Components of the Quick Draw Kit
If you want a Quick Draw Kit already made for you, see our pre-made kit.
It contains a whiteboard, dry erase marker, eraser, instructions for playing the game, and directions on how to do finger-mapping.
If you would rather assemble your own board, you can go to Lowe’s or another home improvement store and have a nice little man cut up a shower board for you. Then sand the edges so they will be smooth. Find a set of dry erase markers. The instructions for how to play Quick Draw are in The Illustrated Book of Sounds & Their Spelling Patterns, which also provides you with a comprehensive set of lessons that teach all the sound spellings in our language in leveled lessons.
Some background on Quick Draw
One year in the last decade, I was hired to design a Title 1 program for a school K-8. I ended up serving over 60 students who did not qualify for special education services but who were far below grade level in reading, grades K-8.
I met with the groups of 5-8 children by grade level 2-3 times a week. Time was limited, considering the numbers of children I met with and considering how far behind they were in reading. Best of all, the older the children were, the more discouraged they were and the more resistant to another attempt at learning to read better.
Accidentally, I decided to take their weekly spelling lists and work on those words as a means of killing two Goliaths with one smooth stone. I figured if they could pass their spelling tests, it might help them learn to read better as well. What I didn’t understand was how incredibly powerful that approach would turn out to be.
Let me HASTEN to say that we did not “do spelling” in the traditional way! While I didn’t really know for sure what I was doing, I did know that to repeat multiple times what had already not worked for these children was a foolish undertaking.
I followed my instincts which were
1. To try a vastly different approach to learning so they would not be reminded of their failure with the traditional method.
2. To teach them in a way that didn’t require them to memorize anything at all.
3. To teach them in a way that utilized a different region of their brain and body than they were used to using when they failed.
Other things I did:
1. Asked a lot of questions about how they remembered.
2. Watched them intently for any sign of my having lost them.
3. Kept the bar very high. Our standard was 100% correct or we’d do something different.
4. Helped the children realize the strengths they did possess that would help them learn.
Each week on Friday morning I would take the stack of spelling words for each grade level 2-8 and would focus on the spelling patterns in the list of words. Then I would make silly sentences that linked groups of words together based on their common sound spelling (example: play, may, spray, stay, stray). Finally I would sketch out a cartoon that illustrated the sentence. What happened was far beyond what I intended. I set out to make the learning experience explicit, unforgettable and fun. It turned out that the children gobbled up the learning and learning was permanent.
Here is an example of a sentence that highlights a spelling pattern, has a cartoon, etc.
The sheep on
Sweet Street
have wheels
of cheese.
I challenge you to study this a bit quietly to let your brain take a snapshot of the image while you say the sentence to yourself. Then tomorrow, see if you can recall the image and the sentence that goes with it. Better yet, try it with a child.
This is the kind of practice we did with our kids in Title 1. By the end of the year, all but a small handful of children were at or beyond grade level for reading.
How to play Quick Draw
1. Select a sound spelling (ex: “ee” or “ay” or “ough”).
2. Generate a list of words that use your sound spelling.
3. Practice breaking each word into its individual sounds before teaching the lesson. (example: play is P-L-AY – sounds, not letter spellings).
4. On the day of the lesson, instruct the children to listen for the word and listen to you breaking it into sounds.
5. Say, “PLAY.” “P-L-AY.” “Now you do it.”
6. Children will sound out the word with you, and then write it while they sound it out aloud once again. Tell them their ears are going to be telling their brains what to write.
The reason this works when memorizing spellings of words does not is that a child can hear and word and can learn to represent that word by using letters that represent the sounds.
The key is to make sure they know the sound spellings in our words (refer to The Illustrated Book of Sounds & Their Spelling Patterns for the comprehensive list) and have them sound out loud.
I promise you: they will love learning!
Comments