Hey Kendra! I am not Lori, but would love to share my thoughts and experiences with you. 1- I have been teaching Kindergarten for 27 years. When I started, I did Letter of the Week and loved it. I had everything planned around those letters. Now that I look back, I wonder if the children really "got" many of the activities I planned around the letter. For example, I knew we had honey on our biscuits during H week because honey begins with H, but did they really get that? With letter of the week, you don't even finish introducing the letter until maybe March! Children need to know those letters and sounds much sooner so they can use them to read and write. I have always used the good old Letter People to help teach sounds and letters. They give us all a common reference when we talk about sounds and letters and when we use sounds and letters. I introduce a letter person a day, but talk about ALL of the letters and sounds, especially in the children's names. Our district bought each of us a zoophonics kit for next year, so I will teach those charachter names and characteristics (That is about all I plan to use out of that $550 kit. They could have just given me a sheet with a list of the characters!). I don't think it matters what you use, even a set of ABC cards will work, I just like having that common reference that we all (as a class) know. With the whole district using Zoophonics, they will have the same references if they move from school to school. Zoophonics focusses on two letters a week, but I plan to keep on doing it my way with focus on one a day, but working with all letters and sounds. 2- Have high expectations for your kindergarteners with literacy skills, but still give them plenty of time to play. You can enhance their literacy skills within the play centers by the props and materials you put there. I consider all of my learning centers to be literacy centers, even "play" centers like pretend and blocks. Remeber that "speaking" is part of literacy development and play is a great way to enhance language development. 3-Yes! Yes! Yes! Kindergarten children can and should learn comprehensions strategies. When they first begin reading, the patterned texts don't have a lot of content, so you can't work there, but you can work with the stories you read them. Then by the time they get to the stories with more content, the stratgies should come naturally. I start right in on comprehensions strategies, right along side concepts of print and the strategies to figure out words. I plan to jump right in to 'background knowledge' and 'making connections' the first full week of school. Hope this helps. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Kindergarten. Next year, I am going to have a K/1 multi-age class due to low numbers at my school. I am excited, but a little bit nervous, too. Jane in SC :-) In a message dated 7/4/2008 10:51:32 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Lori, thank you for breaking your no work until July rule. I am going to be teaching K for the first time next year and have been wanting to post but didn't know what to say. Your post and all those who have responded are giving me a direction in which to start my summer reading. I have a few questions. 1. You said that you "have been SLOWLY trying to break out of the "letter of the week" system that my team uses". Our teachers have always used this model but I didn't want to. We have the fundations program by Wilson. I have not looked at it that much for K. My thinking was to use a reading/writing workshop model and incorporate this into it. How have you tried to not do a letter a week? 2. I too taught first grade for 3 years and 2nd grade last year. I have never taught K. What advice would you and others give me? 3. I have veteran teachers in my county that think K can't learn reading comprehension strategies. Do you start these at the beginning like you did in 1st after introducing certain fundamentals of reading workshop. I know that with K you have to build knowledge of print concepts and books. I have used Debbie Miller's book in the past to guide my reading comprehension instruction. I am also currently reading To Understand. Thanks for helping me, Kendra **************Gas prices getting you down? Search AOL Autos for fuel-efficient used cars. (http://autos.aol.com/used?ncid=aolaut00050000000007) _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
