High Frequency Words Part 5: High Frequency Word Resources

You have done it!  You have made it to the end of the High Frequency Words series. Whoop Whoop!  I hope you are walking away with new knowledge and new ideas, or affirmations that what you are currently doing is best practice.

If you haven't had a chance to read the previous posts, don't worry!  Just click the links below for the titles that are of interest to you.

High Frequency Words Part 1: What are they? 

High Frequency Word Part 2: Heart Words

High Frequency Words Part 3: How to Master Heart Words 

High Frequency Words Part 4: How to Master Regular High Frequency Words

For this post I would like to showcase various resources you can use to provide students with more exposure to high frequency words.   These resources should be used AFTER you have directly taught some those tricky heart words. 

These resources are really fun and low prep, aka a teacher recipe for a win! :)

With One breath boxes students take one deep breath and correct read all of the word in the first box.  Then students take another deep breath and read the words in the second box (which is a bit longer).  Repeat until all boxes are read.   This a great activity to do with partners, to send home for students to do with their parents or with a classroom aide or para!

The Fry Phrase Pack Bundle includes phrases for ALL of Fry's list (as pictured below). Included in the bundle is a checklist for each list of 100, teacher assessments, speed trial recording sheets, connect four game, a bingo game and a Fry-Bo game (played like Skip Bo)!  

Make sure to check out Sightwords.com as they have a lot of great resources too! 

Ready For Summer Reading Challenge--Freebie!!!

Not sure how you all are feeling....but my kids are excited to be at school checked out!  You see....we only have 7 days of school left and the kids already think it is summer break.  On the flip side---when I think of having 7 days left of school---I immediately think how much more can I cram in their little heads?!?!   I still have time to instruct and improve their reading....but in order to get actual results...I have to be super creative about it!!

So, I came up with "Ready for Summer Reading Challenge."  The students have 5 days to complete various reading challenges (that yours truly came up with).  If they complete the challenges within the five day limit---they get reward parties!  I thought this plan was genius!  For one, they have some friendly competition (which my kiddos love), two-- they get to have a party and three----they are completing "challenges" to make them better readers without even knowing it!  Can you say "Win-win!!"

Yesterday I handed my kids the double sided paper that explains the challenge.  Page one explains the directions---that all challenges have to be completed by a certain date, can be done in any order and on the same day.   Page one is below:

 

The backside of the page shows the six challenges my kiddos need to complete.       

 

 

I catered the challenges to the needs in my room, but the tasks would be easy to change for whatever needs you have in your own classroom.  For my challenges I wanted kids to get extra practice in fluency, decoding, and comprehension....thus I came up with the following "challenges."

 

1. Master level 500 Fry Phrases (great way to improve fluency!!)

 

2. Master Level 600 Fry Phrases

 

3. Read an informational article three times (out loud) and time yourself.  Try to beat your previous time by increasing your reading speed. (still practicing fluency)

 

 

 

4. Read an informational article and highlight the difficult words, write them down and break them into syllables. (this practices a decoding strategy we had been working on all year)

 

 

 

5. Read a book on Reading A to Z and take a comprehension quiz.  (working on comprehension at students reading level)

 

6. Take end of the year test with Mrs. Orr (this is for me---to see how much they have grown throughout the year)

 

 

The kids LOVE the challenge...and so do I!  They are working their little tails off and I know they are getting great reading practice and I am finishing my assessments!! Like I said---I catered this challenge to the needs in my room---but it could easily be adapted to your needs.  Click here to grab this FREE resource from my TPT!! 

 

 

I hope you enjoy!!

Fry Phrases

Happy last day of the weekend!! :)  I hope everyone had a chance to kick back and relax :)  I was pretty much a vegetable this weekend---holed up on the couch watching TV, reading, surfing the web and dreaming up lessons, games and reading strategies to try out on my students. :)  Oh, and I must also confess to the hours I spent playing Candy Crush Saga on my ipad.  That game is addicting, especially when you can't pass a level!!!  Does anyone play that game?

Anyway, when I was actually doing something productive--I came up with some great Fry phrasing games.  The words in the fry phrases come from Dr. Edward Fry's Instant Word List.  Fry's word list is comprised of high frequency words (the first 300 words in his list represents 67% of all the words students will encounter in their reading).

Practicing Fry Phrases is a great way to improve fluency--and not just the speed aspect of fluency, but also accuracy an prosody. :)  They are reading the most commonly used words--which means they will become more accurate.  They will begin to use inflection and word stress--which means they will have better prosody.  AND they will be faster after practicing the word phrases--especially if you have them do time trials.  Dr. Fry's phrases are meant from grades 2-5, but I will be using them with my sixth graders also. 

Ways to use Fry Phrases:

• Speed drills with a partner--give each student a  Fry phrase list and a stop watch.  One partner reads, while the other times.  Repeat and try and beat the previous time. 
• Literacy Centers--have students read through the lists with a partner.  For extra fun--have the students read the phrases in a funny voice (queen, king, robot, excited, sad, etc.)
• PowerPoints for the whole class--get those here
• Fry Phrasing cards for independent practice---get them here

For a complete list of all 600 Fry phrases click here

 

Of course I couldn't just stop with the free resources, I had to come up with a game!! My kids love games, and I figured after speed trials playing a game would be a great review.  If you want to check out the games I made--click here.

 

 

 

 

I have only made games for the last 100 phrases......hopefully I can get the other phrase games done soon! :)  Not sure why I started with the end....but I did!

 

Have a great rest of your weekend!