The power & importance of Read Alouds . . .

"Reading aloud to children is the single most important activity one can do to raise a reader."

This quote comes from the U.S. Department of Education. Hopefully you are reading to your students every day. A story at large group would be great. A fun way to start your small groups might be with a story! Remember to make your stories come alive for your students. If necessary; howl, laugh, growl, giggle, shiver, empathize or sympathize during the reading! We need to attach children to books. We need to help them to associate books with pleasure! A quote from Bev Boz (early childhood specialist), "Read,read, read, read, and, when you think your lips are going to fall off, read one more!"

Teachers extending Study Group

Shelly shared this with me. I am excited to hear that you ladies are taking the things that you learn in Study Group and extending them with your own ideas! I thought that it would be fun to share them with everyone. Thanks ladies & Shelly for sharing!
     1-Bingo cards with feeling pictures.
     2-Rhyming block---the child rolls the dice (block) & rhymes a word with the picture that comes up.
     3-Use feeling cards for recall from work time- "How did you feel playing in _______ area today?"
     4-Sing the song "If you're happy & you know it" & let the children pick a feeling & an action to continue.
        An example, "if you're sad and you know it touch your head".

A blog for everyone!

Just a quick note to everyone. I'm learning how to create & do this blog . . . please be patient with me. The purpose of the blog is to share ideas that will go along with our Study Groups. I have alot of wonderful video clips of many of you! I'm hoping to incorporate each one of you talented ladies in our blog. I will try and share ideas often. If you have ideas that are working great, please let me know. I will  try and put them on the blog.

Adding literacy to the classroom.

Here's an idea that the teachers in Monument Valley are using to incorporate both vocabulary and alphabet awareness in their classroom. The vocabulary words  are words that begin with the letter of  the week.

The letter "S" transition

This is a clip of the transition in action. Thanks Monroe!

Sharing literacy in the classroom:

This is an idea that I saw in Monroe. The teachers would use the letter of the week as a transition from small group to worktime. Each child  would have a turn  writing both the upper & lower case letters on the cut out letter & than tell the teacher where they wanted to go for work time. Sometimes they would allow the children to cut pictures from magazines that started with the letter of the week & glue it to the cut out letter.