Featured Center of the Week

We spend a big chunk of our day doing our Fairview Rotations. Fairview Learning is specially designed reading/language activities for Deaf/Hard of Hearing students. One of those rotations is centers. My language arts centers are meaningful activities that the students should be able to do independently while I am working one to one with a student on Guided Reading. Since I love seeing simple, low-prep centers that other teachers are using, I thought it might be fun to feature a center a week here on the blog.

I am in the process of re-vamping my centers binder. The recording pages are waaaaaaaaay out of date, ugly and boring. Here's a little proof. It's kind of embarrassing to even show you. The top is my old centers binder. The bottom is my new, in progress, centers binder. I was able to update 13 of my centers this weekend, so that was a productive weekend

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Since I have kinder through 6th grade in my class during rotations, I have to have a wide variety of centers to use. Most of the centers use simple Dollar Tree finds, or basic supplies that most teachers already own.

This week's feature: Gumball Words. Students press on the gumball dispenser and a "gumball" or two falls out. They read their word (or in our case, they sign all three ways to sign "do"), then they record their word on a gumball on their recording sheet. At then end of the activity, they read all their words to an adult before the center can be signed off.

I found the little gumball dispenser at Dollar Tree. I filled it with little flat glass marbles that I found at Micheal's. I typed up the Adapted Dolch sight word list on sticker paper. I punched them out with a little circle punch, and adhered them to the bottom of the marble. So far, they seem to be sticking really well. I have a set for each list, pre-primer through third grade.

Assessment Time

The school year is drawing to a close. We only have three more weeks of our Fairview rotations (two for the 6th graders since they are away at Science Camp for a week).  So that means it's assessment time.

One of the things they stressed at my Fairview Regional Training was assess, assess, assess. We did beginning of the year Guided Reading, Adapted Dolch, ASL and writing assessments. I've been assessing the Adapted Dolch words and Bridge Phrases as often as needed throughout the year. Also, I assessed for Guided Reading levels (using the DRA) as I felt the students were topping out on a level and it was becoming too easy for them.  But now it's time for the end of year assessments.

In the Fairview student progress book there is a simple Progress form to fill out. It has everything you need to compile information for the assessments and then document the results online. But it's missing a spot for Guided Reading and our DRA assessment.  So I created this cute little form to use to document progress. I like that it's all on one sheet and is a quick little snapshot of the student's levels.  It's a nice little quick-reference sheet for current levels.

Click over to Google Docs to download a copy of the progress form if it would be helpful in your classroom.

Bridge Phrases

My students that have mastered the first two or three Adapted Dolch word lists also visit the Bridge Phrase rotation. An interpreter sits with the students and works on a phrase a day. Bridge Phrases are English phrases requiring American Sign Language (ASL) translation for understanding.

 

 

The students learn the phrase (and multiple signs/meanings) and practice them in sentences. I wish our wireless at school was more reliable and faster so we could run the online tool on the iPad or laptop. For now, the students come over to the desktop and review their Bridge phrase for the day using the online tool. (The online tool is fabulous because you can just click on the phrase you need rather than fast forwarding the DVD.)

After practicing the multiple meanings/signs they develop their own sentences for their Bridging Dictionary.  They write a sentence and illustrate their photo.

 

My students really struggle with reading comprehension. Mastering these English phrases will increase their reading  comprehension and word choice when writing. I'm already seeing incredible progress since using all 5 components since August. My students are 'seeing' Bridge Phrases everywhere. They are quick to point them out during other content learning time. During Guided Reading I ask the students to 'bridge' whatever they can on their own first after reading the passage once. It's amazing how quickly they have picked this up and now their signs are more conceptually accurate when reading. I love to see progress!

Adapted Dolch Sight Words

All of my students start out with the Fairview Adapted Dolch Words. For those of you unfamiliar with Fairview, Adapted Dolch words are the most common sight words, and many of which have multiple signs and meanings. Students learn all of the various signs for a word to increase their comprehension when reading. For example, the word "run" has 11 signs. Yes, 11! I have to run out the door. The students run at PE. I'm going to run some copies. The teacher runs the class. Obama runs for President. Etc, etc. So our Deaf/Hard of Hearing students learn the multiple signs and meanings for the Adapted Dolch sight words preprimer through third grade.

 

I have two sixth graders that have mastered the lists. The rest are all working at their own pace through the lists. (This is the part that I love about Fairview- all of our students are getting what they need at their level.) This is probably the most challenging part of the Dolch rotation during our Fairview time. Every single student has their own list they are working from. Luckily, my instructional assistant takes the lists I give her from my assessments with the students and then develops the word lists and homework for the week. We keep the student word lists and Adapted Dolch word lists in a binder at her table.

 

When a student arrives to her table they bring their FV word box with them. She introduces the new word. She explains and describes each sign and meaning. Many times this means using a picture to really give the students a mental image of the meaning. The students make a 5x8 index card with the word and number of signs/meanings on the front and a picture and sentence for each meaning on the back. Then she reviews all of the words the student has been working on. The younger students also make a sight word watch that they wear home for the day. They love to make these watches and it's a good reminder to practice their new sight word with their parents.

 

When I first started to use the Adapted Dolch word lists a few years ago, I decided to make file folders for each and every word. Yes, it was a lot of work, but in the end, it makes it so much easier to just pull out the files we need for the week. The files are in a crate out on the counter for easy access.

Within in the folder are all of the activities I've accumulated for that sight word. This includes the multiple signs for the word, sight word watches, writing practice, homework I've created, and other activities. I've been able to find a lot of fun activities like play dough sight words, sight word graphing, pokey pin sight words, and sight word practice pages online at Teachers Pay Teachers. These have made our center activities lots of fun for the students and are great practice using what we've learned. A lot of my students need repetition and practice to master their sight words.

The Basics

To get started using Fairview with your students they are going to need a few things. Having one central place in the classroom for all of the Fairview materials is helpful, but not necessary. This is our Fairview area of the classroom.  (The bulletin board above our boxes is actually my Literature board and the work displayed there changes with each new Literature book.)

First off, every student needs a binder to store all of their papers, and to keep the students organized. My students store their binders on the bookshelf so they are easy to find. The students carry their binders with them (and a pencil) to every rotation.

I added five-tabbed dividers to the binder for each Fairview rotation that the students visit.  There are tabs for Reading, Adapted Dolch Sight Words, Bridge Words (The younger students have a Bridge Word section, but do not yet visit Bridge), ASL Stories and Writing.  I'll show you what's in each section as we come to it.

The other necessities are a small 3x5 card box for reading vocabulary words and a larger 5x8 card box for Adapted Doch words. 

I used a big chunk of my classroom budget at the beginning of the school year to invest in these boxes and binders.  However, they are really sturdy and we will be able to re-use them year after year. Office Depot had the best prices for the larger 5x8 boxes and I found the little 3x5 boxes at.  I added the student names to the top and side of  each box so they would be easy to find.

When the students visit the Adapted Dolch Word rotation they know to bring their large box with them.  When they come to reading, they know to bring their small reading vocabulary box.

So a binder, large 5x8 card file box, and a smaller 3x5 card file box are the supplies your students will need to get started. Of course, you're going to need a large supply of the cards as well!

Centers

Now that you've seen the breakdown of our Fairview rotations, let's go a little bit more in depth on each part. I'm going to start with centers. I'm not going to lie, this is the most time consuming part of Fairview for me.(The rest of the rotations take little to no prep.) I'm working with 13 students in grades Kinder to 6th. That is a whole lot of differentiating for a lot of students. It takes time, but it's well worth it. It keeps the students busy when they are not working 1:1 with an adult at the other rotations.

 

Centers are meant to be independent activities which review and practice previously learned skills. Don't get me wrong, they are all not independent. This is especially true when working with the younger students that are not able to function independently yet. We have a signing instructional assistant that works with the students when they are in centers. She helps the students that need additional help and signs off on the activities when they are complete.

 

The centers are stored in Ziploc bags or large, laminated manila envelopes. Each center is labeled with the name of the task. They are leveled in boxes 1-6 and baskets 7-8. The baskets hold over sized items that will not fit in the Ziploc bags.

 

I have tried to group some of the students together for the center tasks to make my life easier. I have four groups: 1.) Students that are still working on learning the alphabet 2.) Preprimer sight word learners 3.) Basic sight word readers (Primer-1st) 4.) 2nd-3rd grade readers working on grammar skills and sentence building.

 

This year I have purchased a lot of my center activities from Teachers Pay Teachers. They also have a TON of free resources that you can download and print. Since this is the first year of structuring centers this way, I didn't have very many resources already created. We do a lot of printing, cutting and laminating. Next year I will have boxes and boxes of seasonal educational centers ready to use.

 

I make my list of students and center tasks. Each student has at least 5-6 centers to complete in that given week. Some of my students are mainstreamed for part of the Fairview time, so they only have 3 centers. I put the activities into the boxes, and fill out their Fairview Centers slip. This pink slip is what the students refer to all week in order to know which activities they have been assigned to complete. When they finish the task, the IA checks it over and initials the box on the slip. The student also removes that number card from the Fairview Center board and puts it into the "Finished activities" box on the right.

 

I created this chart in Word and then took the file to Office Depot to have it printed on poster size, and laminated. After the school year started, we decided to include the kinders, and I got a new student, so I had to add another chart to the bottom. (My type A personality doesn't love that it hangs over the board!) I added velcro to the large chart and printed cards with the centers numbers and also added velcro once they were laminated. 

 

 

I refer to the student's pink slips and put up the matching center numbers onto the board. The board helps the students and staff stay on track. It's an easy, visual way to see who has done what.  At about October I was frustrated every week when I changed the centers that I had to search through these tiny cards for the center numbers I needed. I quickly threw together this little box with cardstock numbered dividers. Now it's easy to find the cards I need quickly.

 

The students store all of their completed center activities in their Fairview box (blue Lakeshore boxes). Also in the Fairview box they have their Fairview binder, schedule, pink centers slip, Guided Reading books, and Adapted Dolch word signing dictionaries. They store everything in here so the papers do not get lost in the desk and everything is in one place.  By the end of the week, the boxes are pretty crazy. You can tell there was a lot of hard work going on!

 

On Friday afternoons I go through each of the Fairview boxes and staple all of the centers work together. This work is sent home in their Friday folders. And then I do it all again for the next week!

Fairview Learning in Our Classroom

This summer I attended the Fairview Learning Regional Training in Las Vegas. It was a three day intensive training. (I happened to also have a blast with my sister in the evenings!) I've attended the basic Fairview training in the past, but really didn't have a good grasp on how to really implement the full five components in my classroom. 

 

After the regional training, was ready to go and excited to fully implement it in my classroom.  I've "used" the Adapted Dolch words in my classroom for two years. But that's not enough to really see growth and progress in your students. If you want to see true progress in language arts with your students, you need to implement and use all five components. I know it seems like a lot of time out of your day. It is.  But let's get real. If your students have difficulty reading and writing, then all those other subjects are not going to mean very much to your students. They need a strong language base first.

 

We've been using all the components of Fairview Learning since August. In six short months we have seen AMAZING growth in all of our students. It's totally worth the time and energy it takes to implement the components. It will make your job easier as a teacher in the long run!

 

So here's what our schedule looks like. We run Fairview Monday-Thursday afternoons from 12:40-2:25. The students each have their own color coded schedules that they follow. It took a little bit of training, but now it's a well-oiled machine. The students rotate to their next activity every 15-20 minutes. We have pooled our resources with the Pre/K teacher and share all of our students & staff. Combined, we have 13 D/HH students in grades K-6 doing Fairview.

 

Here are our rotations:

Adapted Dolch- Signing Instructional Assistant
Bridge Phrases- Educational Interpreter
Guided Reading- 1-6 teacher (myself)
Guided Writing- Pre/K teacher
ASL- Educational Interpreter (also a CODA)
Centers- Signing Instructional Assistant

 

The goal was that every child would visit reading, writing and ASL at least twice a week. Students visit Adapted Dolch everyday until they master all levels. Some students that have passed all the Adapted Dolch words only work on Bridge Phrases now.

 

Whenever the students are not working 1:1 with an adult they are working independently at centers. One staff member assists the students and signs off as they finish their centers.

 

That's the "nuts and bolts" of our Fairview Learning program and what it looks like in our classroom.