I have been wanting to work with wilson in my lan. arts class. I have from 7-9 students at a time. Can wilson be taught to this amount of students? Has anyone else here tried it? Advice? Thank you…
Re: Possible to teach Wilson to 8 students
Yes, it is possible, the written portion is easier to do in a larger group than the reading portion.
I have small letter cards cut up and bundled in baggies. Each student sets out the letters on his/her own desk. We go through the “What says” with a “be my echo”, then make real words and nonsense words. They love this part (not the nonsense words) although checking for missing letters on the floor is absolutely necessary.
Review and teaching of new skills is done with my larger letters on the board, then onto dictation. Which is part of their Wilson notebooks.
My students love the whole process, they work very hard, and have made great gains.
Re: Possible to teach Wilson to 8 students
After reading Cathy’s post about how to teach Wilson to a large group, I must comment on a great new product they have…they have “magnetic journals”, which eliminate the need to cut up all those little sound cards. The journal is a folder-sized, foldable white board, and all of the sound cards are made out of foam and are magnetic. These are a huge plus to have in my classroom-the kids just love them! All of the sound cards are contained right on the folder, and they build words on the folder. It’s much easier than cutting out all the small sound cards and putting magnetic tape on the back.
Also, you can now download the entire rules notebook from the Wilson website. It is definitely more convenient, but the only drawback to this is that the kids are not actively involved in incorporating the rule into their notebook since it’s already in print, right in front of them. Then again, it is helpful to the child who has difficulty with copying.
I also have a large group. In the course of one period, I have 9 students-1 of them is in step 9, and the rest are in step 2!!! And, within the step 2 group, I could easily create one more, slower group. It’s tought to try to teach this way, but that’s the hand I was dealt! Hopefully I will some progress this year.
I do some adjusting on the lesson plan, though. When I have eight-ten, I work w/4-5 on skills while the others do writing work of previously learned skills and SSR. Groups get the same practice, really, it just becomes their turn to read more quickly than in a big group of eight. I do visual drill as a whole-class, unless the two groups are far apart in what they are studying.
I usually do word building as a small group—I can watch errors better. Definitely word/sentence/passage reading in smaller group of 4-5.
Happy to answer other questions if you think of them.