Madame Belle Feuille: October 2013

What's your routine for teaching reading and specifically French sound blends in grade 1? Here's an overview of mine.

September to December we review the letter sounds from kindergarten using Jolly Phonics. Sound blends are introduced over 10 weeks beginning in January.

Guided reading routines begin in March.

1) Introduce the letter sound and action (from Jolly Phonics). Each sound is a specific colour.

In school these cards did not have English explanations. Neither did the stories as posted below. I have changed those for tutoring purposes and for families who want to help but feel lost when they don't speak French.

LINK TO STORY DOWNLOAD HERE!

2) Circle the sound with a coloured pencil in a our words of the week. Sound out the words of the week in isolation. We look for "les petits mots", the little words in the big words. Notice "les fantômes" or "les lettres muettes" (silent words).

3) Circle the sound in our story of the week. This encourages students to look for what they know and recognize.

4) Read the story together. There are spots to spell the words and images to help as we read.

In my classroom these simple stories were on 1 sheet of paper, no booklet, and we had 3 "levels" of difficulty for various student ability.

As I prepare the resources I will post the stories. I can't post Jolly Phonics resources but they are available from their site here.

5) Play a game with the words, either walking on footprints with the words, pulling sticks from a can, making the words with magnets. We also practice listening for the sound at the beginning, middle and end of the word.

6) Change some of the words in the story to write a new story using the simple sentence structure of the story of the week. This was not part of the grade 1 routine, I've added a writing component for tutoring.

7) Use visual dictionaries to help choose new words for the new story. Usually writing your own story is for homework.

8) Stamp the sound blends on our hand (mine too), it lasts for a couple days and is a reminder of the sound of the week.

8) Practice re-reading the story, review the sound, read the word sticks, write your own story over the course of a week. Depending on where they're at practice spelling the words. In grade 1 students were to bring home their duotang, read the story and each page was stamped with a "please sign and return" note for parents.

9) Each week I send something in the mail, a note, a cartoon using our words, a postcard in French.

10) The following week we review the last week's sound, reread the story, read your own story and move on to a new sound. Periodically we review past sounds, words, stories to see if it's "sticking". We can also spend time reading home reading books from school together. The first goal is reading, then spelling, then writing.

This is the progression I hope to work through.

11) I have a license to print levelled books from readinga-z.com and lend these out for students to read, practice, enjoy, and sometimes do some reading response work with. These are also the base for writing when we move on to that.

Here is the scope and sequence we used in grade 1. At the time we had a team of Francophone assistants who went to each class and worked with small groups of students. Each classroom had 4 French speaking adults for an hour block! The program can still work by teaching the mini lessons to the whole class and then working on differentiated levels of stories in small groups.

We also had quick assessment check lists, each group leader did an assessment at the end of the week with each student. This gave a quick snapshot of who had mastered a sound and who needed some extra review. We had 4 grade 1 classes and kept the literacy block cohesive and structured.

In January we began a guided reading routine. That's another post!

Rocky View Schools has generated a list of grade level words that students are expected to be able to read as sight words by the end of each grade. These word banks serve as part of our reading assessment. Many of the grade 1 district words are in the short stories teachers have created. I have added support materials that include the grade 2 and 3 words for the students I work with in those grades. Everything isn't posted yet but it is comin'!

SUPPORT MATERIALS (click on description to download document)