An active and innovative approach to making words that teachers and their students have grown to love is finally here! Based on its highly successful parent text, Phonics They Use, this new grade-level series Making Words offers teachers a fresh multi-level activity and lesson series written for the kindergarten through fifth grade classroom. Pat Cunningham and Dottie Hall present classroom teachers with effective tools for strengthening phonics and spelling skills that encourage students to move beyond learning and into a world of word discovery. Each research-based volume includes a wealth of friendly, hands-on, manipulative activities that guide teachers in teaching the development of words--from phonemic awareness to spelling. In Making Words Fifth Grade, Pat and Dottie introduce second grade teachers to 50 lessons that teach all the decoding and spelling skills included in most fifth grade curriculums. Each Making Words activity leads children through a systematic and sequential phonics curriculum. All lessons include practice with the decoding and spellings skills of segmenting and blending as children stretch out words they are making and blend the letters to make new words.Because teaching children letter-sound relationships is easier than teaching children to actually use these letter-sound relationships, all lessons include a transfer step in which children apply the sounds they are learning to spelling new words. Making Words Fifth Grade is the best resource you can have on hand for motivating your students to learn words! *Features 50 fun and interactive lessons for building decoding and spelling skills.*Presents a concise method for involving students in the process of identifying common contractions and compound words and more complex vowel patterns within words.*Promotes student awareness of similarities in words that helps develop writing skills.*Includes reproducible letter tiles, record sheets for each lesson, and take-home sheets to copy, cut, and/or laminate. *Highlights a list of useful children's books to extend the Making Words lesson....

An active and innovative approach to making words that teachers and their students have grown to love is finally here! Based on its highly successful parent text, Phonics They Use, this new grade-level series Making Words offers teachers a fresh multi-level activity and lesson series written for the kindergarten through fifth grade classroom. Pat Cunningham and Dottie Hall present classroom teachers with effective tools for strengthening phonics and spelling skills that encourage students to move beyond learning and into a world of word discovery. Each research-based volume includes a wealth of friendly, hands-on, manipulative activities that guide teachers in teaching the development of words--from phonemic awareness to spelling. In Making Words Second Grade, Pat and Dottie introduce second grade teachers to 100 lessons that teach all the phonics, spelling, and phonemic awareness skills included in most second grade curricula. Each Making Words activity leads children through a systematic and sequential phonics curriculum. All lessons include practice with the phonemic awareness skills of segmenting and blending as children stretch out words they are making and blend the letters to make new words. Because teaching children letter-sound relationships is easier than teaching children to actually use these letter-sound relationships, all lessons include a transfer step in which children apply the sounds they are learning to spelling new words. Making Words Second Grade is the best resource you can have on hand for motivating your students to learn words! *Features 100 fun and interactive lessons for building phonemic awareness, phonics, and spelling skills.*Presents a concise method for involving students in the process of identifying phonological units and patterns within words.*Promotes student awareness of similarities in words that helps develop writing skills.*Includes reproducible letter tiles, record sheets for each lesson, and take-home sheets to copy, cut, and/or laminate. *Highlights a list of useful children's books to extend the Making Words lesson....

An active and innovative approach to making words that teachers and their students have grown to love is finally here! Based on its highly successful parent text, Phonics They Use, this new grade-level series Making Words offers teachers a fresh multi-level activity and lesson series written for the kindergarten through fifth grade classroom. Pat Cunningham and Dottie Hall present classroom teachers with effective tools for strengthening phonics and spelling skills that encourage students to move beyond learning and into a world of word discovery. Each research-based volume includes a wealth of friendly, hands-on, manipulative activities that guide teachers in teaching the development of words--from phonemic awareness to spelling. In Making Words Fourth Grade, Pat and Dottie introduce fourth grade teachers to 50 lessons that teach all the prefixes, suffixes, and root skills included in most fourth grade curriculums. Each Making Words activity leads children through a systematic and sequential spelling curriculum. All lessons include practice with prefixes and suffixes as children stretch out words they are making and blend the letters to make new words. Because teaching children letter-sound relationships is easier than teaching children to actually use these letter-sound relationships, all lessons include a transfer step in which children apply the sounds they are learning to spelling new words. Making Words Fourth Grade is the best resource you can have on hand for motivating your students to learn words! *Features 50 fun and interactive lessons for building decoding and spelling skills.*Presents a concise method for involving students in the process of identifying common contractions and compound words and more complex vowel patterns within words.*Promotes student awareness of similarities in words that helps develop writing skills.*Includes reproducible take-home record sheets to help students build their vocabularies....

Patricia Cunningham and Debra Renner Smith help close the literacy gap and achieve academic success for all students with Beyond Retelling: Toward Higher Level Thinking and Big Ideas! To meet today's educational demands, Patricia Cunningham and Debra Renner Smith present teachers with a framework based on years of reading research to help students attain higher level thinking skills and develop their ability to think critically about what they read. Their "Thinking Theme" lesson framework allows teachers to pose "The Big Question" and support students as they think about "The Big Idea." With the guidance of Pat and Deb, teachers will find their students will be able to formulate thoughtful answers to the big question and will move from proficiency to literacy achievement. Reviewers Can't Put This Book Down! "In an era of phonics-based instruction, especially for students in poverty and English Language Learners, it is refreshing to see a balanced view of what good reading instruction can look like!. Additionally, the lessons described in Beyond Retelling demonstrate that all students are capable of deep thinking about their reading!. Beyond Retelling is a phenomenal book." --Sheila Bostrom, Thomson Elementary, Brush, CO "The authors have done an amazing job and have hit upon one of the biggest issues confronting teaching reading today. In a time when teachers are pressured to cover material at a lightening pace, higher level thinking skills are not being taught as they should. This book reminds us that we should be creating critical thinkers and lifelong learners!" --Pam B. Cole, Department Chair, Kennesaw State University This book will become a must-read for any teacher whose state requires students to be evaluated on the higher level thinking processes of synthesis, analysis, evaluation, or application as they move through elementary and middle school!...

To Pat Cunningham vocabulary isn't just a predictor for comprehension it is a reminder of how much meaning vocabulary matters and how complex it is to teach children meanings for words. In many ways, things are better in our schools for children who we used to call "underprivileged" and "disadvantaged." Every state now has public kindergarten and pre K is available for our most needy children. The Internet and other technologies make "bringing words to life" a richer and more do-able goal. However, we still have many children coming to school with impoverished vocabularies. Many of these children come from underpriviledged families and many do not come with much English. Drawing on her experience as a classroom teacher, researcher, scholar, author, and co-founder of the Four-Blocks Literacy Framework Pat Cunningham offers elementary teachers a practical model and friendly strategies for helping ALL students develop their vocabularies. Guiding teachers to use all available resources to build rich meaning vocabularies, she helps to ensure every student's success in school and beyond. There is no way to overstate the importance of meaning vocabulary to comprehension. The size of a child's vocabulary is one of the best predictors of how well he or she will comprehend while listening or reading. Simply stated, what really matters is building bigger vocabulary to make all students better readers. Features: *Practical strategies teachers can use to build meaning vocabulary throughout the school day. *Separate chapters for building vocabulary during math, science, social studies and the arts and physical education....

An active and innovative approach to making words that teachers and their students have grown to love is finally here! Based on its highly successful parent text, Phonics They Use, this new grade-level series Making Words offers teachers a fresh multi-level activity and lesson series written for the kindergarten through fifth grade classroom. Pat Cunningham and Dottie Hall present classroom teachers with effective tools for strengthening phonics and spelling skills that encourage students to move beyond learning and into a world of word discovery. Each research-based volume includes a wealth of friendly, hands-on, manipulative activities that guide teachers in teaching the development of words--from phonemic awareness to spelling. In Making Words First Grade, Pat and Dottie introduce first grade teachers to100 lessons that teach all the phonics, spelling, and phonemic awareness skills included in most first grade curriculums. Each Making Words activity leads children through a systematic and sequential phonics curriculum. All lessons include practice with the phonemic awareness skills of segmenting and blending as children stretch out words they are making and blend the letters to make new words. Because teaching children letter-sound relationships is easier than teaching children to actually use these letter-sound relationships, all lessons include a transfer step in which children apply the sounds they are learning to spelling new words. Making Words First Grade is the best resource you can have on hand for motivating your students to learn words! *Features 100 fun and interactive lessons for building phonemic awareness, phonics, and spelling skills.*Presents a concise method for involving students in the process of identifying phonological units and patterns within words.*Promotes student awareness of similarities in words that helps develop writing skills.*Includes reproducible letter tiles, record sheets for each lesson, and take-home sheets to copy, cut, and/or laminate. *Highlights a list of useful children's books to extend the Making Words lesson....

Written by an outstanding scholar, Phonics They Use seamlessly weaves together the complex and varied strategic approaches needed to help students develop reading and spelling skills. Long-positioned and long-respected as a bestseller by both pre-service and practicing teachers of reading, this affordable text offers a coherent collection of practical, hands-on activities that provide a framework for teaching phonics. The Fourth Edition continues to emphasize that what matters is not how much phonics students know but what they actually use when they need phonics for decoding a new word, for reading and spelling a new word, and for writing. Rather than subscribe to a single theory, Pat Cunningham stresses a balanced reading program---incorporating a variety of strategic approaches--tied to the individual needs of children. Packed with new activities and strategies for teaching reading, this book is an invaluable resource for any new or veteran teacher. Now teachers have access to a new grade-level series Making Words that offers fresh multi-level activities and lessons for the kindergarten through fifth grade classroom. Based on the active and innovative approach to making words that teachers and their students have grown to love in Phonics They Use, this new series is the best resource you can have on hand for motivating your students to learn words! Take a Peek at What's New to the Edition! New Chapter on Making Words in Kindergarten (Ch. 4) describes and provides sample lesson plans on how teachers can make each kindergarten student a letter of the alphabet, using a big letter card, to teaching them how to begin to form words. *New Chapter on Making Words in Upper Grades (Ch. 11) describes and provides sample lessons on how making words has been adapted for use of older students in upper grades, by emphasizing the prefixes, suffixes, roots and spelling changes that are the important decoding and spelling patterns for polysyllabic words. *Inclusion of hints and suggestions for English Language Learners scattered throughout the chapters, which help make phonics and spelling instruction more successful for ELLs as they learn to read and write. These "For English Language Learner" boxes include a variety of ways teachers have adapted the Phonics They Use activities to include their children learning English....