Word Warm-ups
Steps of the Program
The Word Warm-ups program incorporates three strategies—instruction and modeling, repeated reading, and progress monitoring—into a series of steps. These steps are designed to maximize the time a student spends reviewing letter names and sounds, learning phonics and syllable patterns, and using this knowledge to decode words.
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Step 1: Look, Listen, and Respond
This step helps the student learn the featured sounds, phonics patterns, or syllable patterns. The student looks at the exercise sheet while listening to the audio lesson on the CD and responding to the lesson instructions. |
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Step 2: Cold Timing
The student reads the words in a new exercise for a one-minute cold timing, marking any words he or she doesn't know. The student calculates the score by subtracting the number of errors from the total number of words read. |
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Step 3: Mark and Graph Cold-Timing Score
The student writes his or her cold scores for the word list or story on the exercise sheet and graphs his or her cold scores in blue. This is the first part of progress monitoring. |
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Step 4: Read Along
This is the modeling step. The student reads along with a recording of the exercise, quietly subvocalizing. The narrator models correct pronunciation. Depending on the level, the student reads sample words sound by sound or syllable by syllable with the audio and then blends the parts into whole words. |
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Step 5: Practice
This is the repeated reading step. The student practices reading the word lists independently until he or she reaches the goal of reading all the words correctly, down the columns and then across the rows, in one minute. As the student practices many words with the featured pattern, he or she learns to decode the pattern more easily and read the words with automaticity. |
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Step 6: Hot Timing
The teacher listens to the student read the word lists for one minute. To pass, the student must read all of the words down the columns, then across the rows, with three or fewer errors. |
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Step 7: Mark and Graph Hot-Timing Score
The student graphs the hot score in red on the Word Warm-ups graph. Comparing the cold score to the hot score provides proof of the student's progress, motivating him or her to continue. This completes the progress monitoring step. The student is ready to continue with the next exercise. |
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