Malissa Schreiber

Course Portfolio

Phonemic Awareness, Phonics/Word Identification

A. Phonological Awareness Summary: Phonological awareness is set of skills
that help children become aware of word structure and sound structure. The
children become aware of syllabus, onsets, rimes, and phonemes. Phonemes
are the individual sounds in a spoken word. Onset is the initial phoneme of a
word and a rime is the rest of the syllable. Phonological awareness is what
happens before you can learn to read or write it is also a predictor of later
reading success. Parts of phonological awareness include segmenting into
syllables, categorization, and substituting phonemes.
B. Phonemic Awareness Summary: Phonemic awareness is matching sounds to
alphabetic letters. Mapping to print is the connection between phonemes
and graphemes and also includes the alphabetic principle. Phonemic
awareness is a predictor of later reading and spelling success.
C. Phonics/Word Identification Summary: Phonics is the skill of matching
letters to sounds and recognizing letter/spelling patterns. Phonics must be
systematic. Some phonics patterns include ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ letter sounds as
well as long and short vowel sounds. Digraphs and clusters also fall into
phonics with letter patterns.
D. Artifact: Word Study Bookmark

E. Strategies: A fun strategy for letter matching would be a matching game with
upper and lower case letters. This will be fun for the kids because it is game
like as well as helping with their phonemic awareness. A phonological
awareness strategy could be having two sets of cards one set with root words
 on them and another set with letters to add to those root words. An example
would be a card with the word play on it and then a word with ‘ing’ on it to
create the word playing. Another phonological awareness game would be
having a rhyming matching game. For example words like dog and log would
be a match. Word sorts are a good strategy that can be used at any level; you
can have picture sorts as well. Word and picture sorts help to find spelling,
letter, and word patterns. A strategy to help with identifying sounds would
be to give each student a mirror and have them say certain sounds or words
and take note of where their lips, tongue, and teeth are for each sound. You
can then have a discussion about what is needed to do to make certain
sounds.
F. Website: http://www.readingrockets.org/article/phonemic-activities-
preschool-or-elementary-classroom Reading Rockets is a great website that
has anything you can think of. It has teacher resources, parent resources,
activities, and even activities for kids. The particular site that I would use in
my classroom is a list of activities regarding phonological awareness that you
can do in your classroom with your students. The activities list the
objectives, materials needed, what to do, and variations of each activity. All
the classroom activities are laid out and are easy to follow.
G. Apps: Pocket Charts! Rhyming Words: This app costs $0.99 and is a rhyming
matching game. You have two words at a time such as dog and cat you then
have a word/picture bank that you select words from and decide if they go to
the word dog or cat. This app works best for children ages 3-8. Syllable
Awareness—Themes 1: This is a tap it out app helping with syllable
recognition. The app gives you an icon and then names the icon and the
student is to decide how many syllables are in that word. The student will
click a button however many times depending on how many syllables they
think are in the word. This app has words with 1-4 syllables. There are
different themes in this app too; there are animals, transportation, food, and
home items. Pocket Charts! Consonant Blends and Digraphs: This app helps
children learn consonant blends and digraphs. The children are given two
choices at a time for example bl or br and then given pictures blocks or
brooms for example and need to drag them to the correct blend or diagraph.
This app is made for ages 4-8 and costs $0.99.

Vocabulary
A. Vocabulary Summary: There are six categories that build vocabulary,
synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, euphemisms, onomatopoeia, and root
words and affixes. There are also three levels of knowing words, unknown,
where the word is completely unfamiliar. Acquainted, somewhat familiar
with the word, maybe having heard it before, but not knowing the meaning.
Established, this is where you can use the word in a sentence and come up
with a definition. There are three tiers to vocabulary, the first tier is tier one
which consists of common known words, the second tier has academic
vocabulary that is used cross-curricular, and tier three contains subject
 specific vocabulary words. An example of a tier one word would be the word
pencil, a tier two example would be the word predict, and tier three would be
a word such as mitochondria. Marzano has six steps to help fully understand
vocabulary. Step one is describing the word, using examples and writing
explanations. Step two is linguistics where students restate what they know.
Step three is non-linguistics where you represent the vocabulary word in a
visual manner. Step four is adding any other knowledge to a vocabulary
notebook. Step five is where students collaborate and discuss terms with
their peers. Finally step six is playing games with the words.
B. Artifact—Crossword puzzle.

C. Strategies: A Word Wall is a great strategy to use in your classroom.

Physically having the vocabulary words and maybe a picture next to it on the
classroom wall will assist students in their learning. Students will be able to
be working or reading and need to double check a vocabulary word and
instead of asking the teacher they are able to go and look at the Word Wall.
This strategy holds students accountable for their own learning and they will
learn the new vocab words when creating the Word Wall and make
connections with the pictures being used. Interview a Word is a fun game
strategy. As a teacher you will want to pick a few important words that you
want your class to know and then divide the class up into groups of two or
three. Each group will get a vocabulary word and ‘become’ that word. The
rest of the class will ask ‘interview’ questions about the word trying to figure
out what vocab word the group has or ‘is’. Word Wizard is a good strategy to
help kids thoroughly understand vocabulary words in a text. Divide the class
up into groups of two to four and give each group three or so vocabulary
terms from your reading. Each Word Wizard group will present their words
to the rest of the class. They should have a definition of the word in their
own words as well as have a picture representation. While the Word
Wizards are presenting these new words the rest of the class will write what
they learned in their vocabulary notebook. Concept Cube is a fun game like
strategy to learning vocabulary terms. You will have the students working in
pairs and each pair will receive a six-sided cube. The six sides will be labeled
synonym, vocabulary word, antonym, category it belongs to, essential
characteristics, and example. You then have a placemat with vocabulary
words on it, you will have the student roll the die on the placemat and tell the
 partner what the answer to the question on the cube is based on the vocab
word that it rolled on. For example if the word is humongous and they rolled
synonym an answer would be large. A good strategy to learning vocabulary
terms is to use a semantic map. This is a web where you put the term in the
center and have boxes coming out that ask for a picture, related words, using
it in a sentence, a definition in their own words, synonyms or examples, and
antonyms or non-examples. The students will then fill out these webs based
on the word. You can use this for all words; words where they need a little
extra help, or just a way to organize the student’s vocabulary notebook. This
strategy is a good resource for students to look back at and a clear way to
show the information needed about a term.
D. Website: http://www.wordhippo.com/ Word Hippo is a website I would
introduce to my students and allow them to use when they are writing
individually or helping with the revision of another students work. This
website helps you find synonyms, antonyms, rhymes, pronunciation,
meaning, etc. of any word you type in the search box. It is a wonderful and
easy tool to use, which makes it great for any level.
E. Apps: 4th Grade Vocabulary Prep: This app has many different vocabulary
words, the meaning of the word, a sample sentence with the word being
used, and what type of word it is. There are also quizzes on the words to
make sure that they are learning. The student will need to get 90% on a quiz
to move on to the next level of words. You can enter in any amount of
students and follow their completion rate. First Sight Words Professional—
Dolch Words: There are sight words that range from pre-k—3rd grade. With
the word there is an icon to help the students. You as a teacher can manage
what words the kids see when so they aren’t moving ahead. The screen on
the app will give you a picture icon and a letter bank and the student will
have to place the correct letter in the correct box to spell the sight word.
Word Wall HD: This app helps children learn early reading skills with
interactive games. The app has visual cues and pictures linked to words, the
app reads the words correctly for the children, and then encourages them to
repeat the word on their own, and app users are able to write and spell the
words in interactive games. There are over 75 sight words used in this app
and 12 word families. The app is best used for ages 5-6.

Fluency
A. Fluency Summary: Fluency consists of automaticity, prosody, and rate.
There are different assessments to measure fluency; there are sight words,
words per minute correct, and a prosody scale. Some strategies to use when
teaching fluency include, choral reading, paired reading, repeated reading,
and performance reading (Reader’s theater). Fluency accuracy strategies
include, slowing down your reading, look at all the parts of the word, sound
out the individual letters in a word to read it correctly, reread the sentence
again, etc. Expression fix-ups can include remembering to raise your voice
when you come across punctuation and try to not take breaks so often (try to
 read steady until a coma or the end of a sentence). Fluency is a building
block and can make a huge difference especially third grade and above.
B. Artifact—Fluency fix up strategies
Accuracy:
1. Slow down your reading speed.
2. Look carefully at the words and the letters in the words read incorrectly.
3. Think about if you know the word or parts of the word. Say the word or word
parts.
4. Segment and blend the sounds of the word together.
5. Listen carefully to see if the word makes sense.
6. Reread the word in the sentence again.
7. After saying the word, use visual cues or pictures to help to say the correct word.
8. If the word still doesn’t make sense, ask someone to help you.
Rate:
1. Go slower if the text is more difficult or unfamiliar, or reading for detail.
2. Go faster when the text is easy or familiar, or reading for enjoyment.
Expression:
1. Try to read three of more words together before pausing, stopping or taking a
breath.
2. Taka a big breathe and try to read to the comma or end punctuation without
stopping for another breath.
3. Be sure to raise or lower your pitch when you see punctuation marks at the end of
sentences.
Reutzel & Cooter (2008). Teaching Children to read: The teacher makes the difference.
(5th Ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc. p. 185

C. Strategies: Reader’s Theater, having students participate in a reader’s theater

helps their fluency. Students need to read the script over and over both
orally and silently and are able to gain confidence doing so. Stop and Go
strategy, this strategy helps students become more aware of punctuation.
You are to have students read a sentence at a time and then have them pause
for a few seconds before continuing on to the next sentence. Children can do
this strategy with peers as well. So many children surpass punctuation and
keep on reading, so this would be an ideal strategy for those particular
students. Audio books, having either the whole class or individual students
listen and follow along with an audio book can really help improve students’
fluency. Hearing the book read on tape allows students to hear how it is
supposed to sound and where pauses are supposed to happen, it is a good
modeling technique. Phrase reading is a strategy used to help get away from
word to word reading. As a teacher you should write phrases of a story on
sentence strips and then hold them up in front of the class as cue cards,
where the class together reads the sentence strip as a phrase rather than
word by word. You hold up on strip at a time and should use a book that the
class is familiar with so it is easier to read in phrases. Poem reading is
another good strategy to use when working on phrase reading. Poems are
usually written in phrases and have their own flow to them. As a class
 reading poems will help students to read in phrases and with a sort of flow.
You can also put poem phrases on sentence strips for the class.
D. Website: https://www.readinga-z.com/ Reading A-Z has a variety of leveled
passages that are free to print off for your class or child. They also have free
Reader’s Theaters available. Not only do they have a variety of texts they
also have worksheets and videos that go with the books. You sign up as a
member to access all of these literacy resources.
E. Apps: Sight Words Flash Cards is a free app that gives you sight words that
you practice until you master. Having all of the sight words in one place (this
app) is very convenient for teachers and parents. When children master
their sight words their fluency improves. Fluency Level 1 is an app that
focuses on all aspects of fluency, accuracy, smoothness, expression and
automaticity. This app has different readings to focus on the different parts
of fluency. It times your reading and helps you read in phrases. This app has
different levels as well each at $1.99. One Minute Reader is an app with
several passages that are each leveled and gives you one minute at a time to
read them. This app practices modeling with a voice reading along with the
student in case they get stuck on a word and also shows proper fluency skills.
At the end of each passage there are comprehension questions with
rewarding feedback. For teachers and parents you are able to track how well
your child is doing and how much progress they are making. This app is also
free with in app purchases.

Comprehension
A. Comprehension Summary: Comprehension involves schema, prior
knowledge, self-monitoring and metacognition, reflection and reading
response, and questions that provoke different levels of thinking. We help
students comprehend by reading aloud, paired reading, guided reading in
small groups, whole class choral reading, and individual silent reading where
they are held accountable. You can read any form of text to help with
comprehension from books to newspapers and even text online as long as
the text is at the students reading level. The building blocks of
comprehension are word recognition, decoding, and fluency. You can tell
that a child is comprehending text when they are able to make connections to
what they already know, interrupt and evaluate new ideas, determine and
remember main points, and being able to ‘read between the lines’. When
reading there is a reading cycle, the steps include, pre-reading, during
reading, post reading, and response. Pre-reading is used to predict and
preview the text, during reading you are decoding and thinking, post-reading
you clarify any thoughts and extend your thinking, and then you follow up
with a response to the reading. Readability is the ease of which it is to read.
You can test or figure out the readability in two ways, the RAYGOR method
and the Flesch Kincaid, to figure out readability you take a small chunk (100
words) of the text and use charts and formulas to figure out the number or
grade level of readability. You look at the number of sentences and the
 length of words to figure this out. Text complexity consists of qualitative,
quantitative, and reader and task.
B. Artifact—Close reading steps for narrative and expository

C. Artifact—Readability Explanation and how to find the level of children’s

books

D. Strategies: Graphic organizers are a great way to help with comprehension;

students are able to write down in an organized manner different aspects of
what they read. There are a variety of graphic organizers and each one can
focus on something different. A popular graphic organizer asks about the
main ideas and details. Another graphic organizer may focus on the text
structure asking about plot, characters, setting, etc. A simple, but effective
strategy to use to help with comprehension is giving students a purpose to
read, you do this by asking them questions. You can have a book club in your
classroom where you go very in-depth and have several discussions or it
could be as simple as putting sticky-notes inside the book that the student is
reading to keep provoking thoughts. A creative comprehension strategy to
use is having the students generate their own questions about a story. Have
students have a piece of paper next to them when reading a text and ask
them to write down three to five questions they can ask or that they have
 about the text, this helps them stay focused and looking for details
throughout the reading. Visualizing what is happening in a text helps form
comprehension skills. As a teacher you could pull out a short descriptive
portion of a text and write it on the board. When you have this short
descriptive piece pulled from a book you will read it to your students and ask
them to draw what they are hearing/reading. It is good to have the passage
written on the board for those who want to reread sections and to have it
read to them so they can hear it. This strategy has them focus and learn how
to paint a picture in their mind. One other comprehension strategy that gets
used frequently is simply rereading text. Have the child go back and reread a
section or reread the whole passage to better understand what happened.
This strategy also connects with the skill of looking back to the text when
answering a question. This strategy teaches students that it is okay to read
something more than once to better understand it as well as the book or text
being a resource that they can go back to when stuck on a question.
E. Website: http://www.k5learning.com/reading-comprehension-
worksheets/first-grade-1 k-5 learning has grade level passages with
comprehension questions and worksheets of varying reading levels and
several different passage topics. This website is easy to use and follow and
provides a good amount of comprehension practice for many grades.
F. Apps: Reading Comprehension: This app is a digital lesson plan for your
classroom; it focuses on context clues, main idea, and inferences. This lesson
plan app has pintables, graphic organizers, memory games, interactive
activities, teacher guides, and much more. You can get the first chapter of the
app for free and then pay $1.99 for the other five chapters along with all the
extras. This app is best used with students ages eight and up. Main Idea—
Short Texts: Reading Comprehension Skills & Practice Kids Game: In this app
you start on level one and go in order from there unlocking levels as you go.
You will receive a sentence in this app and then be given a few choices asking
what the main idea was about and are then able to check your answer and
move on. This app is nice because it really breaks down the main idea
learning for students with just one sentence compared to a whole passage.
Kids Reading Comprehension (grade 3): This app allows you to monitor up
to four students reading comprehension. Students will read passages that
are at a third grade level and then answer questions regarding the story.
There are two modes in this app a test mode and a practice mode. There are
several different topics to read about and this app only costs $1.99.

Writing Instruction
A. Writing Instruction Summary: The writing process has seven steps to it. The
fist step is prewriting, this is where you just free write and brainstorm ideas.
Next is a rough draft, this is where you write about your chosen topic. Next is
revising, where you look at the organization of the topic, if everything flows
and fits together, the word choice and overall feel of the writing. You can use
peers and teachers to help with this step. You then write a second draft with
 all of the changes you made during the revision process. Next you will edit
your paper, this is the step where you look at the mechanics of the writing;
you look for punctuation, spelling, and grammar issues. When revising you
focus on one sentence at a time to make sure they you don’t miss any
mistakes. A peer or teacher is a great resource during this step. After you
have made changes to your writing it is time to create a final draft and
publish your paper. You make so many different drafts to help keep the
changes organized and updated, you want your final draft to clean without
any mark ups from the revising or editing steps in the process. Lastly you
will evaluate your writing.
B. Artifact—editing revision bookmark

C. Visual of writing process

D. Strategies: One writing strategy that would be easy to implement into any
classroom would be journaling or free writing. At the end or beginning of
each day have the kids write anything that they want in a journal or
notebook. This will help students with their flow of ideas and teach them
how to turn verbalization into their own writing. Another strategy that can
 be used is having editing/revising conferences. You can have student group
up into group of two to four and have them switch their writing with
someone else to get another set of eyes looking at it and then have them
make suggestions for changes. This strategy will help students review
writing and be more aware of common mistakes as well as teach them how
to converse about different ideas and even learn how to handle constructive
criticism. When starting a writing project a writing strategy that is very
helpful is creating an outline for the writing. You can use graphic organizers
or other outlines to clearly layout what you will be putting in your writing.
This strategy helps students get all their ideas out before even starting to
write and helps make the rest of the process easier. A strategy to help
expand a students writing is a show and tell chart. It is a T-chart that has one
side labeled tell and the other labeled show. On the tell side you take a
sentence you wrote and then you think about that sentence and paint a
picture in your head and then write down in the show column all the parts of
that picture. For example a tell would be ‘It was so hot that day’ and after
thinking about that day in your head you then write ‘I was sweating the
whole afternoon, all I could think about was us going to the beach when mom
got home. In the meantime my brother and I ate ice cream to stay cool’ in the
show column. This strategy teaches students to expand and elaborate with
more detail. A fun strategy to use when deciding what topic to pick for your
writing is to think of a few topics and write down some points about that
topic and then talk to a friend or even a stuffed animal. If you can talk about
this topic for two or more minutes then you should have enough information
and details to write about. This is a good strategy because you don’t want to
start writing and then realize you don’t have enough information to continue
on or finish the writing assignment.
E. Website: http://www.time4writing.com/teaching-writing/ Time For Writing
is a great teacher resource. This website provides resources on how best to
teach writing in the classroom. It gives you help on grading, writing
conventions, and graphic organizers. There are also articles and activities
regarding other writing topics. All of the information provided is directed at
K-12 teachers.
F. Apps: Writing Challenge for Kids is an app that gives students writing
prompts and sparks their imagination. This app gives you a topic to write
about in your own notebook and then gives you following steps such as
character ideas and tells you to create a scene in your story that takes place
in certain areas. There are several different varieties of this story generator
that help students come up with creative stories and help chose a topic if
they are stuck on one. This app is designed for children ages 7-14 and costs
$2.99. Published By Kids is a fun app students can use. You can write or
upload a story to this app and have it published. The app will place the story
in certain categories and then anyone who has this app around the world can
read your story. Students can publish their own work and read other
students work to get ideas or practice. Students will enjoy the idea of having
their story published for anyone to read as well as find comfort in this free
 app by seeing others students work. Tools 4 Students is an app that contains
twenty-five different types of graphic organizers. You chose what organizer
you want and then type your ideas and thoughts in the areas provided for
each of the common comprehension skill areas. This is a great way to help
students organize before they write and will be a fun way to do so with it also
incorporating technology. This is a worthwhile app that only costs $0.99 for
all 25 organizers.

Grammar
A. Grammar Summary: Grammar is the system of structure of the English
Language, it tells us how to form a sentence and where to put certain
punctuation. In the writing process grammar is used when revising and
editing. Revising is when you look at your paper or writing as a whole and
find the strengths and weakness, you look at word choice, voice,
organization, and when you help make clarifications. While editing is looking
at spelling, grammar, punctuation, and also a bit of word choice. An easier
way to think about it is that with revising there is a discussion between the
writer and reader and you are looking at your writing as a whole and with
editing it is one-sided; the reader is the one making corrections and is looked
at one sentence at a time. In grammar you should look at nouns, verbs and
verb tenses, adverbs, adjectives, speech, and punctuation.
B. Artifact—Sentence combing examples
C. Visual of the writing process:

D. Strategies: Give students a sheet with a small portion of writing 1-3

sentences with grammatical errors and as a class go through and try to find a
fix the errors. Sentence expanding is a good grammar strategy, you could
have a simple sentence like ‘the cat ran’ and then have students roll a die and
add as many words as they rolled to the sentence to expand it. As a teacher
you should read many different forms of writing aloud to your students; you
should read letters, books, newspapers, etc. Students can be Sentence
Collectors too, while they are reading at home or in the classroom have them
write down sentences they find to be interesting and then bring them back to
the classroom and have group discussions about why they thought they were
interesting. Was it the voice the writer used or was it the structure of the
sentence? Another strategy you could use to help with grammar in your
classroom is having students proofread and talk with a partner about their
writing.
E. Website: https://www.grammarly.com/handbook/ Grammarly Handbook is
an easy to follow website with lessons covering many aspects of grammar in
an easy and clear way with many examples.
F. Apps: Grammar For Kids—Learn Parts of Speech: This app helps children
grades 3-7 learn parts of speech. There are ten levels and a dinosaur that
walks you through them all. In this app you need to identify what part of
speech the underlined word is. There are thousands of different questions
and the first two levels are free! Abby Explorer Grammar—First Level Lite
Free: This app focuses on parts of speech, sentences, and mechanics; you can
choose what section you want to look at or complete them all. There are
lessons with examples to help make independent learning easier. Lastly
there are printable PDF’s that are connected with this app so you can
practice on paper too! Word Types Grammar Quiz—Practice Parts of Speech:
This app costs $1.99, but there are no in app purchases. This app helps
children identify different word types and grammatical concepts. The
questions on this app are multiple-choice questions and they change every
time you play.