One of the first things I struggled with when I began my science of reading journey a few years ago was finding a good sample structured literacy block schedule to implement.

I knew there were parts of our balanced literacy block that were not science of reading aligned and had to go.  But what should that be replaced with?  My brain works in schedules.  I truly believe my brain is one giant Excel spreadsheet, lol.  Spreadsheets are my love language.

Okay, you get it.  But seriously.  Scheduling is how I make sense of my day-to-day world.  So, when a big shift happens in how I’m teaching–hey there, Science of Reading, I go straight to the schedule to process, and start changing.

Here’s my sample structured literacy block schedule that helped me shift from balanced literacy to structured literacy.

 

Goodbye, Familiar Reading

Hello, morning work!

My day always started with familiar reading.  Kids came into the classroom, did their morning chores, and then sat down with their book tubs we called browsing boxes.  It had charts and leveled readers from guided reading that they would read and reread.

Now, let me be clear.  Rereading has its place.  I believe in it.  We still do it.  But the problem was that part of what kids could choose to do when they finished early was read from their browsing boxes.  It was kinda the catch all.  

So our morning time was less quiet reading and more just faking it…or bopping a friend over the head with an ABC chart…

Instead, we did morning tubs or phonics cut-and-paste activities for a skill we learned the day before.

 

Goodbye, Calendar

Hello, Phonemic Awareness and Phonics! 

Truth time: Calendar wasn’t completely gone.  When I was in kinder, we moved the calendar block to our math time.  In first grade, it became a quick morning meeting so we could talk about our day and schedule… because, YES, my firsties had to endure my obsession with schedules! 🙂

Phonics wasn’t new for me.  I had been doing some phonics work in small groups and a tad at the beginning of the year whole group.  But my big shift was making phonics systematic and a consistent block of time for our whole group.  You can read more about my weekly phonics routine here and find the digital curriculum I use here.

Phonemic awareness was COMPLETELY new to me.  I mean, we learned about it in college, but I had it in my mind that it was really more prek and kinder.  Not for first grade–and certainly not second grade!

I use Heggerty for my phonemic awareness curriculum.  It’s quick.  We add TPR and hand motions to make it fun.  It’s systematic.  And most of all, it WORKS!  So much so, that I’ve been using it with my 3 year olds to help with their speech and language delays at home.

Welcome Back, Read Alouds!

The one thing I missed so much was read alouds.  Every year, it seemed like I had less and less time to really read a book to my kids.  Sure, we read a chapter book together at the end of the day.  And I squeezed in a book here and there during transition.  

But a read aloud?  A real, genuine, read aloud where we talk about the book, and work on comprehension together and do some related activities?  That was missing because there just wasn’t time.

And I told myself it was fine because they were getting some of that in guided reading.

But y’all, those leveled guided readers were NOT read aloud quality.

With our sample structured literacy block schedule, we are focusing on oral comprehension in K-2 and that means READ ALOUDS!  I love using the same book for several days or an entire week with a different focus.  One of our focus days was always Tier 2 vocabulary.  You can read about those Tier 2 vocabulary routines here and find a free sample of the Tier 2 vocabulary lessons and activities I use here.

Our writing is now connected with our read aloud and oral comprehension work.  We write about what we read.  On vocabulary days, we write about our vocab words.  On retelling days, we write to retell a story.  

It’s so much more connected to our learning and meaningful for our kids.  Not to mention, they know EXACTLY what to write about instead of trying to constantly come up with an idea to write about. 🙂

Goodbye, Guided Reading

This is such a HUGE shift, that it got its own blog post a while back.  So, if you want all the juicy details from an EX guided reading mega fan, read about why I said goodbye to Guided Reading here.

I also, go over in detail what I replaced it with.  Because small groups aren’t going anywhere in my classroom.  I’m a firm believer in that.  We just had to work hard to figure out what that was going to look like.

And it looks more skill-based, intervention-focused, faster, and wayyyyyy more flexible.

Yes, I still do centers during small group time.  This is the bundle of centers I used for kindergarten.  (There are plenty of free samples linked in there for you to try out too!) 

I pulled small groups during this time, but also during our morning work time.  Because the skill groups are so focused and fast, it’s easy to squeeze in a small group during any part of the day when kids are working independently. 

Sample structured literacy block Schedule

Here’s a look at how our sample structured literacy block schedule comes together and what the differences look like…

In a spreadsheet, no less! 🙂