What’s In EL Skills? Unpacking the Lesson Structure

What instructional model does the skills block lesson follow?

• I do, we do, you do

• We do, I do, you do

• You do, we do, I do

• Monkey see, monkey do

The new skill that is learned is the same throughout

• The week

• The month

• The year

• It cycles

The skills block lesson starts with phonemic play, is followed by word work, and finishes with writing. Why?

• The curriculum designers chose this

• It moves from easier to more difficult skill

• Because each of these is the same as the benchmark tests

• I never thought about it!

For the phonemic play, some words will be written on the board

• True

• False

In word work...

• Students work with spelling patterns from the lesson

• Students use fun activities that focus on the new spelling pattern

• Students learn high-frequency "trap" words that cannot be decoded easily

• All of these are correct

• Students may read from decodable readers

Writing is the hardest skill because students need both phonemic awareness and decoding to perform it correctly

• True

• False

EL Skills is for whole group MASTERY. All students should master a lesson in whole group

• True

• False

Encoding (spelling) will be MOST difficult for which groups of students?

• Above level

• On level

• Below level

• Well Below level