5 Tips for Teaching Reading the Week After a School Break
The week after a holiday or summer break can be as chaotic as the week leading up to one. In today’s post, I hope to ease your mind by sharing a few guidelines that I use following a break to keep my students and I grounded and focused. The key is to give your students and yourself grace. Things will be all over the place and it’s important that we consider regression with carefully planned review and patience. Here are the five ways I stay sane after the break:
#1 Don’t expect to be able to introduce a new phonics skill the day you return.
Not everyone would agree with me on this one. A quality phonics program will have cumulative review built in, meaning that even if you introduce a new skill, you are still reviewing previously learned skills every day. However, in my experience kids need a solid week to reestablish routines and rhythm, and sometimes adding a new skill right away can be too overwhelming for everyone. If you have the flexibility, give yourself permission to simply review. Keep the bones of your phonics lessons the same, but only work with previously taught skills. This means that if you have taught all short vowels, digraphs, blends, and welded sounds, you should run through your standard lesson plan steps with short vowels, digraphs, blends, and welded sounds. And…that’s it. We should aim to recreate a solid phonics foundation for our students, and overloading them after the break with new material can work against that.
#2 Focus on rereading connected text
We need to take some time to get our kids back into the habit of reading text. This is huge, and if you’ve been following me for a while you know I talk about this a lot. But this is the piece that most boxed programs leave out. It is true that the more children read, the better readers they become. We need to consider this when we plan our daily instructional routines. Give your students time each day to reread decodable passages they’ve read before, as well some time to explore and read as non-decodable or uncontrolled texts. Remember the goal: we teach phonics so that our students can comprehend what they are reading. Phonics unlocks word reading for our kids. But if kids only practice read words in isolation, or even only in the context of a sentence, we aren’t giving them enough practice flexing their muscles in real texts. Proficient reading can only occur if students have multiple opportunities to practice what they are learning. So, bust out those decodable passages and books, set a timer for 10 minutes, let students read independently, with a partner, or with you as a class (choral reading). It’s all good and it all helps guide students reach the end goal—skilled reading.
#3 Use review packs & engaging activities to fine tune previously learned skills
A variety of activities can help students get back into the groove of fluent word, sentence, and passage level reading. Roll & reads are a favorite of mine because they can be done independently or with a partner. Students simply roll a die and read the word. I have my students highlight the word they read. With a partner, the first one to 5 in a row is the winner.
Phoneme-grapheme mapping is another low prep, high impact instructional routine you can use daily to review phonics skills with your students. Students look at the picture, say the name of the picture, say the sounds in that word, and match the corresponding letters to the sounds. I created the review packs pictured below specifically for times like these after school breaks where I just need print & go resources to get my kids back in the game.
#4 Read aloud
Read-alouds should be an anchor in every elementary literacy block. If I were a classroom teacher (I’m reading specialist), I would declare read-alouds twice a day and make them my non-negotiable. The benefits are unmatched. Throught read-alouds we promote fluency by modeling what fluent reading looks and sounds like. We develop listening comprehension by pausing and modeling our own thinking as we demonstrate how we understand the story. We build background knowledge by selecting texts that teach students about science and social studies topics. We create classroom community by coming together to engage in a story as a group. We expose our students to written language. The list goes on and on and on. In the new year, let this be a time to anchor ourselves in the practice of reading aloud to our kids. And remember that reading aloud, even if you don’t stop to pose comprehension questions, still has a myriad of benefits. Don’t leave this one out!
#5 Pay attention to universal screening data and revaluate your core instruction (whole and small group)
This one is huge. Your universal screening data is a compass for designing effective and intentional core instruction that moves the needle for all students in your classroom. If you don’t use DIBELS or Acadience, I highly recommend exploring either one of these assessments to gain clear, informative data on both individual students’ reading health as well as the reading health of your class as a whole. For example, looking at your data, what percentage of your students are still struggling with blending? Can most of your students read words without having to sound them out? If not, this should be something you prioritize during whole group instruction. Look at your current small groups. Have any students grown significantly? Can they be moved to a different group? If you need more information on how to analyze your screening data—check out this post where I go into detail on how to create intentional, data-based small groups.
Final Thoughts
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, grace for you and your students is the secret ingredient for surviving the first week after a school break. If you don’t have grace, none of the above will be effective. Teaching reading is incredibly nuanced and complex, especially after the holidays or a long break from school. Go as fast as you can and as slow as you must, and advocate for your students. Remember that if we rush to keep up with our pacing guide or scope and sequence, we perpetuate the literacy crisis by widening the gap for our students. They will fall further and further behind if we don’t take our time and review and reestablish the foundational literacy skills our students need.
