Reading Support 3/4 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 vowels and open/closed syllables.  Understanding what makes a open (ends with a vowel) and closed syllable (ends with a consonant) is an excellent strategy for sounding out longer words.  A closed syllable has a short vowel sound while an open syllable has a long vowel sound.  We practiced reading long words by breaking words into syllables.  We also created words by putting syllables together. We did a memory game for vowel teams and a long O Bingo game. This past week we reviewed vowel teams.  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 ow and ou.  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 and double consonants 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 are back into the swing of things after spring break!  We have been working on vowel teams. This week we worked on oy, oi, ow, ou, ai, and ay.  We will continue with practicing with vowel teams, c/g/v followed by e, and floss words (or double consonants) in the next few weeks.   

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 my students reading, I can hear how much more fluent their reading is becoming. 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, soft g, dge, itch, ie, and oo sounds and vowel teams.  We will review them this week.  Then we will begin additional 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

I heard good reports from our substitutes.  I know each of you continued to work hard while I was away and that makes my heart so happy!

We continue to work on phonics rules, particularly long vowel words made from two vowels and r-controlled vowels.  One of my favorite things about my students in Reading Success is their willingness to try something hard in front of their peers.  They always strive to give it their best.   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 walking around and reading the sentences to see which one matches the pictures.  We played a ball toss game to practice our r-controlled vowels.  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 r controlled sounds such as er, ir, ar, or, and ur.  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, divided into reading groups and practiced reading stories together, made and read silly sentences in silly voices, and we did a write the room where we corrected sentence spelling and read sentences.

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

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!  The class started our levelled readers which we will do every week from now on.  For class, the class played Jenga where you read a passage based on the colored wooden piece that you took. 

October 12, 2023 These past two weeks, we finally have begun to meet as a class. It took a bit to get everyone in and it has been wonderful to see how hard everyone is working.  We have played some games such as Fiddlesticks and Jenga to practice words. We appreciate those who came in and did the reading assessments as now we can start doing levelled readers. Last week, we read a Halloween Reader's theater and the students all worked so hard and were so patient as they waited their turns. I was very proud of them.

We will continue to read texts together to develop our reading fluency as well as to play games to make reading engaging and meaningful.

October 2, 2023

This was our first official week of class. It is a very small class right now, but we had a lot of fun reading CVC words (short vowel words).  We played games and just got comfortable with the format of the class.  I was impressed with the hard work that I saw!

This week, we will move on to silent e words as we begin our units on long vowel words. 

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, right now I do not have anyone yet signed up for the class. But the plan for next week is to review how our class is run, get to know each other, assess what we know, and play some fun phonics based 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!