If we know better about what helps kids learn to read, I feel like we should want to do that as teachers. Some teachers are holding on firm to outdated methods that aren’t really backed in research.
~ Zeba McGibbon from Episode 75 of The Kindergarten Cafe Podcast
Episode Summary
What are your thoughts on the Science of Reading? Well, in this episode, I explain what the Science of Reading is and its impact on designing effective literacy centers. I highlight the key pillars of literacy instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, and advocate for a balanced approach. I also tell you about the various literacy centers I implement, including a Word Work Center and interactive group activities, which adapt throughout the year to support students’ evolving skills.
In this episode I share:
- The Science of Reading Explained
- Designing Effective Literacy Centers
- Adapting Centers Throughout the Year
- Future Plans for Literacy Focus
Centers:
- Vocabulary Activities & Games for Kindergarten | Literacy Centers
- Kindergarten Decodable Passages | Printable and Progressive Phonics Readers
- Kindergarten Decodable Readers BUNDLE! | Progressing Skills |Just Print and Read
- Teaching Kids to Draw | Introduction to Drawing | Drawing Journal | Fine Motor
- Kindergarten Phonics Activities Bundle | Centers, Small Groups, Interventions
- Alphabet Worksheets Bundle | Alphabet Literacy Centers and Journals
- High Frequency Word Practice | Sight Word Spelling & Reading Games
Scarsborough’s Rope:
Connect with Zeba:
- Instagram – @kindergartencafe
- Facebook – @kindergartencafe
- Website – www.kindergartencafe.org
- Tik Tok – @kindergartencafe
Read the Transcript
[0:00] Hey there, teacher friends! It’s Zeba from Kindergarten Cafe, and we are continuing this literacy miniseries with an episode all on science of reading-based literacy centers. I want to tell you how I do my centers and the thought that I’ve put into it to align more with the science of reading. So let’s get into it.
[0:20] Music. You’re listening to the Kindergarten Cafe podcast, where kindergarten teachers come to learn classroom-tested tips and tricks and teaching ideas they can use in their classroom right away. I’m Zeba, creator and founder of Kindergarten Cafe, and I help kindergarten teachers with everything they need from arrival to dismissal in order to save time, work smarter, not harder, and support students with engaging and purposeful lessons. I’m here to cheer you on through your successes and breakthroughs, and offer support and resources so you never have to feel stuck or alone. Ready to start saving time and reducing your stress all while using effective and purposeful lessons that students love? Let’s get started. Music.
[1:15] So first of all, science of reading, hot topic right now. I actually have a guest coming on in a couple of weeks to talk to us all about making changes that align more with science of reading, so I can’t wait for you to hear from her. I think it’s a big debate topic, and I’m honestly not really sure why it’s a big debate topic, because if we know better about what helps kids learn to read, I feel like we should want to do that as teachers. Some teachers are holding on firm to outdated methods that aren’t really backed in research, And this is not anyone saying that you’re a bad teacher at all. This is just people saying, hey, we’ve done some research. We’ve learned how kids learn how to read. Let’s take this and use it to help our students. I’m going to get into a little bit about like what that comes down to. Like what are the parts of helping kids learn to read and how do I use that in my centers?
[2:12] So the science of reading, like I said, is really like understanding. It’s the research on like how kids learn to read. So what are the components? There’s five pillars to the science of reading. There’s phonemic awareness, which we talked about in an earlier episode about the ability to identify sounds and spoken words. There’s phonics, which is the ability to decode words by correlating letters with sounds, or correlating sounds with letters or groups of letters. So phonemic awareness would be being able to say c, a, t.
[2:47] Breaking apart cat into c-at. Phonics would be knowing that c is the letter c, or that that is made up of v, which is t-h, right? That would be a group of letters making one sound. Fluency is another pillar of science of reading, the ability to read in a way that sounds like spoken language. Vocabulary is another pillar, the ability to understand and use a variety of words, and comprehension, the ability to understand text. So people say the science of reading is only phonics. Phonics is a huge part of it to me in kindergarten because it sort of unlocks the code for kids to be able to understand the word that they are reading, to be able to decode, to be able to read that word, they need phonics.
[3:40] But I don’t think anyone who’s screaming science of reading is saying that’s the only, I mean, maybe there’s people out there, but that’s definitely not the only component of science of reading. You need all of those parts in order to learn how to read. Vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, phonemic awareness, phonics, they all need to work together. The other way to look at it of science of reading and how kids learn to read is Scars Bird Rope, which I mentioned earlier, which has all of those strands, right? It has the language comprehension strand, which is filled with background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, so syntax, semantics, verbal reasoning, inferences, metaphors, literacy knowledge, prince concepts, etc. That all is one part of the language comprehension strand. And then you have word recognition, which is phonological awareness, like identifying syllables and phonemes, as well as decoding words. That means I have to understand the letter sound correspondence and sight recognition of familiar words. So sight words, which we talked about last week.
[4:46] So you need all of those components for science of reading, for kids to be able to learn to read. So if those are all the components of science of reading, what could some science of reading centers look like? We could have a vocabulary center, knowledge building center, comprehension center, fluency center, phonics center, sight word center, decoding center. Those would all be really good places for activities for you to have within your centers that you want to focus on. Let me tell you exactly how I do my centers.
[5:23] When I do centers at the beginning of the year, I do it slightly different than I do at the middle to end of the year. So I’ll talk about both. In the beginning of the year, I have a word work center, a reading center with me, and an iPad center. And then I let the kids choose between reading or writing. So we have like must do’s and can do’s. So if they’re not in one of those groups that I talked about, a word work group, a reading group, or an iPad group, they have to choose reading or writing. So that’s kind of the same no matter what time of year we’re in. The must do’s and can do’s work really well for me. I like giving kids choice. I like letting kids free flow between centers. It just works really well for me. I talked a lot about it when I talked about math centers, but I do it similarly in literacy. I’ve tried lots of different ways. This is what works for me. I finally feel after many, many, many years, I mean, I’ve been teaching kindergarten for what, eight years? I’m teaching for 11 years. Like, I finally feel like I found a center strategy that works for me.
[6:35] So the WordWork Center is at the beginning of the year with my assistant. But if I didn’t have my assistant, I would get kids started and then I would go off and do my reading group. Like, you could do both. I am very thankful to have my assistant here during center time, though. I also do have a fourth grader come down and help with centers so that you could ask the fifth graders or whoever’s oldest grade, you could ask them if they can, if you could have like a teacher’s helper for during center time, like that could work too. But what they do in word work at the beginning of the year is they use my alphabet worksheets and they go through a little notebook that I’ve put together with all the worksheets put together in order of the letters that we learn them. So as soon as they learn T, topped, then they go through the pages to find the T, write the T, do a picture sort with T and the other letter they’ve learned, that kind of stuff. So they can do it totally do this independently. It does help to have someone there just keeping them on track and helping them know what the pictures are in case they don’t know what that thing is called. There’s that vocabulary piece, but otherwise they can do it independently.
[7:46] Reading with me, I am so thankful my school has a resource called Geodes. They got like a grant to buy it. They’re by the same company that makes foundations. So it’s aligned with foundations. But at the beginning of the year, we do wordless ones. Or they’re not wordless. I’m reading to the kids. And then the kids are finding things in the pictures that have to do with the letters we’ve just learned. But what I love about it is the books are all focused on knowledge building. The books are all teaching them things about our culture or our history or things around the world. Like they are really good knowledge building books. If I didn’t have those, I would probably meet with kids in small groups, but I wouldn’t be expecting them to read. I would probably do phonics activities with them if I didn’t have those books. And I would focus the knowledge building more on read-alouds in my class. So just something to think about. But that is, I want to be clear and honest, this is what I do in centers.
[8:49] And then I have kids do iPads where they have a program aligned with our literacy assessment. It’s called Boost. We use MClass. And so the app just aligns with where they are based on the literacy assessment. If I didn’t have that, I’d probably find a related phonics app that I could give them. But I also use Epic. So I let kids listen to books. So this is a great way to work on language comprehension and knowledge building and fluency because they’re hearing fluent readers when they’re listening to the reading. So all that is a great way to tie in those things to your literacy centers. When the kids aren’t in those three groups, they’re either choosing reading or writing, and they’re just continuing the workshop routines that I have going in my class based on the curriculum we’re doing. So they read from their book bag or they write from their folder, but I don’t expect them to write more or read more than 10 minutes independently. I do not push them beyond that. I don’t think that’s appropriate, especially at the beginning of the year. After that 10 minutes I call out you can do can-do time and they have a choice of word work, science center, retelling, drawing, or vocabulary. Word work for can-do they can do an alphabet puzzle that they are obsessed with and they can do roll and writes for the letters that we’ve learned. Science center they can do observational drawings of something that’s in our science center.
[10:09] Retelling I have books with pieces from the book with magnets that they can move around on a magnet board and they retell the story of books that we’ve read as a class. Drawing, I have a drawing journal for them and they can just practice drawing all these details and backgrounds and it’s a great way for them to improve their drawing abilities. And then vocabulary, we talked about the vocabulary centers in the vocabulary episode two episodes ago, but…
[10:39] The kids are playing I Spy or the headbands game, things like that. Now, that’s in the fall. After we’ve learned all the letters, they no longer need their alphabet book or their wordwork notebook, we switch it up. So then my assistant, instead of helping them in their wordwork journal, she still takes a group and she does my reading passages with them. The reading passages follow a phonics sequence that relates to the foundations that we’ve learned, and they’re just silly little passages that are decodable based on the phonics skills the kids have learned. The kids read the passage with her. They highlight the trick words that are in the passage, so another way to reinforce the high-frequency word knowledge. Then they draw what the poem is about, so that comprehension piece, we’re touching on that as well.
[11:32] Sometimes her groups can do a couple of poems in a day, but they meet with her once a week. And again, if I didn’t have my assistant, I would still do this. I would just get the kids started and then go off and read the other group. Or when I’m done with my reading group, I would show them the next poem for them to do. And I would show the trick word that they need to find, but I would let them go off and read it on their own. Because the point of these passages is they are all decodable. So the kids will all be able to read them independently. So then if they’re not in that group with my assistant, then they’re with me where we are reading more of the geodes, which are, at this point, they actually have words that the kids are decoding and the kids are reading with me. But I love these books because of that knowledge building piece. So even though I could read any kind of decodables at this point with my kids and there are kids who are reading way above that level, I still do the geos with every group because of the knowledge building piece and because I have these awesome resources. They are very expensive. Like I said, my school got a grant to purchase them. So if you can like that, if you have a grant money to apply for, like that’s something I would look into.
[12:45] And I like wish I had an affiliate link to send you to, but I don’t. I just love them that much. I also, this year, my school got jump rope readers. Not sure how I feel about them yet, but they are chapter books that are mostly decodable. And so the kids are feeling really special that they get to read chapter books. So I’ll introduce them with the kids and then send them off with them to go read the rest of the chapters on their own. They’re enjoying that. other decodable sets we have are daffodil readers and i’ll read those with my lower kids because there’s very few pages but the kids are reading a full book when i didn’t have any of these these are new the last couple of years i made my own i made my own decodable reading sets that follow a phonics sequence so they start with books that have just one short vowel highlighted in the book like they’re all short a and I really tried not to use an or am because those are not the a sounds like there’s not a it’s an and they’re glued sounds so I tried not to include those which is really hard in a short a book and then I go to mixing those short vowels so they’re just short vowels all the short vowels together and then they go on to have blends digraphs and silent e.
[14:08] So they really grow with the kids as they’re learning phonics skills. So if I didn’t have all of those resources, and at one point I didn’t have any of those resources, that’s when I made my own. I would highly recommend using those because, and I still use them with my kids. Kids can read them. They can learn the phonics skills and grow with them. You can print enough copies so that everyone has the same book. But also, there’s an activity at the beginning where the kids can make words based on the letters that are in the book. It’s a great way to connect phonics and their learning about phonics to the reading of the book. So definitely recommend checking that out. So we’ve got the reading passages center, reading with me, my small groups, and iPads, same choices on the iPads. And again, if they’re not in one of those three groups, they are choosing reading or writing. But at this point in the year, we do more like 15 minutes, but I don’t push them beyond that.
[15:07] Their can-dos change slightly once they’ve learned all their letters. I take away the letter puzzle because that’s all they would choose to do. And I take away the roll and write for letters and replace it with trick words, the trick words that we’ve learned. So I talked about this in the high frequency word episode about what they can do but they can do roll and write with high frequency words. They can build the high frequency words, play go fish with the high frequency words. This is my chance to get them to really practice and engage with those. I also include in the WordWorks Center some CVC activities where they’re building CVC words. They’re writing CVC words using Elkonen boxes, that kind of thing. I still have Sign Center and Retelling Center and Vocabulary.
[15:51] I’ve started limiting vocabulary to be once a week so the kids make sure to try other centers because otherwise they would just do that. They love it so much. And I did change up drawing a little bit because most of the kids have finished their drawing journal to be a… I found these sheets somewhere. I don’t know where, so I can’t link them. It was just like a step-by-step drawing page. So it’ll teach the kids how to draw a dolphin, a bee, a monkey, like step-by-step. And what I like about this is that it’s really teaching the kids how to be a better drawer, which is still really important for their literacy development, but also for Writers Workshop and all of that. And then I encourage the kids after they’ve drawn that object that they then add a background and maybe even tell a story. They can take a picture of it and send it on Seesaw to their families, things like that.
[16:45] So those are my literacy centers, and I’ve done my best to align them with the different components of science of reading and Scarsborough’s Rope. Something I’m really excited to add for later in the year, right about now, and this episode’s coming out, is work on fluency and comprehension. So I’m working on some products as we speak on how to address those with my students.
[17:13] Comprehension is going to look a little bit like stuff I’ve done in the past would be the book club. So for higher readers, they’re ready to focus more on that comprehension piece. So it’ll look a little bit like that. And then fluency will be looking at like sounding out from words to sentences and making our sentences sound. We call it scooping up our phrases. We say like make sure we sound like we’re talking, smooth out our voice, stuff like that. So I’m excited to add some of that into what I do but I’m not quite there yet where I feel confident, telling you about it because I’m still working on making the product so I know this is an area that I need to get better at so I’m going to work on making the products figuring out how I want to do it in my classroom and once I feel really good about it I will tell you I always make sure that when I post products and tell you about it, I know that they work with students. That is really important to me that I’m not just like saying, oh, I made this thing. I think it’s so great.
[18:15] Like, no, I’ve used this with students and I’ve seen how powerful it is. So everything I’ve said in today’s episode is something that I use with my students. I believe in. And if you want to check them out, all the links are in the show notes, or you can always message me saying you’re looking for something. It’s pretty easy to find on a Teachers Pay Teachers store. However you want to go about it, I know that they work because I use them with my students. So have confidence in that.
[18:41] And today’s quote of the day is A girl five years old says, is there school tomorrow? There’s a day off for students. And I replied, nope, there’s no school for students, but there is school for teachers. We’re going to get to be the students. And the girl replied, but you already know everything. Just so nice. And I love that they think that because older grades don’t necessarily think that. But kindergartners totally believe that you are the expert on everything and believe you know everything. But the truth is we don’t and we’re always still learning and I’m still learning and I’m learning here with you so like I said when I feel confident that what I’m doing is working with students I love to share it with you so if you have any questions about today’s episode definitely reach out and stay tuned next week we’ll connect to literacy but in two weeks we’re going to have that guest speaker on who’s going to help us really understand about aligning our literacy instruction with science of reading. If you’re on the fence, if you’re unsure about it, it’s going to be a really good episode to listen to to help you understand more about like what is this science of reading if I haven’t already explained it well enough. So get ready for that and we’ll see you in the next episode.
[19:55] Music.
[20:01] Thanks so much for listening to the Kindergarten Cafe podcast. Be sure to check out the show notes for more information and resources or just head straight to KindergartenCafe.org for all the goodies. If you liked this episode, the best ways to show your support are to subscribe, leave a review, or send it to a friend. I’ll be back next week with even more kindergarten tips. See you then.