Summer Training Series - Relationships, Rules, & Routines

RSI4Edu.com & #BeginningTeachers focus on classroom environment.

If you ask any teacher what their focus should be in the beginning of the school year the answer should always be the same; relationships, rules, and routines.  Taking/making the time to establish your classroom environment and climate is an investment that will payoff in the long run - but many teachers are not sure where to begin.  Our training recommendation is to Begin with the End in Mind:

• Begin with the End in Mind:  What do you want your classroom culture to look like, sound like, (5th grade) smell like… Get this picture in your mind and identify critical elements that you can teach your students to make the picture a reality.  Start with Teach Like a Champion’s technique 45 Threshold and 46 Strong Start.  Meet your students as they enter the classroom - build that relationship on the way into the classroom and set expectations immediately.  Establish a routine for what students should do from the moment you greet them until you formally begin instruction.  Describe the routine, model, practice, release to evaluate, practice some more, release to evaluate, and praise successful engagement in the routine ~ “rinse and repeat” until the students own the routine.
• When planning your routine make sure that your take the time to identify the following:
• What is the criteria for success
• What materials or preparation are needed
• What is the teacher doing
• What are the students doing (name the steps)
• What happens immediately if a student doesn’t comply

Visit RSI4edu.com/services and scroll to Classroom Culture for a sample routine.  Contact us at RSI4Edu.com for more information on how we can support your educational initiatives.

Summer Training Series - Alphabetic Principle

RSI4EDU.com trained teachers this summer in the Alphabetic Principle - Increasing understanding in #phonics and #beginningreaders.

A primary goal of beginning reading instruction is to prepare students to read texts fluently so they are able to construct meaning as they read.  Increasing students’ understanding and use of the Alphabetic Principle is crucial to facilitating the process of learning to read.  

Alphabetic Principle Defined:

The ability to associate sounds with letters and use these sounds to form words.  The understanding that words in spoken language are represented in print.  Sounds in words relate to the letters that represent them (Liberman & Liberman, 1990).

The Alphabetic Principle includes such skills as; letter-sound correspondence, regular word reading, reading in texts, irregular word reading, and advanced word analysis skills.  One of the greatest areas of the Alphabetic Principle that students struggle with is vocalizing each sound within a word and blending it to a whole word.  Students need overt (explicit) instruction in applying the phonological strategy of saying words slowly then saying them fast - when engaged in whole word reading.  Below is a progression of regular word reading as provided by Harn, Simmons, & Kame’enui (2003).

Want to increase your teacher’s knowledge and instructional capacity in teaching beginning reading? Contact RSI4EDU.com to inquire how our experts can support your school initiatives.

References

Harn, Simmons, & Kame’enue (2003). Institute on Beginning Reading. Retrieved from http://reading.uoregon.edu/.

Liberman, I. Y., & Liberman, A. M. (1990). Whole language vs. code emphasis: Underlying assumptions and their implications for reading instruction. Annals of Dyslexia, 40, 51-76.

Summer Training Series - Phonemic Awareness

RSI4EDU.com trained teachers in #beginningreaders during Summer PD sessions.  Do your teachers know #phonemicawareness and #phonics.

We all agree that comprehension is the essence of reading; the complex cognitive process involving the intentional interaction between the reader and text to extract meaning.  However, The greatest predictor of reading comprehension is fluency.  Fluency is the ability to read words with no noticeable cognitive or mental effort ~ fluent reading frees resources to process meaning.  To build reading fluency beginning readers must acquire and apply the alphabetic principle - which is contingent on the strategic integration of phonemic awareness skills & strategies.  To often in early education we fail to grasp the essential knowledge of why we teach phonemic awareness.  More importantly, we struggle to integrate the skills and strategies taught during phonemic awareness instruction when teaching the alphabetic principle.  Want to increase your teacher’s knowledge and instructional capacity in beginning reading?  Contact RSI4EDU.com to inquire how our experts can support your school initiatives.

Summer Training Series ~ Routines & Procedures

RSI4EDU.com opened its summer training series this year with a focus on Developing Essential Routines & Procedures and Strong Start.  Do your teachers #TeachLikeAChampion?

Excellence in education includes a healthy sense of urgency.  The sense that there is a lot of content to cover with little precious time.  When we consider that every minute matters in the classroom it is critically important to take advantage of teaching routines and procedures.  As we begin each new school year we often only recall what our scholars “looked like” and “acted like” at the end of the previous year - after we had them in our classrooms for 180 days.  We accidentally project these memories onto our new scholars and forget to schedule time to teach, practice, and evaluate classroom routines and procedures.  We become frustrated as the thought creeps in, “They are in ___ grade, they should know how to ___.”

To overcome this entanglement of potential frustration remember to carefully and explicitly design procedures that satisfy four criteria: Simplicity, Quick Is King, Little Narration Required, and Planned to the Detail.  Pick up your copy of Teach Like A Champion 2.0 and contact www.RSI4Edu.com for more information, training and coaching.