Reading Support 1/2 News

May 16, 2024 I just finished reading assessments for all my students!  I saw a lot of growth. It was so obvious how the students have been working on their reading and I am incredibly proud of my students!

In class, we studied long o vowels such as ow and ou. We also studied long e vowels like ee and ea.  This past week we reviewed vowel teams. We played a memory game, did a write the room, and Bingo.  We will be studying long i words next (igh, sometimes y) and r-controlled vowels (ar, or).  After that, we will have a last class to play review games and celebrate all their hard work!  

Your students have done incredible!  I am so proud of them!

April 25, 2024 In reading class, we have been working on vowel teams such as ai and ay.  We enjoyed a classroom party with Pixar Shorts movies and goodies.  Thanks for all who contributed.

We will continue to work on different vowel teams in the coming weeks.  

May 31 is Community Day and the last day of in class attendance is June 11, so please mark your calendars:)

Also, May 6-24 will be testing so each day will be a two hour late start and classes will be shortened to 45 minutes.

Lastly, I will be absent on May 2 and 3 as I will be attending my daughter's national dance competition.  

April 13, 2024 

Please sign up for reading assessments:  Here is a copy of the letter I sent home for signing up for our reading assessments with the signup link.

Dear Reading Support families,

Please sign your student up for Reading Inventories to assess their current reading level.  Testing will be done April 15 until May 1 and will either be after school or on Wednesdays.  All students in my reading classes need to sign up for an assessment time!  It should take about 15 minutes.  The assessments will take place at my desk in room 6.

The link to sign up for a time is provided here:  https://signup.com/go/WYnxxXk

Thank you for signing up as soon as possible.

Robynne Boysen

April 12, 2024  

We have earned a  class party on April 24, 2024!  They have opted to watch a movie for the second half of class.  I will provide popcorn. They  may bring an additional snack if they would like.    

We are back into the swing of things after spring break!  We have been working on vowel teams after working on soft and hard c and g. This week we worked on ai and ay.  We will continue with ee and ea next week, slowly working our way through different vowel partnerships and long vowel sounds.  Then we will begin working with R-controlled vowels such as ur and ir.  

As always, we begin with an entry assignment at our desks, have a lesson on the carpet, read a passage related to our lesson out loud, and then play a game to reinforce the concept and/or do reading fluency practice. The students always impress me with how much they want to learn!  They are always willing to try to sound out new words and to correct any mispronunciations.

It can be hard to read the same passage out loud over and over, often reading it anywhere from 2 to 5 times in the time given, Yet, as I listen to the students reading, I can hear how much more fluent their reading sounds. They are making less mistakes and reading more smoothly, less robotically. I look forward to the upcoming reading assessments and seeing how far everyone has come!

I also can see how much my students are reading at home and practicing their skills.  It really shows!  Keep up the INCREDIBLE work!

March 18, 2024  Students have been working so hard to practice their soft c and soft g sounds. We will review them this week.  Then we will begin vowel teams.  

We started a new type of reading where the students read the same story, that comes from our Phonics lesson. They read it aloud at the same time as we come around listen and help guide.  I started this for several reasons:

1. The story supports the lesson and gives additional practice on the lesson we are learning.

2. The students get more reading practice because they read the story over and over, developing fluency.

3.  It builds confidence because they read it through it so many times.  

4. They read the whole story rather than taking turns reading a line, and ultimately, reading less than if they could read the whole passage. 

5. Plus, we are able to get to other activities quicker because we are doing the reading groups all at the same time.  

6. It builds confidence in reading quicker because they read through it multiple times and declare, "That seemed easy!" because they are achieving so much!

The students as always are putting their best foot forward and I am so incredibly proud of their willingness to try new things!

February 27, 2024

Well done students!  I heard that you worked hard while I was away last week!  I am so proud of you all!

We continue to work on phonics rules, particularly long e words and digraphs (ch, sh, th, wh).  Students have been so willing to read aloud and to practice their fluency in front of others.  I know that can be scary and I am proud of them for always trying!  

As always we try to end our time together with games or activities to make reading fun and engaging.

January 30, 2024  In addition to our group lesson, small reading groups, and a few activities such as spelling words by sounding out each sound.  We played a ball toss game to practice our diagraph words.  Everyone is so willing to do their best, to read out loud in groups, and to to try to improve their scores.  I am always impressed with how my students desire to improve their reading and do their best!

We are looking forward to community days this week on January 30 and February 1st and hope to see you there.  Don't forget that there are Reading classes on Wednesday, January 31st!  

On February 7, there is no student attendance as teachers will be attending professional development classes.

January 16, 2024   Happy New Year!  It has been an interesting start with snow days!  We began the day reviewing phonics rules for the silent e and reviewing digraphs sounds of sh, ch, th, and wh.  We continue to read as small groups and then end each day playing reading games together.

Continue to read every day at home!  The more  you choose books or comics or stories that you enjoy, the more you will want to read and the more practice you get.  A couple of tips to improve your reading at home:  

Make sure you are checking your comprehension.  

Tell someone about what you read and let them ask you questions.  

Reading out loud really helps with reading fluency. 

Don't rush your reading, but think about reading at a pace that you                            know  everyone can understand what you are saying.  

December 13, 2023 I am so incredibly proud of our students today! They did an amazing job on their Reader's Theater.  Amazing!!  With only two weeks to practice, their hard work really showed. Well done, class!  Now on to a well deserved break! Enjoy your holidays! Keep reading every day.  I look forward to hearing about the books you read and all your winter break adventures:)

11/27/23

Dear Reading Classes,

For the next three weeks, we will be working on fluency and will be doing a reading theater that we will perform on Wednesday, December 13.  Parents, family members, and friends are invited to attend. The students have been working very hard and will have a class party after the reader’s theater.  The students are invited to bring a treat to share.

For my Wednesday, 3rd period, the Reader’s theater will  start at 11:10 am and we invite you to come and get a seat in the audience at 11 am.  This will still be in room 9.

For my Wednesday, 5th period, the Reader’s theater will start at 2:10 pm and we invite you to come get a seat in the audience at 2 pm. This will still be in room 11.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Robynne Boysen

November 15, 2023

It is strange not to have class today!  I know next Wednesday is also the Thanksgiving holiday, so we will have two weeks of not getting together!  I miss you and am busy preparing new games to play and read together.  In the meantime, please keep reading. The more you read, the more fluent you will get.  Here are some great free websites with sight words all the way through middle school.  You can download lists, make flash cards, print games to play, and use the lessons to learn the words with your students. Fry and Dolch lists have a lot of overlapping words, so either list is fine!

https://sightwords.com/sight-words/fry/

sightwords.com/sight-words/dolch/ 

November 3, 2023  Last Wednesday, we did Lexia on the computer, made and read silly sentences in silly voices, and tested sight word recognition.  We had some new students as well.  

Next week, we will begin our Highline Phonics program instruction at the beginning of every class.

Please remember parent attendance is MANDATORY for students to participate in this class. Since it is a reading intervention class, parent participation is not optional. Parents should expect to come in weekly, at minimum twice a month.  

October 23, 2023  Last Wednesday, I was absent and the students did very well with my substitute and worked really hard! Well done!   I heard that we had a full class and we had new students! We started our levelled readers which we will do every week.  For class, we played Fiddlesticks and Tic Tac Toe, where you read sentences for each square you claimed.  

October 12, 2023  This week we were able to do most of the reading assessments. Thank you to those who were able to come in!  We continue to practice reading words and sentences through games. We even read a Halloween reader's theater this week.  The students did an incredible job!  Next week we will keep working on short vowel sounds with consonant blends. We will also divide into groups with levelled readers and play reading games to build fluency.

October 2, 2023

Last week, we continued to explore CVC or short vowel words.  We glued pictures under their correct vowel sound, played Fiddlesticks with CVC words (Mrs. Boysen lost again!), and set up CVC dominoes. We have been focusing on reading words. The students have worked so hard! I have been really impressed with how well they are doing!

This week, our class will be growing as more students have been added. We will continue to work on CVC words, such as A.  We will also start reading sentences and interactive reading passages. 

9/25/23

This week, we continued to practice our CVC (short vowel words), specifically we were looking at the vowels in the middle of the words. We played some games to practice.  We even danced a bit!  With iReady testing almost done, we may be seeing more students join our class soon.  The students are doing a fantastic job!

This week, we will continue to do CVC words!

September 16, 2023

Our class is slowly getting larger and I expect a few more students in the coming weeks.  This week, we continued to practice reading cvc words (words with short vowel sounds).  We decoded words by using the first sound of pictures.  We also played a game called fiddlesticks where you pull out a popsicle stick with a word on it. If you read it correctly, you get to keep the word, but if you get a stick with red on it, you lose all your words!  The students did a fantastic job with their letter sound recognition and persevering even if was a word that was challenging for them!  

Next week, we will be continuing with our CVC words and games!  

9/9/23

Week 1 went well!  We played several letter sound correspondence games.  We drew objects from a hat and spelled the words. We did a Write the Room where we identified the first sound of the words and we played a memory game where we matched the letter to the picture of the object.  Learning is fun!

Next week we will do some more letter sound recognition and begin the short A sound!

August 30 to September 1, 2023

The last week of August is Orientation and we will begin our classes the week of September 5th. If you were not able to attend orientation, information will be sent home in your child's backpack and via email. After you read the information, feel free to ask any questions.  You can also find the orientation information on the home page of this website.  

Looking ahead, our first week will be spent reviewing how our class is run, getting to know each other, assessing what we know, and playing interactive phonics games!

On Friday, September 8 is Community Day.  Though we will not have our typical class schedule, many teachers will be offering trainings or question and answer sessions that will be very informative and helpful. I am in the process of working with teachers to plan and will send you an invite via email next week with details.  We encourage you to come!