It is my honor and privilege to introduce you to Alison Palermo, a very talented Worthington City Schools Literacy Coach and guest blogger for "Dream Big!". I had the pleasure of learning from and with Alison and group of our teachers last week during a Wilson Reading System workshop and I was amazed, yet not surprised by the amount of deep learning and collaboration that took place.
ALL teachers are working together to better understand and grow ALL of our learners.
Thanks Alison...YOU ARE MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN WORTHINGTON!
#ItsWorthIt
Worthington’s Framework for Literacy Instruction, Wilson Reading System and The Culper Spy Ring
This week I had the privilege of hosting a Wilson Reading System workshop for Worthington teachers. In attendance at the workshop were Intervention Specialists, Reading Specialists and general education teachers. You might be asking yourself why in the world would Reading Specialists and general education teachers want to attend a Wilson Reading System workshop? Isn’t that only for students receiving special education services?
As teachers- whether general education teachers, reading specialists or intervention specialists- we are all responsible for instructing the Ohio State Standards. The Ohio State Standards that were the focus of our workshop (and are the focus of Wilson Reading System instruction) are found in the areas of Reading Foundations and Language Standards.
RF.K.3 Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
a. Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one grapheme (letter)-sound correspondences by producing the primary sound or many of the most frequent sounds for each consonant.
RF.1.3 Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
a. Know the spelling-sound correspondences for common consonant digraphs.
b. Decode regularly spelled one-syllable words.
c. Know final -e and common vowel team conventions for representing long vowel sounds.
d. Use knowledge that every syllable must have a vowel sound to determine the number of syllables in a printed word.
e. Decode two-syllable words following basic patterns by breaking the words into syllables.
RF.2.3 Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
a. Distinguish long and short vowels when reading regularly spelled one-syllable words.
b. Know spelling-sound correspondences for additional common vowel teams.
c. Decode regularly spelled two-syllable words with long vowels.
d. Decode words with common prefixes and suffixes.
e. Identify words with inconsistent but common spelling-sound correspondences.
RF.3.3 Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
a. Identify and know the meaning of the most common prefixes and derivational suffixes.
b. Decode words with common Latin suffixes.
c. Decode multi-syllable words.
RF.4.3 Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words by using combined knowledge of all letter-sound correspondences, syllabication patterns, and morphology (e.g., roots and affixes) to read accurately unfamiliar multisyllabic words in context and out of context
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L.K.2 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
c. Write a letter or letters for most consonant and short-vowel phonemes (sounds).
d. Spell simple words phonetically, drawing on knowledge of sound-letter relationships
L.1.2 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
d. Use conventional spelling for words with common spelling patterns and for frequently occurring irregular words.
e. Spell untaught words phonetically, drawing on phonemic awareness and spelling conventions
L.2.2 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
d. Generalize learned spelling patterns when writing words (e.g., cage -> badge; boy -> boil).
L.3.2 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
e. Use conventional spelling for high-frequency and other studied words and for adding suffixes to base words (e.g., sitting, smiled, cries, happiness).
f. Use spelling patterns and generalizations (e.g., word families, position-based spellings, syllable patterns, ending rules, meaningful word parts) in writing words.
L.4.2 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
d. Spell grade-appropriate words correctly
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So while we are all teaching the same content, for students who need the additional support from either a reading specialist or an intervention specialist- what changes is not the content being taught, but the instructional methods we use.
The Framework for Literacy Instruction we use in Worthington has three main components:
- reading
- writing
- word study
Word Study consists of:
- phonemic awareness
- phonics
- vocabulary
- word analysis
- spelling
Within the context of the Framework for Literacy Instruction, we as teachers have to differentiate our instruction to meet the unique needs of each learner.
The group of learners who were the focus of our workshop this week are those learners who (for various reasons) have a documented deficit in the area(s) of: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, word analysis and spelling. These are students who are struggling to acquire the necessary skills to be able to read in order to fully grasp the writer’s message and write to send their own message. Upon in-depth analysis, we discover that at the core of these student’s reading and writing deficit is an inability to decipher and use the code of the English language.
Now to the Culper Spy Ring- (Washington’s spy ring during the Revolutionary War and made popular again by the A&E show Turn) their success was rooted in the development of a code only understood and utilized by those in the spy ring. For students with deficits in the area of phonological processing (which means once they visually decipher the symbols we use in English, attach the symbols to the sounds of our language, and finally blend those sounds together to form words that have meaning) anytime they read or write they feel as if they are trying to decipher a secret code that everyone else in their life completely understands (and uses easily and effortlessly) but for some reason- they cannot break.
So for our students who feel like they are on the outside looking in as we all use this “secret code” when we read and write- we owe them nothing less than being able to instruct them at their point of need using methods that make sense to them. I love the title of the resource Words Their Way. It is a good reminder for us as educators that our responsibility is to teach skills and content- not our way, relying on our preferences, and teaching within our comfort zone- but their way. We have to know each student’s unique learning profile and then differentiate our instruction so that we are teaching skills and content THEIR way.
For the group of teachers that gathered this week and spent three full days exploring a method of instruction to teach phonics, word analysis skills and spelling to students who just can’t seem to break the code- they will now head into their classrooms this week with a deepened ability to teach each student THEIR way.
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