Michele Handy

The session started by disucssing how the class was going. The coachee shared about the in-person class with Carla Chavez as the guest speaker. This lead into a discussion of her take-aways about the information on syntax. The ideas Carla shared about asking who, what, etc. questions triggered her remembering the wonder wheel of questions they use in comprehension and how those same questions can improve student writing.

We discussed writing goals for the coachee’s students, with the coachee explaining the significant gap between higher and lower performing students in her class. She expressed difficulty in setting realistic goals due to the wide range of abilities, particularly noting that half her class doesn’t know their letter sounds. They agreed that establishing letter recognition as a foundation is crucial before students can progress to writing sentences, with me referencing Scarborough’s rope as a framework for understanding the progression of reading skills. I asked her what the ideal would be for her students writing. She said that they would be able to write two sentences by the end of the year. Knowing that students must know letters and sounds to be able to write sentences led the coachee to decide to set an instructional goal based on alphabetic principle since it is so important for students to have mastered this by the end of kindergarten.

The coachee shared teaching procedures for letters and sounds in the 95% program. She explained their approach of introducing one letter per lesson, using cards with pictures and keywords (like “apple” for the letter A), and incorporating actions to help students remember sounds. During MTSS groups, the coachee observed that not all students could perform these tasks independently, with some students appearing to wait for cues from neighbors.

The coachee shared how she currently uses an alphabet arc in kindergarten, where they use letter magnets for review activities I suggested management strategies including limiting the number of letters in the box to 10 and using a timed activity approach to make the process more efficient and less taxing on the students’ working memories. I shared different ways to use the alphabet arc to build fluency that involves using different hands to point to letters, switching at the letter MN.

We talked about the importance of drawing students’ attention to the form and manner of making the sounds in the mouth. The coachee says that she uses cards that have the prompts on the back.

I also suggested adding an alphabetic prosody activity where letters are paired with punctuation marks to provide additional practice, and mentioned creating a random letter sheet using Excel.

We discussed how Fastbridge LSF progress monitoring is a quick way to check in on not only accuracy, but automaticity. Michele shared her current practices using FastBridge and laminated letter cards, while Tara suggested new activities including an alphabet chart with colored letters (eye chart created by Lucy Hart Paulsen), and the ABC dance. They agreed on a goal for Michele to try at least two new strategies for teaching letters and sounds, and scheduled their next meetings for May 6th and May 20th.