Title I Tidbits
April 18 2016
The Power of Hope
Eric Jensen talks about the importance of hope for our students. Without hope our students feel defeated before they begin.
As educators we need to have hope too, hope - and belief - that our students can learn to read and that we have the skills and supports to get them there.
In 2014, NEA today did an interview with Valerie Maholmes, author of Fostering Resilience and Well-Being in Children and Families in Poverty: Why Hope Still Matters. Here are some of her insights...
"One reason I chose to review the literature on hope and resilience is to dispel the notion that if children can’t read by grade four, they are no longer able to learn or read. People have the capacity for lifelong-learning." .... "Every child can learn and every child can succeed. It requires a different level of effort for different children; that’s what the brain science teaches us...When we as teachers and adults shine the light on their capacities and capabilities, kids rise to the occasion."
As adults we also have to need to have a light shone on our capacities and feel the power of hope for ourselves. The Gresham Barlow Title team is an amazing, committed, talented team of educators driven to give hope and support our most struggling readers. Your impact is felt city wide, in the lives of these children and their families. You are supporting them to a life of possibilities full of hope for an amazing future. Thank you for shining you light and sharing your gifts with our children.
DIBELS & Diversity: IT update
Diversity in Title I - how are we doing at supporting subgroups?
As you know, we have not have demographic information included in our DIBELS database for students. Before if you wanted to disaggregate the data, you had to use SIP reporter, a useful, but time consuming process. However, now IT is working on getting this information entered into the DIBELS database for students by mid May, in time for spring analysis. Descriptors we can look at include gender, ethnicity, SpEd status and we may have a way to include active ELL status (although this may be a little harder.) Because we are building wide Title for schools with Title, we will not be able to differentiate data looking at economic status.
We hope to have this up and going ASAP and I will send you an e-mail when we are able to use the demographics breakdown and distribution reports of DIBELS.uoregon.edu.
Thank you IT for being AWESOME and helping us support our kids!
TILT: 5 GRADE FLUENCY & RETELL GOALS - ANITA ARCHER SAYS...
"Celebrate Good Times: We Are On The Right Track!"
Many of you have just finished your mid winter/spring 6-8 week Tier II check in meetings. As a district we are doing an excellent job with this process, there has been exciting growth and often consistent gains. As we get close to end of the year Benchmarking we want to insure we have done our best to support our students successful reading. Below are Anita Archer's recommendations for fluency and retell instruction.
Last February the Title I 5th grade focused team selected these goals for the end of the year:
- 75% of students will make Ambitious Growth (12 words) from the week of Feb 1 to the last day of May based on End Of Year Benchmarking.
- 75% of students will score a 3 on quality of retell using at least 33 words on Winter benchmark.
- Students will score 20 on the DAZE.
Anita Strategy #1. Provide extensive reading practice: Utilize procedures such as augmented silent reading, choral reading, cloze reading, and partner reading.
- We do this when we use the alternative passage reading procedures (shared in the February Tidbits) - GO US!
Anita Strategy #2. Encourage wide independent reading.
- I have seen several Title I rooms incorporate different strategies to encourage Title I students to do additional reading outside of the classroom, such as recess reading club, checking out special books from the title I teacher to take home, writing or giving an oral summary of a book read at home for Title I dollars used to buy prizes among others. WE ROCK!
Anita Strategy # 3 Provide repeated reading practice at the word level. When reading word lists, have students reread word lists until competent.
- SIPPS (Our most common program for 5th grade students) includes word list reading. WE'RE ON IT!
Anita Strategy # 4. Utilize repeated reading exercises in passages to increase fluency.
- Read Naturally (Our second most common program at 5th grade) includes repeated readings. WE'VE GOT THIS!
SOME THINGS TO CONSIDER BASED ON YOUR DATA
SIPPS: Do you need to include an element of repeated reading at the end of SIPPS challenge lesson? If so, keep it simple, follow Anita's repeated reading structure at the end of the lesson. You could spend a week on one passage, or get a new one more often.
1) A minute cold timing of new passage
2) A few minutes of practice time, students re-read the passage at least once
3) A "hot" time of the passage
Read Naturally: Do you need to add a sight word list review component for irregular words? If so, think about a quick 1-2 minute chorally read list as a warm up with the EA prior to breaking into individual practice sessions.
All Students: retell with Non-Fiction texts can be a bear, the details tend to be less linear and harder to organize. Dr Archer recommends we scaffold non-fiction retell for students with providing sentence frames specific to Non-Fiction texts e.g. "The main idea of this passage was _____. In the text it said _______. Another thing it said was ______. I also learned that ____."
You are doing amazing work for your building and our district - thank you for making a difference in the lives of kids!
Accuracy- We Got It: Decoding Instruction for Emergent Readers, more from Dr. Archer
Last February in our TILT meeting the 2nd grade focused team made these SMART goals for the end of the year:
- Students scoring proficient in Accuracy in January will make an average growth of 1% by May 16, 2016.
- Students in the close to proficient range will make an average of 2% growth.
- Students it the far to go range will make an average of 4% growth by May 16 2016.
Anita Archer shared some insights into decoding instruction for students. Anita recommends strategies similar to any direct instruction program including the ones we use in SIPPS, Phonics for Reading, Reading Mastery - WE'RE AWESOME!
Something along the lines of:
- say the individual sounds (without stopping unless it is a stop sound),
- say the sounds fast,
- say the word,
- if it is a word in context - ask yourself if that is a real word and if it makes sense.
Looking at longer words with word parts, Anita recommends supporting students to chunk the parts with looping a la REWARDS or ECRI - W00T! When decoding words with parts chunk rhymes & onsets as needed. Such as:
- Let's look at this in parts..
- Part ____
- Part _____
- Say the whole word ____.
This is a strategy I have been coaching on in buildings with people leading interventions. We all know sometimes us well meaning adults jump in with the word a student is missing, without giving the child the time to have a productive struggle with an appropriate decodable text. I will continue to reinforce this when I encounter it in your buildings.
In cases where additional review and practice is needed, such as when mastery is not reached in SIPPS, Anita shared a few no prep "games" that can be added to support emergent readers additional practice and keep our young students engaged in the work.
Games/Activities requiring little preparation
Ten Second Rapid Read
After a list of words has been read, have one student whisper-read words for 10 seconds to his/her partner. As the student reads, the partner counts the number of words read. Have students switch roles.
Team Read
Divide the students into teams having the same number of “Players”. Have the students line up. When you say go, have students read the words in order. When they complete the list, have them raise their hands. First team done is the winner.
Cross-out Game
Have students circle three words on his/her word list. Be sure that the students do not show classmates their circled words. Read any word from the word list. Have students locate and cross out the word. Continue reading words from the list in random order. The winner of the game is the person whose circled words are crossed out first.
We are on the right track for increasing accuracy for our emergent readers. Great job Title I teams- you are so important to our students!
Follow up on the Orton Gillingham & Anita Archer Introduction: Information from Santa Barbara ESD
http://www.sbcselpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Dislexia-Society-Top-Reading-Programs.pdf
The Santa Barbara site in general some interesting resources incase you wanted to poke around further. There is a very descriptive power-point on dyslexia and Orton-Gillingham at the top if the list on this page, second down is a synopsis of several Anita Archer reading strategies great for improving instruction - good stuff!
http://www.sbcselpa.org/home/reading/reading-best-practices/
News From The Front!
This edition's News From the Front is coming to us from North Gresham Elementary.
For their mid winter/spring Tier II meetings North cancelled intervention groups on the day and brought the EAs, teachers, coach, title and principal into the process of looking at the data and planning supports. It was all hands on deck for an amazing day of cooperative analysis to support student learning.
Great work North Gresham using all resources and a maintaining a relentless focus on outcomes to increase student achievement.
And That's The Way It Is At North Gresham Elementary!
TILT Meeting: District Office
- Share District DIBELS Scores
- End of Year Celebration
Thursday, Jun 9, 2016, 01:30 PM
Gresham-Barlow School District, Northwest Eastman Parkway, Gresham, OR, United States
Dr Jennifer Stackhouse - RTI Coordinator
Email: stackhouse@gresham.k12.or.us
Website: http://www.gresham.k12.or.us/
Location: 1331 NW Eastman Pkwy, Gresham, OR, United States
Phone: 503-261-4583