Words From Daddy's Mouth | Readers 1, 2, 3 & 4

02 Jun Readers 1, 2, 3 & 4 – Teacher and Parent Notes

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Please find below the Teachering Notes for the Words From Daddy’s Mouth Reader series, including puzzles and printables.

If you would like to download all the word versions please click here.

Otherwise individual links are following in word version for the Word Study and Comprehension Sheets. The puzzles and their solutions are in PDF format.

Words from Daddy’s Mouth

Classroom readers

Broken Bones

Radio Competitions

The Sports Room

The Ball Game

by Lily Burgess

Illustrated by Kate Hawthorne

Teaching and Parent Notes

Prepared and written by a teacher with experience in both

whole class teaching and specialist literacy support

These notes are made available free of charge for use in schools.

They may not be reproduced and sold commercially.

INTRODUCTION

The four books in the Words from Daddy’s Mouth classroom readers series are designed to engage students. They provide interesting stories, written in natural language.

These stories are intended for students who can confidently recognise, or are close to recognising all 100 of Dr Fry’s Out and About Sight Words (Level 1). They provide students with an opportunity to practise these words in a contextual setting.

See: https://deta.qld.gov.au/about/app/out-and-about.html

In addition to these sight words, each story includes a number of context words. While there is some overlap between stories (for example, words such as dad, little, play and game occur in several stories, words such as bike and weekend are specific to a single story).

TEACHING STRATEGIES

Introductory activities should be suited to the needs and abilities of the students.

Students who can tackle new words using context cues can proceed to reading, following a book orientation. For these students, the pictures may provide additional clues, and serve to confirm their predictions.

However, other students may require additional scaffolding such as word building and word familiarisation activities. For these students, it may be advantageous to complete the Word Study and Word Searches prior to reading the stories.

New words can be introduced by discussing the meaning, and then exploring strategies for recall.

For example:

Perhaps a word can be broken down into smaller words?

Perhaps it is similar to a word the students already know?

Perhaps it rhymes with other known words?

Perhaps is there a fun story students can invent to help remember it?

Perhaps students can draw a picture or symbol in the word as a memory aid – such as turning the o’s in ‘look’ into eyes?

The aim is to maximise what Marie Clay refers to as ‘islands of certainty’.[1] As a guide, when a student opens a book, he or she should be able to correctly identify at least nine out of ten words on every page.

A further activity to support reticent readers is Transformations (adapted to include the vocabulary encountered in these stories).

See: https://www.raisingreaders.com.au/resources/Activities/Transformations.htm

Once the teacher is confident the students have sufficient background information and skills to process the text, Guided Reading can be introduced.

However, those students who are likely to be overwhelmed when confronted with a text that is just a little too difficult, can be further supported by using the Neurological Impress Method (NIM).

See: https://childdevelopmentinfo.com/learning/dyslexia/neurological_impress_reading

Although the books can be introduced in any order, the following table shows the difficulty gradient of the four books, and a suggested order for teaching purposes. However, the decision as to which book to introduce first can be adjusted to suit the interests and needs of the students.

Book	No. of words	No. of different Level 1 sight words	No. of different context words per story	Percentage of sight words per story*	Punctuation used	Word building
Broken Bones	140	42	31	58%	. , … ‘ !	call, calls, caller, called, calling race, races, racer, raced, racing swap, swaps, swapper, swapped, swapping big/bigger/biggest new/newer/newest old/older/oldest little/littler/littlest happy/happier/happiest
Radio Competitions	155	52	27	70%	. , … ‘ ! ‘ ‘ ?	listen, listens, listener, listened, listening guess, guesses, guesser, guessed, guessing shout, shouts, shouter, shouted, shouting to/too/two sent/cent/scent be/bee won/one
The Sports Room	195	51	47	60%	. , … ! ‘ ‘ –	help, helps, helper, helped, helping look, looks, looker, looked, looking tell/tells/told lend/lends/lent say/says/said throw/throws/threw think/thinks/thought
The Ball Game	186	47	34	67%	. , … ! ‘ ‘ – –	play, plays, player, played, playing jump, jumps, jumper, jumped, jumping count, counts, counter, counted, counting for/four no/know would/wood so/sew not/knot (silent ‘k’)
Across all four books, 95% of the Out and About Sight Words* (Level 1) are covered. Words NOT included: these, water, am, its, may

Above all, reading these books should be fun. Children learn when they have confidence and the skills to achieve, and are actively engaged in the learning process.

FOLLOW UP ACTIVITIES

Following guided reading, students can retell the stories in their own words, discuss any moral dilemmas presented, and dramatise the stories. Students can also complete the Comprehension and Crossword work sheets. Note that the clues in the crosswords are provided as cloze exercises, thereby providing further comprehension opportunities. All students, but particularly those who learn from tactile experiences, will gain further insights through illustrating the stories as a cartoon series, collage, diorama or painting. For further activities, incorporating other curriculum areas.

ASSESSMENT

These classroom readers are intended primarily for teaching purposes. However, for those teachers wishing to identify the strategies and reading behaviours of individual students, Reading Behaviours Recording Sheets are included for each story.

Further information on administering and scoring these sheets can be found online.

See: https://www.decd.sa.gov.au/literacy/files/links/link_157532.pdf

https://www.scholastic.ca/education/movingupwithliteracyplace/pdfs/grade4/runningrecords.pdf

https://www.wordcalc.com/runningrecord/

[1]Marie M. Clay, Becoming literate: the construction of inner control, Heinemann Education (1991) p. 172.