Using Boxes all the Time!

Recently, I attended the National Reading Recovery and K-6 Classroom Literacy Conference in Columbus, OH.  I attended many great sessions and heard some awesome featured speakers, including Gay Su Pinnell, Katie Wood Ray, and children's author Jack Gantos (who was awesome & hilarious, by the way). 

While at the conference, I got some great reminders that smacked me in the face and made me remember what good teaching is all about!  Its just that, good teaching!!!  I don't need a program to tell me what to do, or a test prep manual to tell me how to prepare kids for "the test".  I need to follow the kids and teach them what they need to be readers and thinkers.  I need to use great books and teach them in authentic ways.  Now that I got that out, I can tell a little bit about a session that reminded me how great, using sound boxes are, and how I can use them here, there, and everywhere.

As a Reading Recovery teacher, I used sound & letter boxes every day during the writing portion of my lesson.  Sometimes I would put a word in boxes that the child was stuck on while reading to help them blend through the word left to right, if they were really good in boxes.  If you don't know what I'm talking about; sound boxes are a way for students to learn how to hear and record sounds in sequence, which is super important for beginning readers.  I've always known how powerful using sound boxes can be.  But I neglected to use them as much as I could have. They can help a kiddo say words slowly and learn to link what they hear to what they should expect to see.  They really help with getting the left to right visual processing under control.  I have noticed that kids really aren't checking with their eyes all the way through a word when they read.  Putting words in boxes is a great way to force them to LOOK.  What do I mean by all of this?? Well, here are some places in your literacy instruction where boxes can be used;

• During interactive writing (practice page)-choose words that you can clearly hear all the sounds. 
• During guided writing, small group writing- I work with a small group of first grade students and we always write about the book afterwards.  This is a great way for students to learn how to say words slowly and learn how to write unknown words. I wouldn't take words to boxes that are high frequency words or words that you cannot hear most of the sounds, or long multi-syllabic words.
• During guided reading-you may put a word in boxes that the child is stuck on to show them how to blend left to right with their finger.  Then have them re-read the sentence once they successfully solved the word in boxes.  You could quickly do this on a whiteboard.
• Writing-while you are walking around conferencing with students, and they ask you how to spell something, you could draw boxes on their "try it" page. 

I use these strategies all the time and I have started to see kids being able to process left to right in a more efficient way.  If anyone wants the exact procedures of how to teach a child how to use boxes, I can post those as well.  I think they are useful in kindergarten and first grade for sure.  Some second graders may need them.