Ms. Tiffany

Hello Families,

Staying home this Winter Break? Traveling? Looking for fun things to do with your child regardless? One of my favorite sites to go to for literacy ideas and activities is readwritethink.org. I’ve narrowed down the search for you below to include fun and easy K-2 reading activities to do with your family.  Let me know if you try any out through the New Year!  Happy Holidays!

The most common question asked by parents after Parent-Teacher Conference Week is, “What can we do at home to help our child?”  The following article on the Reading Rockets’ website offers some simple activities to do with your child.  

I’ve found over the years that making connections to different texts allows readers to remember better what they have read and it forces them to stop and think about what a book means to them. If students read just to finish a book and move on to the next, what does reading really mean to them?  

Literacy groups are in full swing!  Each complete custom work, as the group of 3-5 students reads different guided reading books.  All groups begin with a warm-up, ranging from alphabet sound matching to CVC word and picture matching to word family rhyming to compound word assembling.  Then students practice reading their guided reading books through a variety of formats: pointer reading, telephone reading, whisper reading, or turn reading. Most groups read their books a few times, so students can practice for when they read it to parents and caregivers at home.  Finally, Literacy friends make connections to the book they have read, sketching their thoughts and writing a sentence or two about their relation to the topic at hand.  Books come home and can be returned within the week, so the next groups can utilize the book set as well.  

Here is an article I read this month regarding the importance of the bedtime story: 

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/sep/26/bedtime-story-is-key-to-literacy-says-childrens-writer-cottrell-boyce?CMP=share_btn_fb

This week, we spent time getting to know our new literacy groups. We created homemade bookmarks with a variety of card stock, stickers, and colored pencils.  We will be using these bookmarks to follow our reading in our books and hold our place when we pause to discuss comprehension or vocabulary questions.  

We also took home envelopes that contained a mystery letters game that spelled out our first and last names.  We assembled our names at school and can assemble them again at home with our family members.  You can build other small words, as well, using the letters.  For example, ‘Ms. Tiffany’ can be scrambled to form words like, ‘Tiff’, ‘any’, ‘tiny’, ‘fit’, ‘saint’, ‘may’, ‘fat’, and many more! If any letters have been lost in the process, feel free to make replacements at home.

I am so excited to be starting Kindergarten Literacy Enrichment classes next week!  The Literacy special is in addition to all of the wonderful language works being learned in the classrooms.  I am simply the icing on the cake.  I bring my literacy specialist tools to the table, and I meet with Kindergarten students where they are developmentally.  

We have a wide range of Literacy friends to get to know; some are learning alphabet letters and sounds, some are constructing CVC words, some are differentiating between long and short vowel patterns, and some are reading words with digraphs, blends, and vowel combinations.  Wherever our friends may be, we work together in our small groups at our comfort level to learn and grow together.

If I missed you at Back to School Night, stop by the Literacy/Library Room on the 2nd floor, where I have a handout explaining what our weekly routine looks like.

See you next week!

Warmly,

Due to the updated layout of this blog, my literacy links are no longer available down the right-hand side.  I’ve researched some fresh links, kept a few favorites, and posted them below for families to access and play.  Some are phonics games, sight word games, and online stories.  “These are a few of my favorite” links:

http://www.education.com/games/reading/

www.starfall.com

http://supersimplelearning.com/abcs/games

http://pbskids.org/games/reading

www.mrsperkins.com

http://www.storylineonline.net/

http://www.mightybook.com/

www.curiousgeorge.com

Welcome back to school!

It’s hard to believe that we will be starting Kindergarten Literacy groups in a couple short weeks!  I’m looking forward to playing Literacy games, reading books, and reflecting on what we read together.  If you haven’t yet, make sure you stop by the new Literacy and Library Rooms on the second floor to become familiar with the space and how to borrow books.  See you soon!

What do you know!  This NPR story was posted just today.  Nice timing!  Give the article a read and/or the story a listen.  

I’m still overseas, but I listen regularly to NPR to stay in-touch with all things NYC/NJ.  I recently heard a fascinating story regarding ‘the reading brain’ and I wanted to share it with you below.  There is also an upcoming LeVar Burton/Reading Rainbow segment, but it hasn’t quite aired yet, so I’ll post about it if I’m able to catch it.  See you all soon!

Looking for something different to do to help your child practice fine-motor skills when writing?  Does your child enjoy playing with food?  

Why not combine the two!?

Something fun I used to do when I taught public elementary students and managed a classroom was have them write with their fingertip in shaving cream on their desks, which had three purposes...1. practice spelling words  2. clean the desktops  3. freshen the smell of the room

With a younger, smaller group or with a kindergartner at home, give these ideas a try to have them practice their 3-finger pincer grip while holding a 'writing tool'.

If the following messes do not appeal to you, place the dips/whips/sauces/creams into a plastic ziplock bag and your child can easily trace through the bag. When finished, the contents can still be eaten with the tools. :)

1. Use raw skinny carrots, asparagus, or sugar snap pea pods to write in hummus or vege dip on a clean placemat or baking tray, which they can later clean by eating.  Use the flatter sides of the veges to smooth out the surface once it's been written on.

2. Find pretzel sticks or rods, depending on your child's gripping abilities, and have him or her write in pudding or whipped cream.  If smoothing out the food on the work surface is a challenge, use a spreading tool or spoon to flatten.

3. Locate skinny, crunchy breadsticks and use your child's favorite marinara sauce to write words or messages.

4. For an extra challenge and more advanced grippers, try wooden skewers with a few grapes or small chunks of fruit on them for a colorful, edible fruit kabob 'pencil'. Your child can write in whipped marshmallow dip or cream of his or her choosing.

Most importantly, allow your child to have fun with this! Ask him or her to write rhyming words, names, colors, numbers...anything he or she is learning to spell in school.

A fairly new way to have access to free easy-readers for learning readers is to check out Pinterest.  Once you click the link below, you'll have access to seasonal and basic vocabulary for kindergarteners.  Have fun printing, coloring, and reading along with your young reader!

Happy Fall, Readers!

I hope this post finds you well.  I have finally settled in Delft in the Netherlands, and I'm becoming accustomed to life here.  Mostly everyone speaks Dutch, but they nicely switch over to English as needed.  I am slowly learning to read the language, which I view as more crucial in order to be able to get around the area, shop for basic goods, read a menu, and cook.  Besides the language, I'm also learning to convert the English measuring system to metric, so I can dress appropriately and again cook.  

Any time one is learning new things, one must take his or her time to think about the deeper meaning of what is being read.  Last year, as the oldest elementary students were becoming more tech savvy, it was still emphasized to them to take their time when reading, to think deeply.  In a world of Twitter, Facebook, snippets of news here and there, and 140 character posts, when it's time to read a book or articles for educational purposes, it's time to slow down! :)  Read the article linked below for more information:

Slow Reading Article

On a side note, if any students would enjoy receiving a postcard from me in Holland, please email me a request at [email protected].

Take care!

Here is a link to Scholastic's Summer Reading List for 2014.  Now is the time in the summer when you're probably looking for more things to read with your children, so here is a great list.  Enjoy!

Spring is always the time of year when reading levels seem to increase at a faster pace; maybe it's from being cooped up inside all winter.  Even though we may be able to decode more and more, we still need to slow down and check our understanding and clarify information.  We use a variety of graphic organizers, like timelines, story maps, setting the scene, book webs, and chapter summary papers, to wrap our brains around all the details we find in stories and nonfiction text.  Reading is a very active process for us, and there is much to be discussed about a book before we put it aside and say, "I'm done!"

In April, some groups focused on sliding CCVC (like drop) and CVCC (like cash) words together, practicing our blends and digraphs.  Some words are very tricky for our tongues to master on the first try!  Other groups are into long vowel words, focusing on silent e, ee, ea, and other vowel combinations to keep in mind when reading new words.  Also helping us is the ability to chunk words into smaller words (i.e.: cat-er-pill-ar) we recognize or just breaking the word in two, like we have practiced in compound words (i.e.: butter-fly).

In February, we continued to play a variety of games, depending on a groups' skill focus.  Some groups have enjoyed Alphabet Sound Sorting (#1), Blends Matching (#2), Digraph Sorting (#3), Long Vowel Games, Vowel Combination Bingo (#4), Sight Word Bingo, Sight Word Bumper Cars (#5), and Making Words Games (see pictures below).

Students continue working on moving through their reading levels by getting their mouths ready to sound out more challenging words, breaking longer words into smaller chunks or syllables, and by thinking about if what they read in a sentence makes sense or if they need to go back and reread.  As the text becomes more complicated, students are modifying their strategies and preparing for more complex sentences to be read.

To think about what we've read, reading groups are working together to complete various Story Maps (#1), Timelines, and Summary Squares (#2) to organize what they've read and make sense of the story elements and/or facts (see below).