Reflection Points
Reflection Points
Embedded Files
Handwriting is NOT about perfect penmanship, it's about AUTOMATICITY!
Handwriting is NOT about perfect penmanship, it's about AUTOMATICITY!
Often, our focus for handwriting is to improve penmanship. While that's a very logical goal and penmanship will improve over time, we need to shift our focus just a little bit at first! Handwriting, especially in those early years, is all about pencil strokes, lines, and connecting those movements to the brain. That's how we develop automaticity! We want students to be confident or automatic in how to write, so they can focus their brainpower on what to write!
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Mastery should not be expected after one lesson. Trust the process and repetition!
Mastery should not be expected after one lesson. Trust the process and repetition!
Do you feel like you are getting a little more behind on lessons each day? Don't get stuck in the "mastery trap"! As teachers, we naturally want to teach a concept completely so that students can master it. Amplify's lessons are set up so that the concepts are taught and covered again. This curriculum does a fantastic job at spiraling back to concepts.
Those that have taught Amplify for a few years note that they are often taking too long on the read alouds - have you checked your timing and compared it to the listed times in the teacher's manual? That might be a good place to start!
Standards + Amplify - How do we know what is aligned?
Standards + Amplify - How do we know what is aligned?
Take a peek at the teacher’s manual on the very first page of every lesson. There is a detailed list of the formative assessments/activities (workbook pages) and which standard they meet. It’s a quick reference to find out which standard you are collecting data on!
You can also look at the“Primary Focus of the Lesson” section, which is the very first part of every lesson in the teacher’s manual.
More detail is provided in the following links!
Supporting Absent Students
Supporting Absent Students
Teacher’s biggest reminder to new implementers:
EVERYTHING SPIRALS: We do not need to teach to mastery in every lesson, and it’s not a huge deal if a student misses a day of a skills lesson because it will come back. The trouble of missing lessons is magnified in upper grades because these students have not had the previous levels of Amplify yet. Let’s keep working through this!
Utilize Amplify Reading (K-5), now known as "BOOST Reading", to keep skills sharp! This is a program that runs at the student’s level and provides practice in all skills!
Use intervention/WIN time to explicitly teach a missed lesson or two to students.
Pausing Point days allow some more flexibility in getting students caught up. Consider how you can schedule some reteaching time into those days.K-3 read alouds are available from Amplify online! Log into Amplify. From the home page, click on the “waffle” at the top for Programs and Apps. Then, scroll down to click on CKLA Professional Learning. Scroll down and click on “Remote and Hybrid Learning Resources” then ”Instructional Resources”. Pick your grade level and links for the read alouds will be available to put into Seesaw or Schoology!
Day to Day Implementation Reminders
Day to Day Implementation Reminders
Each unit in Amplify is a new adventure! While it’s a lot to wrap our heads around this first year, Amplify does a great job of setting things up for us.
The introduction to the unit in the teacher’s guide is extremely valuable to read! It gives you as the teacher some background info on the unit you are about to teach, a lot about the “WHY” behind the structure, teaching tips, parent communication tips, and more! Please take a few minutes to read these pages when you begin a new unit.
The slides are GREAT teaching tools, but the Teacher’s Manual provides a lot more in-depth info about the lessons and how to teach them. Something not making sense on the slides? Check the manual (either digitally or in print)!
Some read-aloud stories in Amplify are very much outside the norm of what we’ve read in the past. For example, some fairytales coming up in units are a little more “scary” than others. Previewing the texts you will be reading before you are in the middle of teaching them is important!
Before you just “cut” the stories, actually take a second to read them and find the message behind them. The teacher’s manual will provide a plethora of info. Then, if you decide a story is really inappropriate for your age kids, please your literacy coach know and we’ll work together to substitute a recommended trade book or other Amplify related text.
How Do I Plan For A Sub?
How Do I Plan For A Sub?
Several subs have reported that the Amplify curriculum is really “sub friendly”! That’s great news.
The simplest solution people have found so far is to lay out the physical teacher’s manual along with the image cards, readers, etc. that are needed for the day. The sub should be able to follow the plan that way without worrying about technology. The Amplify curriculum was set to be taught without the tech pieces originally actually – the slides are an added bonus!
If you feel comfortable leaving technology for a sub, that’s great too! Make sure you leave specific directions OR have a trusted teammate check in with the sub right away in the morning to help them prepare.
If you are near a pause point day, some have found it beneficial to move that day to the day you have a sub. The benefit of this would be that you are teaching the content and the sub could be doing a review activity. during the pause point.
Writing in Kindergarten
Writing in Kindergarten
Amplify's Response:
CKLA is built on the science of reading and systematically grows great readers and writers. This does mean that more time is spent on activities that focus on sounds first.
Amplify's CKLA Kindergarten scope and sequence teaches the prerequisite skills for sentence writing including: sound-letter correspondences; left to right directionality; letter formation; recognizing that sentences must begin with a capital letter and end with a punctuation mark; producing complete sentences orally in response to questions about the text; expanding sentences orally; filing in the blanks to form complete sentences; understanding how words function in sentences; reading complete sentences in the Readers; and participating in modeled and shared writing experiences.
Kindergarten standards in most states do not require that students write in complete sentences independently, but rather in a combination of writing, drawing and dictation. This is what is reflected in CKLA.
The Literacy "S" Word: Spelling
The Literacy "S" Word: Spelling
As an adult, it's likely you may not even feel confident in your own spelling skills sometimes! I know I don't! It's a hot topic for sure. The big question: In the world of autocorrect and all things technology, do we even need to teach spelling?
The short answer - WE MUST. Here's why.
As students learn more and more of the English language code, they need PRACTICE in USING it in authentic contexts. This comes in decodable texts, word building activities in the classroom (chaining) etc. as early as Kindergarten (and even preschool!) so the students have a large amount of practice using their code knowledge to spell. This practice TRANSFERS spelling patterns to the potentially infinite space in our long-term memory. The second piece of really cementing something in long term memory is practice RETRIEVING that information. So, when doing a dictation or spelling activity, students are retrieving that information, USING it, and completing the cycle of remembering or learning with confidence. If technology is doing this for the learners, they are not committing a significant portion of literacy knowledge to memory. Code knowledge impacts ability to read, as does spelling, and the ability to read affects a human's enjoyment of reading. Spelling is important!
Amplify's process of spelling DOES set students up for success. It may not have seemed that way in year 1, or maybe not even yet in year 2 for our older learners, but as we navigate code knowledge acquisition year after year, this spelling practice becomes very meaningful. It also may seem hard to get on board with because it's not a straightforward pattern of introducing words Monday and testing Friday. When we know better, we do better.
What resources do we have in K-6 and how is spelling taught?
The basics for K-2: The words given ONLY cover spellings that have been reviewed
and taught in class. We know though, that this is clearly not the case in the first year of adoption, as students haven’t been exposed to the entire code they need. Since the sound-spellings are previously taught, some lists contain more than one spelling pattern. Students will NOT be presented with an assessment of letter/sound correspondences that they have just learned that week. Many opportunities to read the words are found in the decodable readers too!
The basics for 3-5: It is the sequence of Amplify instruction that students should know all basic code knowledge by the time they get to these grade levels. So all basic spellings will have been mastered. This is clearly not the case in this first year of adoption...nor will it be for a couple of years! However, when we get to the point of all students having the K-2 sequence of instruction before getting to 3-5, the instruction transitions to morphology rather than the code, which is what the spelling assessments are based on.
Do your 3-6 students need more code knowledge to be successful at spelling? The Decoding and Encoding Remediation Guide is here to help!
Want to hear Amplify’s rationale behind Spelling in K-5 CKLA? Read more here!
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