Increasing Students Blending Fluency: Slinky Style!

Is it winter break yet!? 

Don't get me wrong, I love my job, but I am just feeling so scattered impatient blah. It has been a whirlwind lately with home and work and I feel like I'm just barely treading water in both areas. I just need to recharge.

This eCard about sums it up.

This year the reading scores in my classroom are very drastically polarized. I have kids already way above a 1st grade level at a DRA 24+ and then kids way below 1st grade reading level at a DRA level 1. No one in the middle. As you can imagine this makes differentiation difficult at times. 

I have been really struggling with my low reading group. I meet with them every day for about 20 minutes and we work on blending, blending and more blending. We've played games, we've done worksheets, we've done songs...you name it, I've probably tried it. It's just not clicking. 

A lot of my kids are doing the "/k/ /a/ /t/. Top." I'm sure you're familiar with this. They're not even close and it is so frustrating! The sounds are all there, but they are unable to successful put them together.  

So I decided to get a little creative. I went to the store (and by store I mean Amazon...) and bought some slinkies! My thought process was that they would be able to visualize the stretching out of the sounds better with a visual/tangible tool.

I downloaded these *FREE* large letter cards from Rulin' the Roost and gave it a go!

Oh. My. Gosh. I literally saw the light bulb go on for some of my students, both metaphorically and literally. They physically lit up once they realized they were finally getting it after struggling for so long! I was SO proud (minus that Seahawks jersey....).

This may be the best purchase I've ever made for my classroom. 

But now I have a question for you: 

How do you structure your guided reading? I really want to revamp my guided reading instruction over the break so I would love any and all insights!