the student as a whole. 

I’ve had many teachers and parents tell me that there is no way that their student will get that basic skill, so we have to move on.

I respectfully disagree.

I’ve taught hundreds of students how to read and do basic math.

I have yet to find a student with average IQ that couldn’t learn the skill….just students who we hadn’t presented the skill in a way that they understood yet. By changing up how I presented or had them practice the skill, all of my students have eventually gotten it.

Sometimes you hit on that one thing that makes it click for a student.  Most of the time it takes trying one way, then revamping it and trying something else. But, as long as we keep trying, the students will make progress. That is something that I believe and have believed since I began teaching decades ago. 

I truly believe that the only difference between a student who can and a student who can’t is their exposure to the skill in a way that the student can understand and internalize.

The further from our learning mode that the student is, the more difficult it is to teach the skill deficits.

I always encourage teachers who are very different in their styles to team up and share students. My style works for some students, but my friend teaches it a different way that makes it click for others.

We all have those poor teachers in our buildings who are just really good with behaviors. Admin PILE the behaviors in their rooms. I don’t think this is the answer, but the concept isn’t completely off.

I am really good with behaviors in my classroom, up to a certain point. Balance the behaviors so I can help several students while still getting to teach IS a good idea. Maybe allow me to teach some of my colleagues how to work with behaviors more effectively. That way we can share the wealth.

We need to do the same thing with academics. We could think outside the box and have students who aren’t making progress with one teaching style get some exposure with a different styles. See if that helps.

The one thing that we need to stop doing is wasting student time just working on grade level material. Students need to conquer basic skill deficits if they are going to actually close achievement gaps.

So, let’s get down to basics!

Click here to learn more about how we can close achievement gaps quickly by getting down to basics!

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This time of year it seems like everyone is making resolutions about…well…just about everything. 

We make these big plans about how much weight we are going to lose or gain. How much healthier we are going to be. Basically we plan to be better people?

As teachers, we make these same type of resolutions for our classrooms and our students. We talk about how we are going to get the students able to write a complete paragraph, or read a chapter book. We come up with these big projects that we know are going to be a massive time suck and frustration-maker.

Very few of the goals we plan make it easier to work with students.

We do this every year because the new year is so full of possibilities.

Honestly, we teachers are actually pretty lucky if you think about it. Most of the world gets one chance a year to restart, but we get 2. At least those of us in the United States do.

We start fresh in August, and then again in January. Our students have the same opportunity, if we give it to them.

I want to encourage you this January to go back to your classroom with all the hype of making new resolutions. Use that to get your students on board to meet some really important goals or milestones. Make some goals that help you work with students rather than them working against you.

How? Actually, it’s pretty easy.

Have a real conversation with a small group of students, or maybe even pairs or one-on-one if you can swing it. Talk about some wins that they and you had last semester, and what are some next steps or milestones that would REALLY make a difference in helping that student or group of students be more successful.

Plan ways to work with students to help them feel more successful in the classroom.

Kids are very aware of areas they are weak in. There is no point in trying to hide their weaknesses from them.

Having an honest and open conversation about where students are struggling and what steps they could take to reach a milestone does a world of good in building strong relationships with students. It also gets students on board to work with instead of against you. 

Help students to create their own goals that they can have control over. This would be things that THEY can measure and are meaningful to them. Give students steps THEY can take to meet those goals.

In a world that feels so out of control, give our students something that they can control and we will help them control. This helps their confidence, and our ability to make real change in their learning outcomes. All of a sudden we are working with students rather than against them.

For more information about ways to make goals, check out this FREEBIE that helps you make goals with students. Or check out the blog post for ideas: Making Goals from Screener Data.

Yes, I’m talking about SMART goals for students.

Here is how I’ve gotten kids on board with goals we were working on in the classroom so I was able to work with students on a new level.

First, have that real conversation with your students about what they see as their biggest weaknesses. Help the students to determine which weakness is most in the way of their ability to learn. 

The weakness has to be something they have direct control over.

If students are struggling to understand the vocabulary in their textbooks, they could be taught prefixes, suffixes, or root words. That’s a measurable thing, knowing the meanings of root words or prefixes or suffixes.

Next, help them come up with a goal with an end date. For example, they will know the meaning of 20 root words by the end of the quarter. You can help them make a list or just provide them with a list of root words that would most help them  in the subject area they are struggling. 

After a goal with an end date is set up, talk about and plan how the student can move toward that goal. This plan has to make sense for the student, and be doable.

An example of something that would be realistic is the student reviewing 4 or 5 vocab words every day before reading groups. Or for older students, have the student spend the time the teacher is taking attendance to study some vocab words every day. That helps the student to have a natural reminder to do that vocab practice during the school day, and let’s face it, it’s an added incentive for us to actually take attendance at the beginning of the class period every day. That is really working with students on multiple levels.

Finally, help the student think of a way to track progress toward their goal. Decide if the student will track their progress weekly, bi-weekly, or maybe monthly depending on the goal. Tracking their own progress can be very motivating for students, especially if the goal is a realistic one and they can start to see progress quickly. Seeing progress helps all of us to want to stay on track to win. When teachers work with students to make attainable goals, staying on track gets easy.

For a step-by-step guide in setting goals with students, click here.

And winning, making those gains, meeting our goals or surpassing them….that’s what we are all about isn’t it? Every day being a little bit bigger than the day before. 

Just imagine the change we could make for so many students if we were able to work with students rather than at odds with them. 

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The post How to Work With Students in 2022 appeared first on Teaching Struggling Learners.

     So, when we last talked about universal screeners, we talked about how the information that we get from the beginning of the year data should be taken with some reservation. After all summer slide is a thing, and the kids are more capable than what that test shows. 

     Screener data does give us some good ideas on things that we can review at the beginning of the school year to help get the kids back up to pace quickly.

     The data also gives us a good starting point for making goals for our students this year.

What is the most basic skill your student is weak in? That is your starting point for making goals.

     After you’ve had a chance to really look at the data, and your students, you’ll want to really dig down into the skills that your struggling students have. Figure out what is the most basic skill set that they are weak in.  That skill is the one that you’ll want to work on and progress monitor. Making goals is pretty easy when you know where to start.

     Identifying the skill you are going to work on is half the battle. The next steps are figuring out where the student is right now in that skill set.

     For example, is your student able to read 40 words in a minute, and to be on grade level they need to read 95?

     You could look at that and make your goal: Given an instructional level text, the student will be able to read 60 words in one minute at the end of the first 9 weeks.

Making goals isn’t just about getting kids on grade level.

     Will the student be on grade level at the end of the first 9 weeks?

      Nope, probably not, but if you give a student texts that they can mostly read and start working on fluency, the student will boost their reading fluency a whole lot faster than if you give them texts that are too hard and frustrate them into fighting reading.

     Making goals isn’t just about getting the student on grade level as quickly as possible. It is about giving the student an opportunity to feel success by meeting a goal in an area they struggle in.

      Just like with adults, successfully completing a goal is almost addicting for students. Once the student has met one goal, they are willing to work even harder to meet the next one. We are in this for the long game. Which is getting the student the skills they need for long term success. Yes, we want the student on grade level as soon as possible, but making goals that are impossible isn’t going to make that happen. 

Click here for a guide to making goals quickly and easily.

     Making goals doesn’t have to be hard work.

     Choose a specific skill set the student needs to work on, based on the screener data. Then think carefully about what the student will be able to accomplish in a short time frame. 

     After you’ve made your goals, be sure to monitor your student’s progress so that you can celebrate success together!

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The post Making Goals from Screener Data appeared first on Teaching Struggling Learners.

     We all know the beginning of school is super stressful, and if you’re like me, it feels like we just stinking left from the craziest year ever! But, there is one thing we can count on when we get back into all of it. Our students are going to get hit with that beginning of the school year testing. 

     Universal screener testing is the official start to the race in a lot of schools. That testing is the starting point, off which all the growth that students make all year is based. So, it really is important, even if it is a pain in the butt to do it in the first few weeks of school. 

Let’s take a minute to acknowledge that the summer slide is a thing.

     It will be reflected in that first test. So, before you look at that first set of universal screeners data, keep in mind that it really isn’t as bad as it looks right there. The students ARE more capable than it shows there. But we still have a lot of work to do to get them where we want them to be. 

     Ok, now that we got that panic reducing piece of information out of the way. How the heck do we use the information the universal screeners give us?

     Way too often, we get that data, marvel at how low our students are, make some quick plans to start a little lower than we thought, lower our expectations and get moving. The next time we look at that data will be after the next session of testing is complete. 

I strongly suggest you take a second look at that data, and compare it to what your kids were able to do at the end of last school year.

   You see, when we look at what they were able to do (and they will be able to do again), it gives us a better idea for the growth we should expect our kids to make. The kids have a lot of skills that they are rusty on from not using in the summer. That doesn’t mean they have lost them completely. Before you throw your expectations to the wind, take a deep breath and look at what the kids were able to do in the last assessment. Compare it to your first assessment.

     Using both data points, make a choice about what quick review is needed versus what students need intensive support to help them get on grade level in a timely manner. 

Once you’ve compared the universal screeners data, figure out which students need the highest amount of support.

     Many universal screeners give a list of benchmarks that the student needs to master to meet the next level of skills. Take a look at the most basic skills that are listed and use that to delve a little deeper. Are there more basic skills that lead to that skill that the student is weak in. For example, if the student is struggling to blend letter sounds to make words, does the student know all their letter sounds fluently? Are they able to blend sounds without letters to make words? Those more basic skills, when missing, make all of the more advanced skills more difficult. 

     Once you’ve figured out the most basic skill that is weak, you know the point where you need to start your interventions.

     Yes, I hear you upper grades teachers.

     How are you going to work on phonemic awareness when the students clearly need to work on their comprehension???? But here’s the thing….all the practice in the world on comprehension strategies isn’t going to work if the student can’t read fluently. All the fluency practice in the world is going to give very little results if the student can’t decode. And decoding practice is only effective when students have the phonemic and phonological awareness skills they need.

     No matter what age or grade the student is in, we have to meet students where they are in order to make true progress. 

We have a limited amount of time, and we need to get the most out of the time that we do have.

    So, after we know where we are starting for the individual students, take a look at the students who need the interventions. Group them so that they have similar interventions. Use the universal screeners information to help with this task.

   All the students who need help on phonemic awareness or phonics should be grouped so that lesson plans and interventions can be provided appropriately. Weekly or bi-weekly progress checks help us to see if the skills we are teaching are making an impact and if the student isn’t making progress, clearly a changeup is needed. 

     There is no point in making a student complete an intervention just to say we did it. If the student isn’t making progress, change up what you’re doing! If we know it isn’t going to work, stop wasting time and find something that will! Students deserve that….and so do we as teachers. We deserve to see our students make big progress, we deserve to show that the hard work we put into our students pays off!

     Once you have your basic skills identified, your groupings, and your idea on what you want to do…it’s time to get started progress monitoring!

For how to get started progress monitoring, check out the 5 Steps to Getting Started with Progress Monitoring guide.

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     What are achievement gaps?

     By definition, achievement gap is a term used to describe the difference in learning gains between two groups of students. The groups could be based on gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status, or learning opportunities such as students included in special education or honors courses.

    We tend to talk about achievement gaps when we are discussing the outcomes of standardized tests or graduation rates.

When we talk about achievement gaps, we are usually talking about standardized tests.

     Some assessments give individual classroom teachers information about how they perform when their class of students is broken up into the different groups. What those standardized tests don’t account for is the individuality of each student.  They also don’t account for their experience at school and at home.

     When we look at individual students, it can be helpful to compare their individual growth compared to that of their average peer. This lets us know if their learning gains are at the same pace as their peers, faster, or slower. In many states, this comparison is how students can be identified as having a learning disability.

     I won’t go into the specifics about that right now.  It is helpful to use the comparison of where students are to their peers to help get an idea of how much progress they need to make to get on grade level. Students who are below grade level have to learn more at a faster rate to get on grade level and stay there. It is possible when we fix those weak skills they have. 

    What are some things we know about achievement gaps?

     Achievement gaps occur across grade levels in all states. The reasons for these gaps are varied. Many of them boil down to opportunities presented before students ever get to school. 

So, what causes achievement gaps?

    We know that students who have the opportunity to be read to consistently before kindergarten perform better once they reach school. Children who participate in preschool tend to have better learning outcomes. Students who have good nutrition and safe home environments perform better than those who do not. These, and so many other factors can and do play a part in achievement gaps.

     Even students who have the cards stacked against them can be successful. Teachers work hard every day to support all students. Through everything that schools do, from meal programs to community outreaches, students have greater opportunities to succeed than ever before. 

     The number of intervention programs out there which focus on specific skill sets blows my mind honestly. But I do think that we are making the progress monitoring intervention process much more complicated than it needs to be. I have seen students in all the different groups make great gains academically when the root cause of the struggle is identified. Also, supports are provided that focus on this one skill set. 

While teachers cannot fix all of the issues that contribute to achievement gaps, we can do so much in our classrooms to mitigate many of them.

   We can  use progress monitoring, at its simplest level to make sure that students who start at a disadvantage receive the support that they need to be able to be academically successful. To do that, we need a jumping off point and a way to compare where our students are versus where they need to be. For that, we can use universal screeners to help us figure out our starting points. 

    So, what are achievement gaps? Achievement gaps are what we see when we compare student groups. While they are a problem, we can work together to overcome them. 

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     Yes, that statement is a bold one to make. People within education have been debating the benefits of progress monitoring and its connection to achievement gaps for more than 20 years. 

     And, I do not make this claim lightly. I make it because I have seen it many times over in my career. 

     The best example I can give of how progress monitoring has changed the trajectory of a student’s education is the story of me.

Progress monitoring changed my life.

     When I was 6, I was diagnosed with dyslexia. That story isn’t new, I’ve shared it many times before. But I will share it again here because it plays a part on what I’m about to say about progress monitoring and my achievement gaps.

     I attended a public school, and while all my teachers thought I was a “sweet” little girl, I really wasn’t very smart. I was quiet in class, and did what the teachers said. But, being sweet wasn’t getting the job done. I wasn’t learning my letters or sounds like the other kids. 

     When it came to reading from the textbook, I was smart enough to watch the other kids, and listened to the sentences that we all repeated. When it was my turn, I repeated what everyone else said. My teachers thought I could read. But I couldn’t, and I knew it. The fact is, my learning differences went unnoticed and unappreciated at that time. 

     So, one truly epic day, I came home and threw my backpack down and screamed “I can’t read!” Like I said earlier, I was a quiet kid, so this shocked my grandmother. She claimed that I didn’t get in trouble for yelling, but I know her better than that. But that story is one for another post. 

I never should have learned to read based on the facts.

At 6 years 6 months, I could barely identify 13 letters, and knew fewer sounds. I couldn’t read any sight words, had no idea what it meant to blend sounds, and most of the time couldn’t even keep the letters on the paper.

     Basically, I had absolutely no phonics skills. Letters were scribbles on the paper that made really cool shapes when I concentrated on them. Half way through first grade, I had little hope of ever learning to read.

     At that time, dyslexia was a new idea. The shapes that my brain made were a completely new concept, and my teacher told my mom there was nothing that could be done. 

6 Months later, due to interventions and progress monitoring, I was reading on grade level.

     I have dedicated my life to helping kids get the intensive help they need to get and stay on grade level. 

     I have personally experienced the power that intense interventions, along with progress monitoring can have on closing achievement gaps. 

     Now, in addition to teaching kids how to read, write, and do basic math, I teach TEACHERS how to leverage progress monitoring to help their students. 

Why is progress monitoring so important?

     According to 2017 NAEP data, less than 40% of students in 4th and 8th grades are able to read on grade level.  The state testing data from many states agrees that the majority of students are reading below grade level throughout school. 

     That means that many students are missing key foundational skills such as phonemic awareness. The best way to fix achievement gaps is through intensive supports and progress monitoring. 

     The fact is, many students are leaving elementary schools without the skills that they need to be successful. High school teachers are finding students who don’t have the basic reading, writing, and math skills that they need to be able to access the curriculum. This impacts student’s abilities to choose the courses they want to take, and their options after high school.

     If we want students to be able to pursue their passions, we have to give them the tools they need to be successful. The most effective way to do this is to incorporate progress monitoring into our classrooms. This practice closes achievement gaps, and gives kids the opportunity to choose their future. 

     Be sure to download my freebie: 5 Steps to Getting Started with Progress Monitoring today. This free eBook will walk you through the first steps to getting progress monitoring set up and running efficiently in your classroom this week!

If we want to close achievement gaps, there are a few things we need to do….

• We need to admit that there are a large number of students needing support.
• Identify the students who are the most in need of support.
• Look closely at the students and determine the most basic skill deficits.
• Set up progress monitoring systems to support the students.
• Progress monitor students to determine if the interventions have worked.

The earlier that we start progress monitoring, the easier it is to close achievement gaps quickly.

     This does not mean that progress monitoring isn’t useful in later grades! 

     I have argued with lots of middle and high school administrators that RTI and progress monitoring isn’t useful for their ages. IT IS!!!

     The fact is, by the time students are in middle and high school, the achievement gap is massive, and the amount of help these students need is huge. These students still can succeed, but the supports will have to be much more intense. It is just easier to solve these problems earlier on in school.

     Again, it is easier in lower grades, but NOT IMPOSSIBLE in higher grades. Don’t let age or grade deter you from starting and using progress monitoring in your classroom. I have seen it work at all ages and grades. 

Click here to download 5 Steps to Getting Started with Progress Monitoring

     Progress monitoring closes achievement gaps. The hard work that teachers put in to working with their students is not wasted! Big gains are possible when we work intentionally on skill deficits. 

     Are you ready to get started with me? Download 5 Steps to Getting Started with Progress Monitoring today! We will support students in pursuing their dreams together! 

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This skill leads right into the phonemic awareness skills, which we already talked about in a bunch of earlier posts.

Just like with identifying rhyming words, this skill set directly correlates with successful work with word families.

In relation to phonemic awareness, teaching onset-rime will help students with blending and segmenting the individual phonemes in words, once the student progresses to that skill set.

Linking the phonemes and groups of phonemes to manipulatives helps students to make the concept more concrete.

For example, take a picture of a frog, and cut the picture into 1 small and 1 large piece. Make sure to have the small piece be on the left so that when moving the pieces you’ll move from left to right, like when we are reading. 

Don’t you love how we can sneak in little things like that to reinforce all the other skills that we don’t necessarily have time to reinforce all the time. 

Say /f/ and slide the small piece forward, then /rog/ and slide the larger piece to make the picture. You may need to model it several times for the student to understand what you want them to do. Continue with other pictures, you modeling with the student practicing until you feel like the student is ready to try one on their own. 

That skill practice lends itself perfectly to progress monitoring onset rime.

Count the times they attempted the skill independently and how many times they were correct and you have a graphable data point for the week. Remember, progress monitoring doesn’t have to be a big showy assessment, it can be small data checks that the student doesn’t even know are assessments. I’ve always felt like these small assessments were more accurate than larger tests which caused so much anxiety and frustration for students who were already struggling.

Any of the phonological awareness skills, including onset rime, can be assessed in quick little data checks. When I first started working on assessing goals for response to intervention, I thought that the data points had to come from specific assessments which took up extra time. Eventually I realized that if I integrate the data checks into the flow of the lessons, I can much more easily get the information I need without wasting time on another assessment. I don’t know about you, but I think kids are being assessed way too much formally. That is why I try really hard to find sneaky ways to get my data without adding more assessments! 

If you are looking for more information on progress monitoring or data collection, check out my 5 Step Guide to Getting Started with Progress Monitoring. It won’t disappoint!

If you DM me on Instagram, I’d love to talk about ways that you can integrate onset rime data checks into your small groups so that you can gather your information and keep right on teaching. I think we all could use more time in the day, so finding sneaky ways to take back our time from assessments is important to me!

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The post What Is Onset Rime? appeared first on Teaching Struggling Learners.

Confession time…I hate teaching rhyme and alliteration. There, I said it. I hate it. It seemed like a useless skill, unless you are trying to produce poetry, otherwise what is the point.

I don’t like teaching it because I have a hard time hearing it to this day. I have to pull apart the words and make a mental effort to figure out if two words rhyme. It will ruin my day.  I put off working on it with my older son, and am actively putting off working on it with my younger son. That is how much I hate it. 

I learned about rhyming words a long time ago, have had ages of practice, but still have to put forth effort to do it. I can teach it to kids, who can then do it more easily than I can! Talk about frustrating!

That is the reality we teachers face. Sometimes we can teach a skill. We can have students practice a skill until they are able to do it independently. But that doesn’t mean that the skill we teach will be EASY for them. As much as we say practice makes perfect or better or EASY. Sometimes students brains are wired differently…like mine. It isn’t that they CAN’T or WON’T, but that it isn’t easy. And honestly none of us want to continue to practice something that doesn’t get any easier with all the practice we put forth.

For me it is rhyming. For a student you have, it could be rhyming or learning letter sounds or how to blend sounds. No matter what the skill, the students CAN learn….but that doesn’t mean it will be easy for them.

That is rhyming for me in a nutshell. A task that I avoid until I can’t anymore.

So….why DO we bother teaching it?

Turns out that rhyme really does help students become more familiar with the sounds of words. It prepares them to understand and benefit from word families. It also helps students hear all the different parts of words, and be able to segment words as they become more advanced in their phonological awareness. 

Rhyme and alliteration are important skills to teach, and practice. This is especially true for students who are struggling with their reading.

Students who need more than just a quick refresher to get back on track with rhyming or alliteration may need more intensive intervention, including progress monitoring. 

Just like with all progress monitoring, going into the task with the materials that you need, and a goal to reach for is really important. Yes, have the practice ready and how you plan to teach the skill. Don’t forget to write down the progress information consistently so that you can show the student, and possibly their parents, the progress they are making. 

For more information on progress monitoring, check out my 5 Step Guide to Getting Started with Progress Monitoring. It will help you get your feet on solid ground when it comes to progress monitoring!

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     When students read in class, do they struggle with pronouncing words correctly? I don’t mean articulation errors. I mean when they read words, do you know what word they mean, but they are putting too much or too little emphasis on certain pieces of the words? This can really mess with the fluidity of reading, and make a good story or piece of text terrible to listen to. 

   The first few months of hearing my older son read were such a mixture of pride and wanting to stick earplugs in while he read. Yes, seriously. There is a fluidity with the way that we pronounce words and sentences. Without the fluidity, listening to someone reading is so ugh! 

Good syllabication skills enhance the listening experience for everyone….including the person reading…which directly impacts their comprehension.

     Continuing on with our journey through phonological awareness…this week we are talking about how being able to identify or count syllables can impact future learning.

     Just like with all of the other skills that we’ve talk about with phonological awareness or phonemic awareness for that matter, without these foundational skills, all other learning is shaky at best. 

     When it comes to counting syllables in words, my younger grades teachers know that we do have this in our standards, so it is hit. Though maybe not as much as it should. There are just so many more advanced skills that teachers feel pressured to get to. Counting syllables can be an easy one to gloss over.

Glossing over counting syllables is a mistake. It makes future reading skills more shaky than they need to be.

     Being able to hear the natural breaks in words, and where to place the emphasis in spoken words helps to build fluidity in our speaking and eventually in our reading. Most kids naturally learn to speak fluidly, which means keeping an appropriate rhythm and rate when speaking. Teaching them to break down the syllables in words helps to improve this skill, even in students who are pretty good at it already.

     When students get to the reading phase, having strong phonological syllabication skills helps students to read more fluently, emphasize words correctly, and improves their comprehension of texts they read.

    More importantly, being able to read with a good rate and hear the flow of the words helps to make reading more enjoyable. The more kids enjoy reading, the more they will read and improve their reading skills. It is a beautiful cycle when it works that way. Counting syllables enhances the reading experience and increases reading rates. 

Even if students know their phonics rules, if they struggle to read with a nice comfortable flow, it can impact their enjoyment of the text as well as their comprehension.

    So, what’s a teacher to do about teaching counting syllables to students? What about grades where syllabication isn’t emphasized?

     Much like when teaching counting words in sentences, getting kids moving really helps them to hear the breaks (or syllables) in the words. I think most of us learned to count syllables by clapping. Another option is jumping, hopping, stepping, or moving physical items like counters. The more we can get kids moving or using items to help them, the more easily they will internalize the skill we are teaching. 

     Personally, I like to use those red and yellow circle counters for teaching kids to count syllables. Yes, I know that I’ve mentioned using the little mini cars and things like that in the past.

     Here’s my secret with all of this. I try to use different manipulatives for the different skills I want the students to practice. Maybe it is just the way that my brain works. I do think that it is easier for students to more quickly jump into the skill when they know that they use cars to blend or segment phonemes, but they use the red and yellow counters to count syllables. Seeing something different helps the student to grasp the different skill sets they are mastering. Plus, changing up the manipulatives helps to make the activities a little more interesting. This is true especially when they never know what Mrs. Curtis will be pulling out for them to use! 

All the practice in the world for a skill doesn’t mean that we know that a student is mastering the concept….for that…we need to progress monitor the skill set.

     Progress monitoring really is the key to supporting true academic gains for students. By tracking how the students are doing on an area of deficit, we know without any doubt whether we need to reteach or move on. Or maybe you can really really move on because the student is ready for the next skill set. Plus, it just is such a feel good moment when you get to show a student a graph of how much they have improved over time in a particular area.

     Kids, especially those who are struggling, work so hard and see so little gain from it in grades. But when we can show them how their hard word is paying off, it really boosts their confidence. It helps them to keep working toward their goals. 

To get started progress monitoring, click here to grab the free 5 Steps to Getting Started with Progress Monitoring Guide

     If you are wanting to progress monitor counting syllables, make sure that you group your words by number of syllables. For example, you might work on words with 1 to 3 syllables to progress monitor.

    Once students start getting more confident in their skills, open it up to 1 to 5 syllables. I’ve never really bothered having students count syllables above 5. This is because those are some big, complicated words. But also because once they can get 5 syllables, students seem to be able to generalize to bigger words pretty easily. That is a call that you’ll need to make to determine if the skill is mastered.

     My students, by that time, were able to generalize the skill to really really big words. Your student may need more explicit practice beyond 5. 

     So, once your students master counting syllables. What else is there in phonological awareness? Well, next week we are going to talk about rhyming and alliteration…and how we can help even more students lay a strong phonological foundation for those reading skills.

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The post Counting Syllables in Words appeared first on Teaching Struggling Learners.