The literacy warm-up uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to develop a deep understanding and connection to reading and writing foundational skills. The literacy warm-up as a strategy is teacher created. The literacy warm-up is completed each day with variation in content. The purpose of repetition is to build students’ comfortability and awareness of foundational skills application. The literacy warm-up consists of four components, including:
1. Morning Work 2. Daily Fix-A-Sentence 3. Play Dough Build-A-Word 4. Daily Reading Comprehension Journal
The literacy warm-up is displayed below in a beginning excerpt from each daily lesson plan.
1. Morning Work
Morning work greets each student every morning when he or she walks into the classroom. The morning work is placed on each student's table spot and students have ten minutes to complete the morning work individually or collaboratively. . Morning work reviews skills that students have already learned in class. Therefore, students are expected to complete each morning work assignment using prior knowledge. Wednesday morning work is graded for completion and correctness. This weekly check-in allows me to complete a quick check of each student's progress with his or her morning work and independent skills fluency.If students are tardy or absent morning work is sent home for completion.
Below are five examples of our classroom morning work throughout the school year. Number one is an example of graded morning work for skill fluency and numbers two through five are examples of graded morning work for completion.
On example number one the student received a three out six, or fifty percent, demonstrating an understanding of the skill of adding -s or -es to make the word plural and complete a number bond, which correlates with the foundational skills of word reading fluency, phonological awareness, and adding and subtracting numbers 1 - 20. However, the student when completing a number bond still needs support identifying the whole and the parts of the number bond. In this case, after grading I provided the student with a one-on-one conference explaining her mistakes and small group work was adjusted to review the skill of identifying parts and the whole in a number bond.
2. Daily Fix-A-Sentence
Students learn about sentences and sentence structure each day and use a sentence tool box to make corrections to sentences. Students complete this activity each day following their morning work activity. Monday's sentence from the Daily Fix-A-Sentence packet is chosen to be on the end of the week assessment. During this activity, students are reviewing their skills of word reading fluency, phonics, and reading comprehension.
1. First, a student is chosen from the classroom equity jar to read the sentence to the class. The student reads the sentence to the class and then the sentence is read following along with the student chosen from the equity jar. (Word Reading Fluency) 2. Second, students raise their hands to collectively make corrections to the sentence. (Phonics) 3. Third, students discuss what the sentence's illustration will include based on the sentence. (Reading Comprehension) 4. Fourth, students make the corrections to the sentence, writing the sentence twice on the page and draw a relevant illustration. (Word Reading Fluency, Phonics, and Reading Comprehension)
Students have ten minutes to complete the fourth step. Once students have made all corrections and add relevant illustrations students receive a sticker on their work from a classroom teacher or volunteer. If a teacher or volunteer is not able to give a student a sticker initially, she or he will give the student feedback for corrections and circle back around following corrections to give the student his or her sticker. This is an indicator to the student that he or she is done and can go to the carpet to wait for the morning meeting to begin.
The images below numbers one through four are examples of completed sentences. Number five is an example of a relevant illustration, and a sentence which still needs correction. Consequently, the student receives the teacher or volunteer feedback and he is expected to make the needed corrections to receive a sticker. Stickers are counted at the end of every other week for grading and students receive two points for stickers for five days.
3. Play Dough Build-A-Word
Each day students participate in a teacher created literacy warm-up, which encourages students to practice and interact with reading and writing foundational skills. In the daily literacy warm-up, students participate in a Word of the Day exercise, when students build the word of the day with play dough. At the end of the week on Friday students use the play dough to prepare for the end of the week assessment and practice spelling all five of that week's sight-words with play dough including the sentence. Building the sentence is a fun activity for students because it encourages students not only to spell each word in the sentence correctly using their favorite spelling tool but also to work with other table mates to build the sentence and each word. A collaborative Friday play dough sentence is displayed above.
Students take home their play dough at the end of each month to use as a practice tool at home and at the beginning of each month students receive a new play dough jar for continued in classroom practice.
In this daily exercise students practice spelling and writing. Building words with play dough, writing the word in daily sentences (Today is _____________. The word of the day is _________________. ), rainbow writing words, and writing the word in student created sentences.
A student example using the sight-word "my" is displayed below:
4. Daily Reading Comprehension Journal
Students complete their daily reading comprehension journal each day and read the same passage each week to build word reading fluency and reading comprehension skills. The daily reading comprehension workbooks were purchased from the Lakeshore Learning Store.
Each day the students read the passage along with the teacher and complete the reading comprehension activity. The daily reading comprehension workbooks are an example of NACA I's accelerated curriculum as students are interacting with first grade reading standards when reading and completing each passage.
The Common Core Standards for the daily reading comprehension work book are listed in the image below:
The daily reading comprehension work books are graded every third week to check-in on students word reading fluency and progression of reading comprehension skills.
An example of one hundred percent mastery for week thirty is displayed in the images below.