Literacy in the Room

Writing their words down to show voice to print as well as having words all around them all the time.

The people tell us how many friend are allowed in the center.  The word and the number underneath help the children to make a connection between all 3 and the fact they all mean the same thing.

A simple phrase I ask MANY times a day (while pointing to it) will help them to start to read these three words; every word counts!

I use text to answer questions they may have. This is displayed right over the sensory table so they can answer what is in there and be reading the words of what is in there while they play with it, making the connection.

Everything in the room is labeled.  Also, to check in students must find their name and place it in.  Later in the year, I will change it to their last name, they must find that to check in when they arrive.  Name recognition is important as well.

Every week we focus on a letter. We read books on the letters  (Scholastic's AlphaTales), find the words that start with that sound in the book, decorrate that letter with something that has that sound or looks like that letter, make a handprint alphabet book page, find it in our room, learn the letter in sign language, and more.  (See my letter of the week page)

Even the carpets are labeled with the objects name.  This one is bilingual!

Signs posted around the room in the play areas allows students to connect things in real life to the words that correspond.

Names on everything for them to work on name recognition.

My writing center has bubble letters for them to practice writing inside, letters on lines with directional arrows, hand writing sheets, and our Alphatales characters with dotted lines to practice writing, their names, and other common words they may want to write.  I laminate EVERYTHING and allow them to use dry erase markers and practice again and again.  There is regular paper and markers also available if they are read to start writing something to their friends and families.

Videos to Teach Pre-literacy Skills

I am really trying to help my class figure out the letter sounds and the initial sounds of words. This is an important pre-reading and pre-writing skill that I try to work on in a variety of fun ways.  I have found some YouTube videos to help with that and thought I would share

The letters and initial sound:

 I also downloaded the YouTube to MP3 Converter (just type in YouTube to Mp3 in google).  Now this plays in the background while they play and learn!

Letter name, formation AND exercise!

This is only a sample.  To get the full version you need to purchase, but I think the video would be totally worth it.  It is available on his site.

Rhyming

My students thought this was absolutely hilarious, but if they are laughing they are enjoying it!

More to come as I find them!

Apple Unit

We started the week with The Biggest Apple Ever.  

We then colored our apples red, cut them out ourselves, and sorted them by size: small, middle, big.

We read: Apple Countdown.

We then made apple cores by cutting out 2 half circles drawn by teacher on a paper plate.  The students then recycled their own extra pieces.  They came back, wrote their name on the back and then made the "bumpy parts of the plate" red with red bingo dotters.  They then picked a leaf with out seeing the number.  Once they chose their leaf, they flipped it over and I stapled it to their core.  They then had to bingo dot that many seeds into their core.  

We read: I am an Apple.  We talked about the life cycle of a tree.  

To reinforce this we did Apple tree Yoga.  

In a tiny seed 

Rain and sun need to go on their backs before they can grow!

Wiggle and grow into a tall tree

5 petals on our blossoms

Petals fall off one by one (count to five 2 times)

When all the petals fall off, you have tiny apples.

and they grow bigger, and bigger....

Huge Apples! 

The apples plop off the tree: plop, plop

The apples break apart and the seeds come out.

 Repeat!

We also labeled an apple:

We then cut an apple in half to see the star.  We then stamped with them, counted our stamped apples, and then counted the points on our stars.  

We watched these videos:

Finally: We used our 5 senses and Looked at, Smelled, Listened to, Felt, and tasted some golden delicious apples.  

Smell

Look

Listen to (shake)

Touch

Taste

And then documented our results: