Welcome to the St. John Reading Room

The St. John Reading Intervention Program offers on-going, specialized instruction throughout the year in a small group setting. Students are placed in the program based on their performance on beginning of the year reading assessments administered by the Reading Specialist and the classroom teachers. Students in grades one through five are assessed again in the winter and the spring to determine progress and guide instruction. Middle school students are assessed at the beginning and end of the year.

In the Reading Room students are taught phonics rules using multisensory instruction. Students practice decoding words using specialized techniques and work towards mastery through continuous review. Students practice reading for fluency and comprehension with a variety of non-fiction and fiction passages, poems, and plays.

Announcements

End of the year testing will take place the week of June 4th. Reports will be hand carried home the following week on Tuesday or Wednesday.

The last day for morning middle school reading group will be:

6th grade Friday, 6/8

7th grade Thursday, 6/7

8th grade Thursday, 5/31

The best way to reach me is through e-mail at kmccarthy@stjohnsea.org. Because parent e-mails are sometimes sent to junk e-mail, please use your child's name as the subject. If you don't hear back from me within a couple of days please try again or leave a voice mail at 783-0337 ext. 341.

Happenings

Week of May 21st

Miss Feeney's Readers, Monday, Wednesday, Friday

Students are developing their phonemic awareness through blending and segmenting activities. Students have been taught the consonants, the digraphs, the short vowel pattern, the silent-e pattern, and the vowel pair ee, oa, ai, and ea and the r-controlled vowels ar, or, and er. This week students are reading words with ur and ir. Students are tapping words, they start with the vowel sound, then tap each letter and say the sound, before blending the word together. Students are building fluency and comprehension with passages from the QuickReads series.

Miss Feeney's Readers, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday

Students are developing their phonemic awareness through segmenting activities. Students have been taught the consonants, the digraphs, the short vowel pattern, the silent-e pattern, and the vowel pairs ee, oa, ai, and ea and the r-controlled vowels ar , or, ir, ur, and er. This week students are reading words with oo. Students are tapping words, they start with the vowel sound, then tap each letter and say the sound, before blending the word together. Students are building fluency and comprehension with passages from the QuickReads series.

Miss Schifferman's Readers, Monday, Wednesday and Tuesday, Thursday

Students are developing their phonemic awareness through segmenting activities. Students have been taught the consonants, the digraphs, the short vowel pattern, and the silent-e pattern, and the vowel pairs ee, oa, ai, and ea and the r-controlled vowels ar, or, ir, ur, and er. This week students are reading words with oo. Students are tapping words, they start with the vowel sound, then tap each letter and say the sound, before blending the word together. Students are building fluency and comprehension with passages from the QuickReads series.

Mrs. Hendrickson's Readers

Students are reviewing the tapping skill for decoding one syllable words. Students have been taught the short vowel sounds, the silent-e syllable, the vowel pairs ee, oa, ai, ea, oo, ow, ou, ay, ie, aw, au, oi, oy, and ew and the r-controlled vowels. Students are now working on reading multisyllable words. Students have read two and three syllable words with closed and silent-e syllables. This week students are reading one and two syllable words with closed, silent-e, and open syllables. Students are building fluency and comprehension skills with passages from the QuickReads series and with poetry.

Mrs. Teschner's Readers, Monday, Wednesday, Friday

Students are reviewing the tapping skill for decoding one syllable words. Students have been taught the short vowels, the silent-e syllable, and the vowel pairs ee, oa, ai, ea, oo, ow, ou, au, ay, oi, oy, and aw, and the r-controlled vowels. This week students are reading two syllable words with closed syllables only. Students are building fluency and comprehension skills with passages from the QuickReads series.

Mrs. Teschner's Readers, Tuesday, Thursday

Students are reviewing the tapping skill for decoding one syllable words. Students have been taught the short vowels, the silent-e syllable, and the vowel pairs ee, oa, ai, ea, oo, ow, ou, aw, au, ie, ew, and the r-controlled vowels. This week students are learning syllable division rules in two syllable words with closed syllables and silent-e syllables. Students are building fluency and comprehension skills with passages from the QuickReads series and with poetry.

Mrs. Castillo's Readers

Students have been taught the rules for syllable division in two and three syllable words with closed, silent-e, open, and consonant-le syllables. This week students are working in the REWARDS series. REWARDS reviews the common vowel pairs and introduces the most common prefixes and suffixes students need to know in order to decode complex multisyllable words. Students are building fluency and comprehension skills with passages from the QuickReads series, Time for Kids, and poetry.

Mrs. Kelly's Readers

Fourth Grade Readers

Students are working through the Advanced Wired for Reading program, which teaches the meanings of common Latin and Greek prefixes, roots, and suffixes. This week students are reading words with prefixes, roots, and suffixes from Latin Set One. Students are building fluency and comprehension with passages from the the QuickReads series and Reading for Content.

Fifth Grade Readers

Students are learning prefixes, roots, and suffixes from Set Two of the Wired for Reading Advanced Program. This week students are reading words with roots from Latin Set Four. Students are building fluency and comprehension skills with plays from the Readers' Theater series. Students are practicing retelling and completing graphic organizers with non-fiction and fiction passages.

Middle School Readers, Monday, Wednesday, Friday

Students are learning the steps for reading a textbook and taking notes from their Science textbook.

Middle School Readers, Tuesday, Thursday

Students have completed the Reading and Reasoning series, which builds language and comprehension skills. Students are reading non-fiction passages from the Reading for Content series and and are building comprehension through the completion of graphic organizers.

Homework

Students in grades two through five are given homework folders at the beginning of the year. In general students will have one word list and one fluency passage to read each night. The practice should be completed in about five minutes and is meant to reinforce phonics concepts and to further build students' fluency through the repeated reading of short passages. Please make sure you sign your student's home practice log with your initials. This is your child's way of showing me that s/he did the homework.

Educational Links

Reading Rockets

www.readingrockets.org

This website offers great information for families on how to help support reading at home, plus information on books and authors.

Starfall

www.starfall.com

This website has fun activities and stories appropriate for students in pre-k through second grade.

Big Ideas in Beginning Reading

http://reading.uoregon.edu/

This website showcases the five essential elements of reading: phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, accuracy and fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. For families interested in relevant research, this website offers a wealth of information.