Reciprocal Teaching

Reciprocal Teaching 

Reciprocal teaching refers to an instructional activity that takes place in the form of a dialogue between teachers and students regarding segments of text. The dialogue is structured by the use of four strategies: summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting. The teacher and students take turns assuming the role of teacher in leading this dialogue. 

Sharing Literature with Children

Reading to and with your Children

The verbal interaction between an adult and a child that occurs during story reading has a major impact on children's literacy development.  When a parent or adult reads with a child they learn about turn taking in story reading.  Through story reading very young children are guided into talks, discussions, and interactions; the adult talks, then the child talks, then the adult talks and so on and so forth.

Attached I have created a chart for you young families with new babies to early readers of what that conversion might look like.

Sharing Literature with Children

Handwriting

Handwriting skills are an important developmental task and activity for kids. Your child may face difficulties with their penmanship, pencil grasp, placement of letters, or formation of letters; all of which are important parts of the writing process. 

Here is just one quick tip for you that I picked up from the Occupational Therapist I work with and I have to say it does help with letter placement.  Highlight the lines when practicing on primary paper (Primary Paper are those papers with several lines to help with letter formation and placement)

Click below for your copy of highlighted primary paper:

Highlighted Primary Paper

Fluency Pyramids

Reading fluency is an important part of reading. I like to tell my children that fluency is the ability to read like you are talking to your friends. Fluency can come naturally for some students whereas other students may need some practice. Learning sight words is one step to reading fluency.  Fluency pyramids can be used to help students learn sight words as well as practice reading fluently.

So what exactly is a fluency pyramid? A fluency pyramid is a sentence that has been broken up to look like a triangle with repeated phrases, adding a new word to the sentences on each line.  It will look like this;

I 

I like

I like to

I like to run 

I like to run and 

I like to run and jump

I have created a collection of fluency pyramids that follow a scope and sequence (stories that build upon each other). The stories that I created contain only sight words and a few three letter words that can easily be sounded out. 

Scope and Sequence of words

Sight Word Sequence

Fluency Pyramids Collection 

Fluency Pyramids

My recommendation is to use the sequence of words to introduce the stories as they will build on each other.

Happy Reading!