West Deptford High School

Language Arts Literacy Department

Reading

Instructor: Mrs. Patrice Chambers

           pchambers@wdeptford.k12.nj.us (preferred method of contact)

           856-848-6110 ext. 2641

COURSE DESCRIPTION/OBJECTIVES               

The Wilson Reading System® (WRS) directly teaches the structure of the English language using an organized and sequential system in 12 Steps, not corresponded to school grade levels. It provides a complete curriculum for explicitly and systematically teaching decoding and encoding (spelling). From the beginning steps of the program, instruction also addresses high frequency/sight words, fluency, vocabulary, oral expressive language development and comprehension with progressively more challenging text. Throughout the program, the teacher follows a 10-part lesson plan that provides for extensive teacher-student interaction and multisensory learning methods.

Key components directly addressed in the Wilson Reading System are:

• Phonemic awareness
• Alphabetic principle (sound/symbol relationship)
• Decoding
• Encoding (spelling)
• Advanced word analysis
• High frequency/sight word instruction
• Vocabulary development
• Fluency
• Oral expressive language development
• Listening and reading comprehension with visualization
• Metacognition skills of increasingly more sophisticated reading materials. The reading selections reinforce and develop every student’s composition and grammar skills.

Course Requirements and Expectations:

1. I expect that students will maintain an environment of respect in the classroom and demonstrate respect for their peers, their teacher, and the property of the school.
2. I expect that students will give their best effort in every assignment and positively contribute to the academic community of the classroom.
3. I expect that students will come to class prepared with a writing utensil, binder and loose-leaf paper, and their charged, school-assigned laptop.

All other class expectations will be created by the students during the first week of school.

Consequences:

If a student breaks an expectation that was set or is behaving in an inappropriate manner the following consequence system will go into effect:

1. First verbal warning- The student will be given a verbal warning that the behavior is inappropriate/unacceptable.
2. After-school student conference- If the student continues to break expectations or behave in an inappropriate way, the student will be required to stay after school for an after-school conference. The parent will be notified of this through an email.
3. Discipline referral- After the student has been given a verbal warning and stayed after school for a conference, yet still continues to misbehave, they will be written up through the school’s discipline referral system.

**In the case of severe misconduct, the teacher reserves the right to skip the first two steps and go directly to the discipline referral system.**

Grade Scale:

Homework:

1. All homework will be written on the chalkboard. Homework will be due the next day unless otherwise specified.

1. Homework will be graded on the following scale:

✔++ 100% or A+ The student’s work is fully complete and contains little to no errors. The work is of high quality for the student, and not only meets the expectations of the assignment, but goes above and beyond.

✔+ 93% or A- The student’s work is fully complete, but may contain several errors. The work is of high quality for the student, but does not meet every expectation of the assignment OR the work is of mediocre quality for the student, while meeting all of the expectations of the assignment.

✔ 87% or B The work is fully complete, but contains several errors. The quality of the work does not meet the full potential of the student, and does not fulfill all of the expectations of the assignment.

✔- 78% or C The work is mostly complete, but contains many errors. The work is of poor quality for the student, and does not fulfill all of the expectations of the assignment.

✔-- 69% or D The work is partially complete, while containing many severe errors. The work is of poor quality and does not fulfill the expectations of the assignment.

X 55% or F Only a limited portion of the work is complete. The work may contain many severe errors.

0 0% or F The work is missing/never turned in.

If an extenuating circumstance comes up and you will not be able to turn your homework in on time, please reach out to me so that we can discuss other options.

Participation:

1. Participation is a key component of the course and is critical to students’ success. Each week, I will randomly select a day on which students will receive a participation score. The score will be based on the following rubric:

*If a student is absent on the randomly selected day, I will grade their class participation based on another day in the week when they are present. If the student is absent for an extended period of time, they will be provided with makeup work that will count towards their participation score.

If a student is absent due to medical reasons, family emergencies, or school related trips, their absence will be excused as per the school’s policy.

     Course Goals          

TRANSFER

Students will be able to independently use their learning to…

• To become better readers and writers.

UNDERSTANDINGS

Students will understand that…

• Offers a research-based, structured literacy program with more than twenty years of data collected and analyzed from schools and districts implementing the program.
• Utilizes a systematic and cumulative approach to teach total word structure for decoding and encoding, emphasizing the six syllable types.
• Makes all instruction multisensory and interactive, requiring students to use visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile senses to reinforce skills learned and engage motor memory.

• Uses a unique “sound tapping” system to help students segment and blend sounds.

• Provides a penciling technique for tracking syllable division and prosody.

• Teaches concepts through the manipulation of sound, syllable, and suffix cards.

• Reinforces the application of skills.

• Contains one of the most extensive collections of controlled and decodable text (wordlists, sentences, stories) for students beyond the primary grades.

• Provides two levels of vocabulary: one appropriate for elementary school students, English language learners (ELL), and those with limited vocabularies, and the other for older students with advanced vocabularies.

• Presents the material in 12 Steps, not corresponding to school grade levels, that are further divided into 52 incremental substeps, each building upon the previous one. Requiring the mastery of each substep before progressing to the next one makes the demands of the subsequent substep manageable and achievable.

• Follows a 10-part lesson plan that addresses phonemic awareness, phonics and word study, encoding, high frequency/sight word instruction, fluency, vocabulary, and listening and reading comprehension in a sequential and integrated fashion.

• Incorporates criterion-based assessments to measure student progress and success.

• Is a comprehensive program that can follow students from grade to grade, as needed.

   

                       

  KNOWLEDGE/SKILLS

  As a result of this course, students will know and be skilled at

  Word Study – Phonetically Regular Words

  Beginning with phoneme segmentation, WRS directly teaches the structure of words in the English language so that students master the coding system for reading and spelling. WRS presents the language system of English in a systematic, sequential, and cumulative manner over the course of 12 Steps, or Units, so that learning is manageable and does not overwhelm the student with rules.

  Word construction is gradually taught to students according to six syllable types:

1. Closed syllable (Steps 1-3)
2. Vowel-consonant-e syllable (Step 4)
3. Open syllable (Step 5)
4. Consonant-le syllable (Step 6)
5. R-controlled syllable (Step 8)
6. Vowel digraph/diphthong “D” syllable (Step 9)

Steps 1-6 of the program provide consistent patterns to establish a solid foundation of word knowledge, including the first four syllable types, multisyllabic words, and suffixes with unchanging basewords.

Steps 7-12 teach more complex concepts including spelling options, advanced spelling rules, and morphology, including sound options, contractions, r-controlled syllables, “D” syllables, adding suffixes to changing basewords, and other advanced language structure concepts.

The elements of word structure are taught for both reading and spelling simultaneously. Thus, within a lesson, students are working in both directions, further reinforcing the structures to be learned. Parts 6-8 of the daily lesson plan emphasize encoding (spelling). Students learn to segment and spell words in correspondence with the decoding patterns being taught.

Word Study – High Frequency/Sight Words

Words that appear most often in text are high frequency words. These words are important to master since they are quite common. Words with irregular patterns or untaught word patterns according to the WRS scope and sequence should be memorized so they are recognized by sight.

The word study goal is automaticity with accurate and speedy word recognition for reading and consistent application of skills for spelling. Students progress through the curriculum at their own pace as they master each new concept and skill.

Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension

Throughout the 12 Steps, students work on fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension skills.

Single word automaticity and fluency with connected text are part of each Wilson lesson. Students have multiple opportunities to develop quick and automatic word recognition in Parts 3 and 4 of the lesson. To help build fluency, students are provided opportunities to read and reread sentences (Part 5), and decodable passages (Part 9). Decodable text is used to develop prosody and expression. Students use a penciling technique to scoop the sentences and passages into phrases in order to learn to read the passages with prosody, or phrasing with proper intonation. The phrasing provides the natural pauses that occur within sentences, with an attention to the meaning. Echo and choral reading is used. The Wilson Fluency®/Basic Kit is a supplemental program designed to provide explicit fluency instruction and reading practice to develop the application of skills with connected text. Additionally there are timed fluency drills for each step provided on the Wilson Academy.

Vocabulary is explicitly addressed in each WRS lesson plan. Vocabulary words are targeted in decoding and spelling activities in Parts 2, 3, 7, and 8 of the lesson plan and thoroughly embedded in instruction with connected text in Parts 5, 9 and 10 of the lesson plan. Teachers completing the WRS Level I Certification program further understand how to carefully choose targeted words with high curricular/academic utility from the appropriate substep and to integrate vocabulary instruction into each lesson.

Comprehension strategies are specifically addressed in Parts 9 and 10 of the daily lesson plan. In Part 9 of the lesson, students practice fluent reading with short, decodable passages that are included with each substep. These controlled passages allow students with emerging decoding skills the opportunity to develop fluency and reading comprehension strategies. Part 10 provides teachers with the opportunity to engage students deeply in a broad range of high-quality, increasingly challenging literary and informational texts. Students are engaging in more complex text in Part 10 than their decoding abilities allow for, while also increasing the complexity of text as their decoding skills increase. As a student progresses in their decoding skills through the WRS curriculum (all 12 Steps), teachers carefully plan the text selection for Part 10. When engaging in reading and discussing text, WRS teachers use a process called Wilson Comprehension S.O.S.™ (Stop – Orient – Scaffold / Support). This process engages students in rich and rigorous evidence-based conversations about text—the skill of close reading.

Throughout the WRS program, each part of a lesson plan, each WRS session, and each Step of the program progresses from easier to more challenging tasks. The Wilson Reading System curriculum and accompanying materials provide teachers with the necessary resources and support to successfully implement this multisensory, structured language program.

STANDARDS

New Jersey English Language Arts Student Learning Standards

http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/