Interactive Skills Block

Our third Vertical Demonstration Day last Wednesday focused on interactive Skills Block instruction. In December, we sent out an evite to all teachers and the first 15 responders secured their spot to participate in the session. The four hour session included three lesson observations, a debrief, dialogue about implementation ideas, and lunch. By the next morning, some teachers had already implemented new ideas into their classroom instruction!

To give you some background on the topic selection, the America's Choice School Design recommends that there be a 2 1/2 hour uninterrupted literacy block. In Kindergarten through Third grade, the literacy block consists of a thirty minute Skills Block, one hour Readers' Workshop, and one hour Writers' Workshop. The Skills Block is supposed to be fast paced, interactive, and consist of approximately three different activities. The components are phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, punctuation & capitalization, grammar & syntax & usage, vocabulary, and handwriting. These components are implemented grade appropriately and on a consistent basis.

In reality, at Chets Creek, we are able to provide the 2 1/2 hours in Kindergarten and First grade, but due to departmentalized classrooms in Second and Third grade, they only get about 2 hours and 10 minutes. Some days teachers spend time with the Skills Block by trimming 5 minutes from their Readers' and Writers' Workshops, but other days they can only carve out about 10 minutes to do skills. To assist in covering the majority of skills, they embed the teaching of skills into their Workshop sessions.

Our original America's Choice training happened years ago, and since then we've added teachers to our staff, as well as recognized that some teachers have turned to more pencil and paper activities. In an effort to introduce or remind teachers of the original design recommendations, we decided to offer Interactive Skills Block as a session topic. The professional development focused on three lesson observations and debriefing, as well as professional literature the America's Choice recommendations.

We began by observing in Mrs. Dillard and Mrs. Mallon's Kindergarten classroom. Their 36 minute Skills Block included six fast paced engaging activities which included 1) Good Morning Chart/Song 2) Beginning Blends and Digraphs Chart 3) Morning Message 4) Word Families Song and Magnetic Letter Sort with -ig, and -ap Families 5) Digraphs ch and sh Lesson 6) Individual Student Application of ch and sh with their white boards. As you watch the video, you will notice that each learner is engaged and the Skills Block offers instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, and punctuation & capitalization. Their lesson was typical of a daily lesson in their classroom.

Randi Timmons hosted us for the Second Grade Skills Block lesson. Normally, she only has about 10-15 minutes for Skills Block. However, on this observation day, I asked her to teach about 30 minutes to offer teachers the opportunity to see what her instruction would look like across three days of Skills Block lessons. Randi's Skills Block lesson had six fast paced and interactive activities including 1) United States Song 2) Snap Words 3) Weekly Words 4) Syllable Jeopardy! 5) Noun Rap 6) Morning Message with Editing Bags. Her instruction focused on phonics, spelling, grammar & syntax & usage, and capitalization & punctuation. On a normal Skills Block day, her instruction would consist of approximately three fast paced activities. Again, you will notice in her video that the session was engaging and the 30 minutes was packed full of skills and concepts.

Jenny Nash invited us to her 4th Grade Skills Block lesson. The original design calls for an embedding of skills into the Readers' and Writers' Workshop after 3rd Grade. Jenny typically embeds the applications of skills within her Workshops, but also offers about a 10 minute Skills Block as a review of skills and concepts. On the day we observed, Jenny combined two days of lessons to show us several different activities including 1) Editing Message 2) Poem Recitation for Fluency 3) Affixes Practice 4) Vocabulary Group Work Sort. As you will observe, the 20 minute block is packed with activities and review, and will encourage students to use these skills in context within their Readers' and Writers' Workshop.

As you watch each of these lessons, I'm sure you will see the many similarities and the progression of instruction throughout the grade levels. I am also confident that regardless of the grade level you teach, you can borrow ideas from each of these teachers to implement in your own instruction. In addition, I'd love to have you leave a comment if you have other ideas you use in Skills Block so we can learn from your expertise.

Kindergarten Skills Block

K Skills Block Mallon Dillard 1-2010 from Melanie Holtsman on Vimeo.

Second Grade Skills Block

2nd grade Skills Block R. Timmons 1-2010 from Melanie Holtsman on Vimeo.

Fourth Grade Skills Block

4th grade - Skills Block Nash 1-2010 from Melanie Holtsman on Vimeo.

Tell me, I’ll forget. Show me, I'll remember. Involve me, I'll understand.

As a coach, my role includes setting up learning opportunities for teachers. Sometimes that means me going in and modeling for them, sometimes it means co-teaching along side them, and sometimes it simply means providing them with an opportunity to visit in a colleague's classroom.

Earlier in the week, the new 2009-2010 Second Grade team met for a day of planning. That day was a great opportunity to set up expectations and answer questions, but it didn't provide a glimpse into another teacher's classroom.

Because there are several teachers coming from the intermediate school into the primary school, and I know that the biggest difference in ELA is skills block, I wanted to set up an opportunity for them to see inside a primary colleague's classroom. So, I set up a demo in a co-teach classroom for the day after the New Team TDE.

The teachers and I went to watch the co-teach duo, Maria Mallon and Cheryl Dillard because they have an incredible interactive fast paced skills block.

Skills block began with students gathering in the meeting area, they recited their class promise, sang a letter combination song, did a shared reading song, completed a morning message to reinforce punctuation and spelling, and then played a word wall game. The game reinforced rhyming words, homophones, and common spelling patterns, to name a few. Next, they quickly reviewed the playing of a bingo spelling game with the ar, or, er, ur, ir spelling patterns, and set off to play the game with a partner.

The visiting teachers watched this fast paced interactive skills block, asked questions, looked at artifacts, and jotted notes. Then, we debriefed the 30 minute observation. All in all, I think the teachers thought this was a valuable use of their time, and as a coach, an easy way for me to give teachers a glimpse into a strong instructional practice. When they see it, they will remember, and as I work with them in their own classrooms next year, they will understand the impact this practice will have on their student's learning.

Grade 1 Skills Block

At CCE, the Kindergarten and First Grade 2 1/2 hour uninterrupted literacy block consists of a 30 minute Skills Block, a one hour Readers' Workshop, and a one hour Writers' Workshop. The Skills Block is comprised of three to six fast paced activities focusing on phonemic awareness and phonics.

Co-teachers Maria Mallon and Cheryl Dillard, known affectionately as the Mallards, begin each morning with their "Class Promise", letter combinations, morning message, and skills practice. You will notice as you watch this video that the rituals and routines are firmly established and students move with ease from one activity to the next. Though the rituals and routines remain the same, the focused activities change throughout the year to meet the needs of their students. I hope you are delighted by this glimpse into their classroom because they really are a dynamic duo.


1st Grade Skills Block 12-08 Mallon and Dillard from Melanie Holtsman on Vimeo.

Skills Block

Our literacy block, in Kindergarten and First Grade, consists of an uninterrupted 2 1/2 hour block. Sixty minutes each for Readers' and Writers' Workshop and 30 minutes for Skills Block. The collective goal in Readers' Workshop and Skills Block is to teach phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary.

The Skills Block portion focuses on phonemic awareness and phonics so students have the necessary tools to read with fluency and are able to move beyond the distractions and mechanics of decoding words. Then, during Readers' Workshop students can focus on the goal of reading--comprehension. In addition, vocabulary is embedded in Readers' Workshop with read aloud texts, and we use the Text Talk curriculum tool, as well.

Skills Block consists of several fast paced activities that teach students phonemic awareness and phonics. On Friday, Maria Mallon and Cheryl Dillard used video conferencing to stream a live lesson into the Literacy Lap Leader training taking place at our Professional Development site. The audience of 180 participants watched the Mallard's Morning Skills Block and then debriefed with the teachers.

The Skills Block began with a song as students sang along and gathered in their meeting area at the front of the room. Next, lead by a student with a pointer in hand, the class went over their Class Promise, sang a song on Letter Combinations, and went over their beginning blends and digraphs chart. Then, the first graders, seamlessly transitioned into their Morning Message. The message was prewritten on the board and students, one by one, as their name cards were drawn collected in a line to fix or highlight part of the Morning Message. Items needing fixing included spelling and punctuation, and items needing circled, underlined, or written included vocabulary words, antonyms, and word families. I was impressed by the level of sophistication in the message and the students understanding of the elements being covered including dialogue. (There would be a picture here of the Morning Message, but I got distracted by the video taping I was doing. Sorry!) So far, by my observation, the students had run this Morning Skills Block, and you could tell from the established rituals and routines that the high expectations were made clear by the teachers early on and that this is a daily activity in Room 104.

After Morning Message, students quickly stood up and took a stretch, as the teachers hung the sight word chart. The teachers reminded students that they would be singing the chart to the tune Jingle Bells. A student used the pointer to point to each sight word as the class belted out the tune, and then the teachers pulled a name card and had a student try it on their own. A brave soul, I must admit, because you wouldn't catch me belting out a tune in front of an audience of 180 teachers! :) A two minute whole group word sort game followed and then a quick antonym match. Lastly, the teachers introduced an antonym game and thoroughly explained the directions. They strategically paired the students and set students off to play this game.

All in all, I think you'd agree, that this fast paced 30 minute Skills Block is certainly preparing students for mastery in phonemic awareness and phonics.

Stay tuned, because this session was videotaped and as soon as the film is rendered and uploaded, I'll be posting it here.