Now that I’ve covered what programs I use for my middle school small groups A and B, it’s time to talk about what they do while they are not working with me.
In previous weeks, I have covered the programs that I use that address the different strands of the Reading Rope. Group A students have gaps in the Word Recognition strands. Read about what I use to address those needs here. The other students are in Group B because they have gaps in the Language Comprehension strands. Read about how I fill those gaps here.
It makes sense that I can only work with one group at a time. My class is 55 minutes long, so I meet with Group A for 20 minutes. Then we do a brain break in the middle and switch so that I can meet with Group B for 20 minutes. While I’m working with one group, the other group is doing independent work, which includes activities for fluency and morphology.
Fluency
When I analyzed the data to determine which students would be selected for my class, I looked for students that were below grade level in all 3 of our benchmark subtests. While some of them have needs in different parts of the Reading Rope, all of them have at least one thing in common. They all struggle with fluency.
That made my decision for the independent work pretty easy. They can work with a partner to practice fluency skills. Even at the middle school level, there is a connection between fluency and comprehension. The emphasis on fluency begins to decrease, but students still need to read at a certain rate in order to facilitate good comprehension.
When we’re confronted with unfamiliar words, it takes longer to decode them.
When it takes us longer to decode something, we have less “brain space” for understanding what we’re reading.
LETRS
As students get older and are exposed to longer, more complicated words, they need to be able to read them smoothly and automatically so that they can focus on comprehending what the text is about. In order to increase my students’ fluency skills, I’m using a modified version of the 6-Minute Solution routine.
The typical 6-Minute Solution is a partner reading routine where one partner reads out loud for one minute while the other listens and records any errors.
Here is how I’ve adapted it:
- Passage Selection: I purposefully select each passage to match our morphology for the week. This makes it less “random” and gives my students a clear purpose for why they are reading it.
- Students reread the same passage every day with a partner. This helps to build fluency and automaticity, as well as continuing exposure to the morpheme that is being studied. Passages for older students – Passages for younger students
- Timing: Instead of reading for one-minute and possibly not finishing the entire passage, I have my students time each other reading the whole passage. By reading the whole thing from beginning to end, they get to experience all of the ideas presented instead of just the part that they could read in 60 seconds. They also get to see how each read takes a few seconds less as they read more smoothly and automatically.
Morphology
As mentioned before, I include morphology into my students’ independent work. Morphemes need to be explicitly taught. I love using the program Morpheme Magic to teach different morphemes.
Morphology is the study of morphemes: word parts that have meaning (prefixes, suffixes, base words, and roots). This is important for three main reasons: decoding words, understanding the meanings of words, and writing/spelling words more accurately. One of my favorite programs for teaching morphology is Morpheme Magic, but you’ll see that I’ve also included activities from other sources.
Rather than teaching all the prefixes, then all the suffixes, then all the roots, it is better to cycle through a few of each. This allows for integrating building words activities sooner, which will make the word study more meaningful for students.
Prefixes: re-, pre-, “not” prefixes un-/non-/dis-/in-/im-/il-
Suffixes: inflectional endings (-s, -ed, -ing), ful-, -less, -ly
Roots: gram/graph, auto, hydr/aqua, audi, dict/voc, ject, form, port, rupt
Prefixes: “in” prefixes in-/im-/ir-, en-/em-
Suffixes: -er/-est, -tion/-sion, -ology
Roots: photo, tele, therm
…etc
Each week, we focus on 1-2 morphemes to study in depth. After the students have finished their 6-Minute Solution, they also have a morphology activity to complete. The morphology activities rotate throughout the week. The idea is to provide different activities so that students don’t get bored, while also keeping a predictable structure.
They also keep all of their morphemes in a notebook. I use a 5-subject spiral notebook. There is a section for each type of morpheme so that students can refer back to it in future activities.
Activities/Weekly Routine:
Monday: Introduce the Morpheme
Students practice using the morpheme using a variety of different sources. These activities are great! They include word sorts and other fun ways for student to gain familiarity with the morpheme.
Tuesday: Practice with Words and Sentences
This activity is inspired by the materials in Dynamic Roots. I print a page with a list of words that contain the morpheme on one side, and sentences that use those words on the other. Then students follow these directions to complete the activity.
If at least a few prefixes, suffixes, and roots have all been taught, students could also use a Word Matrix to build different words by combining the morpheme that is being studied with other morphemes. This document has a simplified version, as well a blank template that you can use with any morpheme.
Wednesday: Play a game
I bought a couple sets of games and activities from Chalk and Apples that are awesome! Even if I’m teaching a morpheme that is not included in her sets, I can easily create my own game cards to be used with any of her game templates.
Thursday: Write
On Thursdays, students write a paragraph to answer the question from the bottom of their reading passage for the week. My students struggle with this, so I created a paragraph organizer to help them. On the left, there are sentence starters for students to choose from.
Friday: Quiz
On Fridays, students take a quiz on the morpheme for the week. Many times, the game sets have quizzes. If they don’t, the Morpheme Magic book comes with quizzes as well. If neither source has any quizzes, I have to make my own, but that has only happened a once or twice.
I hope all of this helps you as you embark on your own journey to provide reading interventions for your middle and high schoolers. Do you use something different? Leave a comment below and let me know so I can check it out.
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