Literacy Corner 2023-2024
Growing Readers and Writers
June
Summer Reading
We have less than two weeks left in the school year before summer break! We all hope FHES students will keep reading, writing, and learning throughout the summer to prevent what is often referred to as the Summer Slide (loss of knowledge learned throughout the school year)! Some recent research shows that 3rd to 5th grade students lose, on average, about 20 percent of their school-year gains in reading (and 27 percent in math) during summer break. The good news is that there are many simple ways families can support sustained/continued progress! Encourage your students to keep reading by checking out free books/games from the SJI Public Library, trading books with friends and family, finding free books in a local Little Free Library, etc. Be on the lookout for a SJI Public Library newsletter (coming home soon) explaining the Summer Reading Program, including Wednesday performances on the FHES playground, prizes, free books, and more! Click here for a 2022 Scholastic article titled “How to Prevent Your Kids From Losing What They Learned in School During Summer Vacation”.
May
Graphic Novels
Have you noticed that graphic novels are exploding both in availability and interest? These modern-day comic books are flying off library and bookstore shelves worldwide, even at FHES! According to our librarian, Ms. Charlene, graphic novels are the most requested and also the most checked out in our library. We currently have 304 graphic novels in our FHES library, with the most checked out being the Babysitters Club, Dog Man and I Survived series.
The term “graphic novel” was coined in the 1960s and despite debate about boundaries between comics and graphic novels, there is general consensus in the literary world that each have distinct traits. Graphic novels have a similar storytelling format to comic books, combining illustrations and bursts of text; however, the main characters are rarely superheroes and the books are true novels, telling a complete story with a clear beginning, middle and end.
Like all books our growing readers have access to, there are varying levels of quality among graphic novels. Although there may be less text in a graphic novel, they still provide engaging opportunities for our young readers to practice and apply various reading comprehension strategies. Students read using the illustrations across each panel along with text in the form of captions, speech/thought balloons, onomatopoeias (sound words like pow, haha, crash, burp, sizzle), and emanata (exaggerated, unrealistic lines or symbols emanating from a character that symbolize something about a character like a sweat drop or heat rays to show high temperatures or a question mark to show confusion). Between panels, readers must do some comprehension work to make sense of the gutter (the space that separates each panel) and determine how much time has passed. It could be a moment, a day, a year, etc. Needless to say, graphic novel readers are still decoding text along with activating prior knowledge, predicting, questioning, inferring, visualizing, building vocabulary, retelling and summarizing the text/illustrations.
If your child is curious about or already hooked on graphic novels, remind them to check out our graphic novel section in the FHES library. Our public library also has an extensive graphic novel collection and is hosting a FREE Comic Book Day this Saturday, May 4th. Here are some graphic novel recommendations for Kindergarten - 2nd grade and grades 3+. If you want to learn more about how graphic novels can benefit readers, see this brief Scholastic article. Additionally, here is a School Library Journal article exploring survey results about the popularity of graphic novels, manga, etc.
April
March was National Reading Month, a month to motivate readers of all ages to read, read, read! At school, we read daily in all classrooms and celebrate students’ reading progress in many different ways. Throughout the year, FHES students of all ages are immersed in various reading activities. They read independently and with partners, teachers read books to children daily, and sometimes we enjoy books read by other staff members (e.g. Ms. Charlene during weekly library visits, sometimes Mrs. Wehner or Ms. Terra). In addition, all of our students read frequently with their reading buddies (Kindergarten-3rd grade, 1st grade-4th grade, 2nd grade-5th grade).
We encourage all FHES students to read/be read to at home daily. Research shows that reading daily for a minimum of 20 minutes and having conversations with children about what they are reading not only exposes them to 1.8 million words yearly, but also helps improve fluency, enhance vocabulary, and foster deeper comprehension skills. Children who read regularly do better in school, not just in reading but in all subjects! We hope you celebrate reading during National Reading Month and throughout the year (even during the summer!) by reading some great books with your child(ren)!
March
Throughout FHES, our K-5 writers are working to improve their writing skills. This includes writing in various genres (fiction and nonfiction) and learning about structure (sentences, paragraphs, leads, transitions, etc.), elaboration, craft, conventions (spelling, punctuation, etc.), and more! Click here to see a video of some of our writers’ published work (i.e. final drafts). Here’s an overview of what’s going on at each grade level:
Kindergarten - Kindergarten writers are currently working on, Writing for Readers: Writing Readable True Stories. This unit introduces students to narrative writing, highlighting the importance of telling and writing true stories.
1st Grade - First-grade writers have finished their first nonfiction writing unit, focusing on How-To books, and are beginning their next unit of Nonfiction Chapter Books. In this unit, students will identify topics they know all about and will use their teaching voice and expertise to write facts, draw diagrams, illustrate covers, and so much more!
2nd Grade - Second-grade writers are in Unit 3, Writing About Reading, looking closely at the books they love and then writing about them to persuade others to read the book too. Students are learning to state clear opinions and support their ideas with evidence. This is a powerful and exciting writing skill that will be used again and again!
3rd Grade - Third-grader writers are revisiting informational writing over the next few weeks as they research a selected important person to write a biography about. They are in the rough draft phase right now and will create a large poster about some very important figures in society. They’ve teamed up with Mr. Lobue (art) to create portraits of each chosen person and will line the hallways with their finished products in a few short weeks! By the end of March, third graders will transition to opinion writing. Ask your 3rd grader who they are researching!
4th Grade - Fourth-grade writers just completed their Literacy Unit and wrote five-paragraph Literary Essays. They are moving into their writing about history unit. They are researching Washington State history and will write a second book, a Westward Expansion Book! They have studied informational texts and will include many elements in their books: a table of contents, maps, diagrams, timelines, and much more. The students feel very confident in their writing abilities at this point in the year and are furiously writing daily.
5th Grade - Fifth-grade writers are busy reading to launch a research project into debatable issues. They will write a letter to Mrs. Wehner about whether or not it is possible to have another day of chocolate milk for lunch. They are also researching the British Colonies in the United States that serve as the foundation for our nation. They are researching each region and its proprietors to grasp the individuality of each colony and the reasons people settled into the 13 Colonies. Using their reading and writing strategies for research, they will begin to build their own colonies and follow a historical storyline to make the learning their own.
February
This month, we are highlighting some of the amazing work our librarian, Ms. Charlene, is doing in the FHES library to support our growing readers! Using proceeds from last spring’s book fair and her classroom budget, Ms. Charlene has added 68 books to our collection. These books include titles that support our Character Strong program (focusing on different character traits), beginning readers in Spanish, nonfiction beginning readers, popular fiction, and student/staff requests. Thanks to a generous donation from our PTO, we have also added all 2023-2024 Sasquatch Book Award nominees and Washington Children’s Choice Picture Book Award nominees. The Sasquatch Book Award nominations include twelve novels for grades 4-6. Our 4th and 5th-grade students are encouraged to read at least two of the books and vote for their favorite in the spring. Last year, more than 7,000 4th and 5th graders of Washington state voted for the Sasquatch Award. The Washington’s Children’s Choice Picture Book (WCCPB) Award nominations include twenty picture books for grades K-3. Ms. Charlene is reading all nominated books to our Kindergarten - 3rd grade students and they will vote on their favorite in the spring. Last year, 110,202 K-3 students in our state voted for the WCCPB Award. We look forward to joining students across the state in voting for our favorites again this year!
Thanks to so many great titles in our library and weekly library visits, our K-5 students average checking out 622 books a week for this school year! In addition to checking out books, Ms. Charlene also has a give-a-book/take-a-book shelf. Students can bring books from home to trade for other used books. Thanks to Ms. Charlene for all that she does to support our FHES readers!
January
We are a few weeks away from completing the first half of this school year! Teachers are busy planning for various reading and writing activities and students are putting those literacy skills to work every day!
Teachers have spent some Wednesday early release time focusing on writing instruction and alignment across all grade levels. Each grade level will focus on at least four different writing genres throughout the year. Across K-5 classrooms, this includes various forms of expository/informative, narrative, persuasive, and letter writing. Ask your child/children what genres of writing have been happening in their classroom.
In addition to all of our literacy learning experiences, this month our 1st-5th grade students will take the second round MAP (Measuring Academic Progress) Growth tests. These tests measure achievement and growth in both math and reading. Because they are taken in Fall, Winter, and Spring (except for Kindergarten students who take them in late Fall/early Winter and Spring only), results can measure growth throughout the school year and from year to year. These computer tests are adaptive, meaning the questions get harder if the student is answering correctly and easier if they’re answering incorrectly. The results provide teachers with data to help inform instruction regardless of how far students are above or below grade level. In grades K-2, questions are read to students by the computer with an option to have the computer repeat as many times as necessary. At this time of year, these tests give teachers additional information about student progress in comparison to the Fall’s MAP scores.
December
High-frequency words are words that appear most often in printed text. FHES teachers refer to these words as: “snap words” (we want to know them in a snap), “trick words” (they can be tricky, and often don’t follow rules that can be sounded out), “sight words” (we want to know them by sight), “word wall words”, etc. Readers work hard to recognize these words with automaticity, not needing to “sound them out”. Reading research tells us that when these words are instantly recognized, our brains can apply effort to the other words of the text and the short term memory can focus on comprehension of what is going on in the story. There are varying lists for these high-frequency words (e.g. the Dolch List, the Fry List).
Click here to see a list of 109 Power Words! These words have a lot of “power” for beginning readers as they comprise 50% of the words found in children’s texts. The first 13 words represent power little words that make up 25% of the words in children’s texts. Ensuring that your reader knows all of these words can be very beneficial for their reading success!
November
Our FHES teachers are working to grow students’ speaking and listening skills. According to the Common Core State Standards, “Students must have ample opportunities to take part in a variety of rich, structured conversations…Being productive members of these conversations requires that students contribute accurate, relevant information; respond to and develop what others have said; make comparisons and contrasts; and analyze and synthesize a multitude of ideas in various domains” (https://www.thecorestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/CCRA/SL/). Research tells us that reading comprehension begins long before children learn how to read words; it begins as they learn to understand and use spoken language. There are many opportunities to naturally practice these skills outside of school: while discussing the events of a day, weekend, family trip, etc.; reviewing what is happening/happened in a book, movie, TV show, video game, sporting event, commercial, etc.; or telling family stories. Digital texts also provide an opportunity for us to consider combinations of words, graphics, images, hyperlinks, and embedded video and audio. When you have meaningful conversations with your child(ren), you are supporting the reading work we are doing at school. Thank you for being their first and most important teacher!
October
During our first month of school, all FHES students have been immersed in reading and writing activities. From our earliest learners who are learning to match sounds to letters to write/read names and words to our upper-grade students who are reading/writing/typing sentences and paragraphs! Be sure to ask your child(ren) about their in-school reading and writing activities.
In addition to all of our literacy learning experiences, our 1st-5th grade students took the first round of MAP (Measuring Academic Progress) Growth tests. These tests measure achievement and growth in both math and reading. Because they are taken in Fall, Winter, and Spring (with the exception of Kindergarten students who take them in Winter and Spring only), results can measure growth throughout the school year and from year to year. These computer tests are adaptive, meaning the questions get harder if the student is answering correctly and easier if they’re answering incorrectly. The results provide teachers with data to help inform instruction regardless of how far students are above or below grade level. In grades K-2, questions are read to students by the computer with an option to have the computer repeat as many times as necessary. At this time of year, these tests help us gather baseline data for reading and math.
Friday Harbor Elementary School
We love to hear from you!
Email: roslynbutcher@sjisd.org
Website: sjisd.wednet.edu
Location: 95 Grover Street, Friday Harbor, WA, USA
Phone: 360.378.5209