Ms. Illingworth: Literacy Intervention

Hello! I am Ms. Illingworth, the 5th and 6th grade literacy interventionist at BFMS. Way back in the late 80s and early 90s I was a student at BFMS. I have lived in Bellows Falls, VT my entire life and raised my two daughters here as well. My oldest daughter is 20 and she attends Wheaton College. My youngest daughter is almost 16 and she is a sophomore at BFUHS. I try to stay active in the community, I am the Secretary for the BFHS Alumni Association, a member of the BFUHS Booster Club, and I help other various organizations. Some of my favorite things to do are attend my girls' activities, go to live concerts, and be on the beach.

Literacy Intervention: During this time we will work a great deal on reading fluency. The following are 7 components of fluency we will practice often: 

1. Accuracy - making sure we read what is written in the text.

2. Rate -  making sure we don't read too fast or too slow.

3. Phrasing - making sure we read in smooth phrases so it doesn't sound choppy.

4. Punctuation - making sure we pay attention to punctuation, stop at periods and pause at commas.

5. Expression - making sure we show a character's feelings in our voice.

6. Intonation - making sure our voice goes up and down and louder and softer where it should.

7. Stress - making sure we emphasize bold or italicized words.

We will work on syllabication of long, unfamiliar words (breaking them down to know how to pronounce them) and learning meanings of root words and affixes to help us understand the meaning of words.

Our time will also include some work on comprehension strategies, writing summaries, working on parts of speech and figurative language, as well as learning about various genres in reading.