A Day in the Life of a Title Teacher
General Information
Each grade level has our services for at least thirty minutes a day. We usually work with students in groups of 5 or 6, but depending on what a student needs the groups can look different. Students are grouped based on the FAST Assessment, classroom assessments, diagnostics and teacher recommendation.
Kindergarten
In Kindergarten we spend a great deal of our time working with skills that fall into the realm of phonemic awareness and then move into phonetic principle. Examples of phonemic awareness (sounds) are Letter Recognition, Letter-Sound Correlation, Rhyming, Onset Sounds, and Syllables. Phonics encompasses the study of the written word. Here we spend a lot of time on basic vowel patterns.
1st Grade
In 1st Grade students spend much more time working with the written word. For this reason we do a lot of work with segmenting the sounds of words and applying those phonetic principles to reading and writing. Students will do this using authentic literature ranging from nursery rhymes to poems and into more advanced forms of text as the year goes on.
2nd Grade
2nd Grade phonics is much more complex. Here we start to address more challenging phonics patterns and apply these to multi-syllabic words. We also get into really focusing on fluency. Fluency is the ability of a student to read at a specified rate, but also how well they use expression, phrasing and punctuation. If a child is able to read accurately and fluently they are much more likely to understand what they are reading at a deeper level.
3rd Grade
This can be a make or break year for students because of the new Iowa legislation on 3rd Grade retention. Most students at this age have a pretty strong grasp of the fundamentals of reading (phonemic awareness and phonics) so we spend most of our time working on fluent reading and comprehension. We try to tie all of our lessons to the standards being worked on in the classroom.
4th Grade
In 4th Grade we still have some fluency work for most of our title students. By the end of 4th Grade the state expects students to read 150 words correct per minute. This is a high goal, but one we know our students can reach with the right supports. We tailor this fluency instruction to comprehension as well. We work hard at this level to make sure we are covering the same standards being addressed in the classroom.
5th Grade
By 5th Grade we spend most of our time working on comprehension skills with our students. We still use best practices for fluency to make sure our students are staying on the right path, but we do that within the scope of comprehension instruction. Again, we ensure our instruction supports the standards being met in the classroom.
Each grade level has our services for at least thirty minutes a day. We usually work with students in groups of 5 or 6, but depending on what a student needs the groups can look different. Students are grouped based on the FAST Assessment, classroom assessments, diagnostics and teacher recommendation.
Kindergarten
In Kindergarten we spend a great deal of our time working with skills that fall into the realm of phonemic awareness and then move into phonetic principle. Examples of phonemic awareness (sounds) are Letter Recognition, Letter-Sound Correlation, Rhyming, Onset Sounds, and Syllables. Phonics encompasses the study of the written word. Here we spend a lot of time on basic vowel patterns.
1st Grade
In 1st Grade students spend much more time working with the written word. For this reason we do a lot of work with segmenting the sounds of words and applying those phonetic principles to reading and writing. Students will do this using authentic literature ranging from nursery rhymes to poems and into more advanced forms of text as the year goes on.
2nd Grade
2nd Grade phonics is much more complex. Here we start to address more challenging phonics patterns and apply these to multi-syllabic words. We also get into really focusing on fluency. Fluency is the ability of a student to read at a specified rate, but also how well they use expression, phrasing and punctuation. If a child is able to read accurately and fluently they are much more likely to understand what they are reading at a deeper level.
3rd Grade
This can be a make or break year for students because of the new Iowa legislation on 3rd Grade retention. Most students at this age have a pretty strong grasp of the fundamentals of reading (phonemic awareness and phonics) so we spend most of our time working on fluent reading and comprehension. We try to tie all of our lessons to the standards being worked on in the classroom.
4th Grade
In 4th Grade we still have some fluency work for most of our title students. By the end of 4th Grade the state expects students to read 150 words correct per minute. This is a high goal, but one we know our students can reach with the right supports. We tailor this fluency instruction to comprehension as well. We work hard at this level to make sure we are covering the same standards being addressed in the classroom.
5th Grade
By 5th Grade we spend most of our time working on comprehension skills with our students. We still use best practices for fluency to make sure our students are staying on the right path, but we do that within the scope of comprehension instruction. Again, we ensure our instruction supports the standards being met in the classroom.