All of those who teach in public schools were back to school this past week. I know colleges and universities may not be back until this coming week. Although we continue an academic year, the change from 2011 to 2012 leads us to consider our direction. My break offered me an opportunity to take a look at what I'm doing and where I'm going with the resources I offer you.
Last year I had a contributing writer, Elaine Bailey, who wrote specifically about dyslexia. During that period I focused on other areas of need: early intervention, fine motor activities, and mathematics. As I was reviewing the interests of my readers, I noted that a lot of people are using the worksheets on the site for letter recognition and word recognition skills. I realized it was time to refocus on this part of the site.
I replaced the letter activities because I found that many of them assumed that students already knew the words, or the pictures and words chosen may not have actually been familiar to most children. Working in inner city schools in Philadelphia, I discovered things those of us from the suburbs assume children know are not known.
Another area that many people visit are the Dolch High Frequency Words flash cards and activities. Reviewing those resources, I found that the "word wall" or flash card printables were too small for use and not convenient drill, storage or handling in general. I have remade those flash cards so they fit on 3" by 5" cards. If you print them on card stock, you can cut them out with a paper cutter and store them in a 3" x 5" card file box. I also like to punch a whole in the upper left corner, and put a ring through them.
Another resource I found lacking were data sheets for Dolch High Frequency Words. These data sheets with the word lists can be used not only with iep goals directed at learning the words, but also to create a baseline to find out where your students are in knowing these words.
My final goal is to redo the cloze worksheets. There are no worksheets for the pre-primer words. I am creating them with rebuses (picture words) for early emerging readers. I hope to create enough for you to give your students lots of practice with these high frequency words.
I am also finishing up Reading 101: I discovered I had abandoned it once Eileen came on board. That has included more information on Phonemic Awareness, a building block for using phonics to decode unfamiliar words. Hopefully you will continue to find new resources available to support your efforts in the classroom.
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