Every day I have been individually practicing sight words with my students. I take a few minutes at the beginning of our small group to use flashcards and constant time delay with each student. After the last three-four weeks they have been exposed to 10 sight words. At the beginning of today's lesson I reviewed all words and asked each student to read the words. I was so happy with their progress. When we started, almost all students in this focal group knew 2-5 sight words. Today, this is what I found:
Jon-read 7 sight words correctly (missed-have, this, at)
Ben- read 7 sight words correctly (missed-this, and, the)
Noah- read 8 sight words correctly (missed-have, the)
Ted-read ALL 10 sight words correctly
Ellen-read ALL 10 sight words correctly
Nicole- read 9 sight words correctly (missed-and)
Things I am noticing:
1. When the students are reading the words, they more often miss the words that have "th" at the beginning of the word. All 6 students have consistently missed "this" and "the". Today, I introduced 5 new words and they struggled the most with the word "that". The blend at the beginning seems to provide great difficulty for them to remember.
2. They are inconsistent with the words they read correctly. Some days they will read all 5 words correctly from that week. The very next day they miss the same word. I am wondering about the inconsistencies. Why is this happening? How can I help make sight word reading more consistent? I am providing them with so much extra practice in my group, with reading buddies, independent stations. Is there something more going on?
3. Distractibility-4 out of the 6 students are easily distracted and have to be reminded constantly to stay on task and focused. How can I help with distractibility? What other positive reinforcement strategies can I use to help with this?
4. An increase in sight words has helped students in their guided reading and independent reading. Using the running records I have seen much more success when the students have to read the story we have read during the week. This week I am going to let the students choose a "just right" book for them to read to me, to see if there increased knowledge of sight words is helping them with fluency and reading comprehension. I want to see if sight word retention is an important part of the balanced literacy approach? Does sight word reading help students become better readers?
I am really happy with the progress my students have shown so far. I am looking forward to doing the PAST and Phonics test in the next few weeks to see their growth in sight words, and to see how sight word retention is affecting them in becoming better readers.
The reading interventionist that pulls a couple of my students in my focus group just emailed me this afternoon and said that the students were still confused with the two sounds "th" make in "the" and "three" after working on it for a while. On the Lit First test, my struggling students have not mastered digraphs yet. They always get stuck on the blends section.
ReplyDeleteI have a question for you. My old school used the Lit First and PAST test because we were a RF school. My new school is new and we are just creating our literacy plan, so I just used the Lit First test on my own to assess phonics in my classroom. It has been a while since I gave it and I couldn't remember all the directions of how to give it.
Do you stop when the students don't master a section, keep going, or is there something about if they don't master 3 in a row THEN stop the test?
Sounds like your little ones are doing great. Go Ted and Ellen!
I like how you have laid out this page. The intro followed by the data and analysis gave me a clear pic of what is going on with your research.
ReplyDeleteJust curious... are the four students that are distracted the same students that missed a few of the words? It may be interesting to look at the words students are missing during sight word assessment and compare to the running record. This could give you some info on whether or not students are able to recognize the sight words in text.
Ashley, when I am giving the test I stop after they have not mastered 2 or 3 in a row, denpending on how many they are getting correct. If they have answered 3/6 or 4/6 correct I will definitely keep going just to see their strengths and weaknesses. But, if they are answering 0/6 or 1/6 correctly after a couple of sections I ususally stop there. Does that make sense?
ReplyDeleteMegan, the same kids missing words are the same ones that are usually distracted. I like your idea! I have been trying to do that with the sight word readers for the week, but I think I need to use a fresh text next time for the running record to see whether or not students are able to recognize sight words in a text, like you said.