The past two years I have used Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) and we (me and my students) love it. The books are so engaging and the different characters are loved. For the most part, my teammates and I have followed the program. And we have seen some great growth in our Tier 2 reading instruction.
In the training, we did learn that the phonics should meet the need of the group. It seemed that each student in each group had a different set of needs. So for the past two years, I have followed the phonics written with the LLI lesson. But...yep, you guessed it. Those gaps did not seem to fill.
This was a hard failing to swallow. Because it was on me for not tailoring my instruction to better meet the need. It led me to some great reading.
From reading and conversations with Orton-Gillingham trained co-workers, I came up with a plan.
1. Assess reading level with F&P.
2. Assess phonological awareness skills.
3. Assess phonics skills.
- rhyming identification
- rhyming utilization
- alliteration identifcation
- alliteration utilization
- sentence segmentation
- syllabication
- onsets
- rimes
- blending task
- phoneme segmentation
- phoneme deletion
- phoneme substitution
For the phonics assessment, I started with just the alphabet mixed up for my first graders. Determining the letter sounds they did know and did not know was the place to begin. If they knew all their sounds, then I moved on to this sheet (partial image of assessment). Basically, this sheet helped me to determine if they knew sounds and how to apply them when blending words together.
Once all this data was collected during the first couple weeks of school, groups were formed with children at similar reading levels and phonics needs.
During the week, each student in my LLI group works with me one on one to be more flexible with sounds through phonological awareness activities. Then, all three students work on the same phonics skill. And our weekly schedule looks like this:
Monday: blending lines (lines of words with the targeted skill)
Tuesday: word sort
Wednesday: making words
Thursday: decodable text
Friday: dictation
Fast forward almost 5 weeks. I know exactly the phonics and phonological awareness skills that can be applied by each student. The information I gather each week through observation, dictation, blending, and progress monitoring allows me to plan more effectively for the focused skills of the following week.
A complete failure that has left me more informed and effective.
This is amazing reflection and renovation!!! Well done! Your students and school are super lucky that you are there!!!
ReplyDelete