This year I moved from 1st grade to 6th grade English Language Arts/Social Studies. I expected there to be a bigger divide, but I am amazed to discover that some of the same skills are abundantly necessary and unfortunately, still missing. The most evident holes popping up?
1. missing phonemic awareness/spelling rules
2. lack of word attack skills (decoding)
3. lack of academic vocabulary
3. unclear understanding of text structures
See? The same issues I saw in the foundational years are still affecting learning in the upper grades. the biggest evidence? Students are unable to access text to learn.
In kindergarten to the beginning of 3rd grade, students are learning how to read. Then in 3rd grade, it begins to shift from learning how to read to reading to learn. For students to be successful in middle school and beyond, they have to have a strong base.
So how to solve the problem? I am sure my struggling students had good teachers that worked hard on all these skills. I would also hazard a guess that some negative behavior choices affected learning. And now these students are expected to research and find information... gasp... on their own! And many are unable to do so.
So I started a few easy to do, quick daily and weekly activities to hep repair these gaps.
First, a Word of the Week. Using WordSmythe, students focus on the syllabication, meaning, synonyms, and visual representation of an academic word. Since I was astounded to realize some of 6th graders didn't know what to do when asked to analyze or evaluate, I started with the key verbs from the learning standards. On Monday, students research the word and put their information into a graphic organizer on Seesaw. Then all directions for all assignments for the week include that word. When we were working on analyzing, we analyzed text structures, character motivations, plot, and ancient civilizations. Each week, we change the work and use it as often as possible. I'm thinking about possibly adding a tracker so any time students use the word correctly, they get points towards a fun activity at the end of the week.
Next, any time a student asks how to spell something, I do a think aloud that goes something like this: "Hmm. (repeats word). That has (tapping out sounds) 5 sounds. Let's see. I would spell the (first sound) with the letter(s) XX, the next sound with the letter(s) XX, etc... So how would you spell it?" The conversation is quick and by the time I'm giving the last sound, the student generally has it already spelled correctly. If the word is has an odd spelling (ough), I will simply give them the spelling. I always give one of the rules to one of the sounds in the word. For example: ledge - no English word ends with a j so we use a ge, but since e is a short vowel, we add the d to keep it short.
Not only do students get phonemic awareness skills they might have missed, but they also get small doses of phonics rules they may not know. Again, I make these conversations VERY brief.
This attention to a vocabulary word and use of a think aloud lead to learning about the morphology of words. It's easy to take each small conversation a step farther and talk about how the prefix changes the word or how the suffix changes the use of the word. I'm working on teaching the Greek and Latin origins of words, at which point that will be added into the weekly vocabulary research activity.
Last, text structure matters. When you know what you will be reading and how it is laid out, it is much easier to find and understand the content. I teach text structures using a combination of chants and organizers made by Nancy Fetzer and the allegory of a city street. I draw a road, then about 5 buildings to represent a house, a store, a skyscraper, etc. I talk about how there are 5 main non fiction text structures that can be built. We talk about compare/contrast and label one of the buildings, description, problem/solution, sequencing, and cause and effect. But then I ask how we will access the buildings (there are no doors or windows). That's when we add text features, which help us access the information in the buildings. We add doors, windows, chimneys and other features and label them glossaries, photographs, diagrams, etc.
Next to the non fiction street is the amusement park at the end of the street. This is where we can find the roller coaster (or mountain depending on which organizer you use for fiction). Here there is an exposition with characters and settings, rising actions, climax, resolution... you get the point.
Then we compare/contrast the structures. We talk about why they are shaped how they are and why it matters. We talk about how to get our brains ready to find information in the text by how the structure is set up.
The last thing we do is split the wall in half. On one side we put our plot map (usually shaped like a mountain) and label the text features. Above it we put the genres associated with fiction. Underneath we put the graphic organizers we use to find character traits, motivations, and theme.
On the other side we put the nonfiction text feature posters. Class Magalong has a nice set. I use the ones from Primary Punch. Above them, we place genres associated with nonfiction. underneath we put text feature posters. Then whenever I introduce a new text, we can figure out what structure it is and how we are going to access it.
Together, these small things are allowing struggling students to successfully read and create text. They are getting better at finding information, giving thoughtful answers to questions, and writing better stories. While some students are already prepared to increase their learning by reading, I am excited to watch as more students learn to read by reading to learn.
