Thanksgiving Write the Room- SoR Aligned!

If you have ever used Write the Room before, then you know how much students love it. It gets them moving around and, wait for it... they get to use clipboards! Before I had learned much about the Science of Reading, I thought it was a wonderful learning opportunity for my students. Once I did more research and read & studied up on SoR some more, I realized I was wrong. I wanted my kindergarteners to be able to stay engaged in learning experiences that brought them joy (Write the Room), but I also wanted to be an effective teacher, using my instructional time wisely to only include rich, meaningful experiences that were based in research and best practice. So, I found a way to align Write the Room to SoR and this resource is the Thanksgiving Themed version of my efforts.

Write the Room basically involves pictures scattered around the classroom or hallway. Each picture card has one word on it. In the past, these would have been what we would have called sight words. The students have a recording sheet pre-programed with the same pictures that are on the cards. When they find the card, they read the word and then record it on their sheet in the spot with the same image. Here is how I have created this resource so that it is all the fun and enjoyment of Write the Room for your learners, but all the rigorous SoR aligned learning you desire as their teacher:

1) Students are expected to color code their written responses. They bring green and red colored pencils with them to record. They use green if the letters in the word they are recording spell their expected sound and they use red if the letters in the word spell an unexpected sound. For example, in the word the, th spell /th/ which is expected and e spells /u/which is unexpected so when students record, they would do so by writing the th in green and the e in red to show that they understand these features of the word.

2) There are 2 recording sheet options for differentiation, but one of them includes boxes so students can record one phoneme in each box. Again, using the word "the" as the example: "the" has 2 phonemes: /th/ and /e/. So the recording space for the picture that is associated with this word has 2 boxes. Students would write the th in green in the first box and the e in red in the 2nd box.

In addition to aligning this to SoR, this resource has several options for differentiation.

1) If you have students who aren't ready for recording the words by individual phoneme, there is a second recording sheet option that has just one box where the word can be written as a whole (less alignment to SoR, but an easier option for kids who need that scaffold).

2) Several options of Write the Room Cards A) colored text for students who need to see the sounds written in green and red coded by expected and unexpected sound, B) black text with a colored dot (green or red) to alert students that there is either a letter somewhere in this word that spells an unexpected sound (red) or all the letters in this word spell their expected sound (green). This is a little harder than option A because students can't see which letters are green or red. The dots give them a hint that they are there, but they need to know them on their own and record them correctly on their recording sheet, C) black text with no dots... this would be the hardest option and only for students who have a firm grasp of the principles of the phoneme/grapheme connections. They would need to know which words have letters that do not make their expected sounds 100% on their own and record them accurately without any hints.

I realize this sounds a bit confusing- I suggest you check out the PDF preview if you are seeking some clarity :)

What's Included:

1) Clear and detailed teacher directions for how to use this product in the classroom...including page specific directions for added clarity.

2) Answer key pages in color to show you the answers you should expect your students to write, but also to further clarify how the task should be completed.

3) 2, two-sided student recording pages. One is easier for students, asking them to simply write the whole word in one box. One is a bit more challenging as it separates the response area into boxes based on the number of phonemes in the word. If you choose this one, students place one phoneme in each box as they write the word.

4) 5 Write the Room Card Slides with black and white CLIPART IMAGES but COLORED TEXT (this allows you to save ink but preserve the colored text scaffold to help students see which sounds are expected and which are unexpected).

5) 5 Write the Room Card Slides with black and white CLIPART IMAGES AND BLACK AND WHITE TEXT (this would allow for the option of saving color ink and printing on colored paper to allow for the scaffold to alert students to expected/unexpected sounds OR to print on white paper to challenge students who are ready to completely decide on their own which sounds are expected and which are not).

6) 5 Write the Room Card Slides with COLORED CLIPARTS AND COLORED TEXT if you want to have colored images and if your students need the support of the colored text to help them see which letters are spelling expected sounds and which are spelling unexpected sounds.

7) 5 Write the Room Card Slides with COLORED CLIPARTS but BLACK TEXT AND A COLORED DOT. This is if you want colored clipart but you want your students to have the challenge of not using the colored text. Since colored ink doesn’t print well on colored paper, the dots are on them to provide the same scaffold the colored paper would have provided if you were printing black and white images.

8) 15 total Write the Room cards (and 15 total corresponding response spaces on the recording sheet). Words represented include: of, for, is, was, the, like, to, you, I, a, can, an, am at, and (the first ten heart words for early readers to learn as suggested by Reading Rockets and 5 decodable words that are often learned early based on the scope and sequence of many phonics programs: short a, n, m, t, d, c)

9) One final slide with the words was, is, like, for coded differently... the s, i_e, and or are temporarily heart parts. Once students know the phonics rules that indicate that s can spell /z/, i_e pattern, and the sound for /or/, then these parts are no longer heart parts, so if your students know these rules, then you would use the cards that code these parts as green, not red.

10) This resource is activated in TPT Easel so you can project it to Student View to model the process for your students when you introduce the procedure.

CCLS Addressed:

K.RF.1b: Recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by specific sequences of letters.

K.RF.3a: Demonstrate one-to-one letter-sound correspondence by producing the primary sound or most frequent sound for each consonant.

K.RF.3b: Decode short vowel sounds with common spellings.

K.RF.3c: Decode some regularly spelled one-syllable words.

K.RF.3d: Read common high-frequency words by sight.

1.RF.3a: Know the letter-sound correspondences for common blends and consonant digraphs (th only in this resource).

1.RF.3b: Decode long vowel sounds in regularly spelled one-syllable words (final -e conventions only in this resource)

1.RF.3c: Decode regularly spelled one syllable words.

1.RF.3g: Read most common high-frequency words by sight.

I realize this sounds like a lot. I found that it was a bit harder for me to wrap my head around the changes to the process than it was for my students to do so. Once I demonstrated a word or two and once they tried it out, they easily got the hang of things and our Write the Room procedure was forever changed for the better.