Improving the 5 Steps of Literacy

Do you know what the 5 pillars of literacy are? They are phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. I’m in my eighth year of teaching but teaching 3rd grade for the first time. I have previously taught 1st and 2nd grade and could clearly identify the literacy gaps within students this year. My 3rd grade students spent first grade in the thick of the pandemic learning remotely or on a hybrid schedule which was tough for students and parents. It was tough for me to teach fundamental reading and math skills to 6 and 7 year olds on a computer as we all navigated school virtually for the first time when I was teaching 1st grade. As a result, I know there are skills students didn’t master and probably missed in the first grade which wasn’t students or parent’s fault. First grade skills are reviewed and built upon in 2nd grade but it’s hard for students to keep up in school and build upon skills that weren’t taught or properly developed because of alternative schooling in a pandemic. I also feel it’s hard for marginalized students to have kept up academically during the after the pandemic when competing against students whose families can’t afford private tutoring or literacy/math tutoring programs which are expensive. That’s where I step in. I will explain how I took steps to help close literacy gaps within my classroom. 

Stepping into DP was like walking into a field of daisies. I had a breath of fresh air everyday coming to work at DP because the students and their families are so eager to learn and very hands on. I noticed students could read at various levels but across the classroom, students struggled with comprehension. As I started to dig deeper into unpacking daily learning targets and asking more probing questions, I noticed students could decode larger syllable words, but they didn’t know what the words meant. Since each teacher has an Amazon Wishlist, I started researching word association games and tools to help build student’s spelling, vocabulary and decoding skills since students in the classroom were on different mastery of the pillars of literacy. First, I started to research bingo games and came across prefix and suffix bingo which was exciting to play with the students because some members of the class had never played bingo before. I knew prefixes and suffixes are heavily pushed in 4th and 5th grade, so I wanted to give students a head start by exposing them to them and their meanings. We played suffix and prefix bingo about once a week during morning crew and I start incorporating different prefix and suffix charts in weekly skills powerpoints that I made exposing students. My goal was to help students use the root words, suffixes and prefixes to break down the meaning of words to help them better comprehend what they were reading. Next, I asked and received a synonym bingo game to help expand their word choice when writing and speaking and to further their comprehension of texts that have vocabulary words their not exposed to regularly. The prefix and suffix bingo was the crew’s favorite out of all of my bingo games when I would give them option, they always chose that game. That’s how I started to bridge the literacy gap asking for bingo games to support. 

I know there are multiple learning styles, so reflecting on 1st and 2nd grade students developmentally, I remembered they need skills taught on a concrete level and need a visual when learning skills. However, remember my current third graders missed out of this key piece of learning because of remote learning. I wanted to restore what some students or most never got a chance to do because of the learning challenges the pandemic brought on. As a result, I asked and received various phonics dominos that were packaged by blends, prefixes/suffixes, and short vowels. They are colored coded dominoes that students have to physically put together to make and sound out real words. I eventually created a word work station in my skills workshop rotation and would differentiate the learning by having different groups use different phonics dominos to create and write words using a whiteboard and dry erase marker. I would also use the dominoes as a warm up in my small groups and have the students race to make as many words as possible in a minute for example. It was cool to see the students explore the dominoes overtime and improve their reading and spelling. 

Lastly, I asked and received Bananagrams and Classwords The Vocabulary Game (grade 2 and 3) from my Amazon Wishlist. I received the idea of asking for Bananagrams from Ms. Alissa who is a current 7th grade teacher here. She told me she plays with her crew and they love it. The game was slightly challenging for the crew at the beginning of the year because students spelling knowledge was low but over the year, students worked really hard to improve their spelling and shared curiosity around learning more words and truly understanding what words mean. Next, I started using the Classwords The Vocabulary Game during the last 5 minutes of closing crew everyday and the crew loved it! Eventually they started playing and facilitating the game themselves during dismissal after we played for a few months. As we close out the year, the students have reflected on their learning and have articulated in final slcs that their spelling has improved and their writing is now legible to readers. Students have used knowledge of different words to have sentence variety when writing. Lastly, students’ comprehension and reading scores have improved this school year. I hope to continue to provide an accessible and fair learning environment for all students using no prep activities that supporters and myself can purchase through Amazon. I’ve already started building activities for next year such as sentence building puzzles, k-3 sight words so I can stop writing them out on index cards and phonic tiles. I’ve excited to continue to expose students to new literacy activities and to continue to work smarter, not harder as a teacher.