The Last Piece of the Puzzle

I've been learning about different strategies that children can use to learn the letters in the alphabet, how to put them together to read words, and how to put words together to read sentences. Comprehension of the sentences and books they read is the last piece to the puzzle!

Cause and Effect is a great strategy that teachers can use with any age. By choosing a story that has many different problems and solutions, such as Whose Mouse Are You? by Robert Kraus, the students can create a circle story in which they arrange the different situations in the book to see what and when things happen.

The Detective Game is also a great strategy that can be used with every student. Students can pretend they are detectives to find out what is going to happen in the book. They can act out different parts and continue acting past the part read so they can try and predict what will happen next using what they previously comprehended. 

Visualizing what is happening in a poem or story is also a great technique. After reading a story, students can draw the pictures that belong to the words. They can share what they drew with their classmates and explain why their picture includes the elements that it does.

Anchor Charts are something the class can make as a whole. The teacher can lead a read-a-loud, stopping in certain places to add ideas from the class to the anchor chart. The chart can have some topics like "Questions Before Reading," "Questions During Reading," "Found the Answer," "Inferred the Answer," and "Need More Information." 

Read-A-Louds are very important for students to do when they are working on comprehension. Not only should the teacher lead read-a-louds, I think it would be a great idea for students to do read-a-louds in small groups with their classmates. That way, they are inferring and questioning different parts of the books by themselves and learn how to do this independently. 

As Pat Johnson and Katie Keier state in Catching Readers Before They Fall, "We believe that all children, from the very start of learning to read, should stay actively focused on meaning making. For some average readers and for all struggling readers, this needs to be explicitly modeled and supported. We want all students to learn to think as they read." I think that by using the comprehension strategies mentioned above, each student will learn to think as they read! :) 

Books! Books! Books!

After listening to the podcast conversation between Dr. Betsy Baker and Dr. Heidi Anne Mesmer discussing Text Complexity, I thought it would be helpful to compile a list of books appropriate for each grade level.

1. How to be a Friend by Laurie Kransy Brown and Marc Brown is a book where fun dinosaur characters show different ways to be a good friend.
2. Alphabet Adventure by Audrey Wood is a book that brings the A, B, C's to life so younger children can learn the order of the letters, what they look like, and the different sounds they make.
3. David Goes to School by David Shannon is a book about a little boy named David who wrecks havoc in the classroom. Kindergarteners will find Davids antics silly and mischievous! 

1. The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister is a wonderful book about a fish that promotes sharing, kindness, friendship, and happiness.
2. Junie B.: First Grader, Toothless Wonder by Barbara Park is a book about a first grader who is about to lose a tooth and is having trouble dealing with the loss. First grade students can really relate to this book!
3. The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle is a book about a ladybug who is a bully. This book shows how to treat people nicely and how to share.

1. The Best Seat in the Second Grade by Katherine Henah is a book about a little boy who waits patiently for the day when he can be Hamster Helper in class. 
2. Dogku by Andrew Clements is a great way to introduce poetry and haiku into the classroom. 
3. Get Ready for Second Grade, Amber Brown by Paula Danzinger is a story about a girl named Amber who has to deal with a school bully.

1. 7x9=Trouble by Claudia Mills is a great way to introduce multiplication into the 3rd graders reading. The little boy in the book has trouble with Math, just like so many 3rd graders.
2. Chocolate Fever by Robert Kimmel Smith is a book about a boy named Henry who eats too much chocolate.
3. Because of Wynn Dixie by Kate DiCamillio is a book about a little girl named Opal and her dog, Wynn Dixie, and the friendship they form to bring a little town together.

1. The Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinny is a book about a boy named Greg who starts at a new school and has trouble fitting in.
2. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl is a book about James and how he escapes his horrible life to and becomes a hero to his new insect family.
3. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis is a book that invokes imagination in a magical world.

1. Holes by Louis Sachar is a book about a boy named Stanley who is sentenced to dig holes. This is a thriller that all students can get into. 
2. Savvy by Ingrid Law is a book about a supernatural family where each member has superpowers. 
3. Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech is a book about a 13 year old girl who desperately tries to find her mother by telling stories.

1. Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko is a book that follows a boy named Moose who moves to Alcatraz with his family in 1935. He lives his life in new surroundings with his Autistic sister.
2. Call of the Wild by Jack London is a book that takes place in the extremely cold Yukon and is about sled dogs.
3. Smile by Raina Telgemeier is a book about a girl with a variety of dental issues like braces who feels bad about herself.

A lot of these books can go up or down a grade level based on the child's reading level. 3rd grade is a great time to get students interested in chapter books. A great way to get students hooked on reading is finding them a book series that they find interesting. If you, as a teacher, can do this... their interest in books will never end! 

Vocabulary Development Can Be Fun!

Vocabulary development is essential for early learners. Children have to use vocabulary in their every day lives. After listening to the podcast by Dr. Baker and Dr. Susan Nueman where they discuss using categories to teach vocabulary to preschoolers, I wanted to try to come up with some other ways we, as teachers, can introduce and teach vocabulary to our students in a fun and inviting way.

The first game that came to mind was Scrabble. When I was an ESL teacher in Korea, the older children loved playing Scrabble. Then I started thinking. Can a primary student really get into such an adult game? Is there a way to make it fun for them too? I'm still stumped on whether this would be something they would enjoy.

A type of game that I always loved as a kid were puzzles. I think that students would really love doing crosswords or word searches. You could make this fun by using clues to what the vocabulary word is instead of just giving them the word to find or fit in the boxes. Another puzzle type game that would be fun is hidden messages. Just like Ralphie from A Christmas Story liked to decode things, some students in your class will have the same interest. Hidden messages are the way to do that!

Kids can also play bingo with sight words. The teacher can have different students read the words out loud and if they have them on their bingo cards, they can cover them up. They could win an eraser or pencil if they win bingo.

Another great word game that my students loved playing in Korea was called Word Work. I would put the students into groups of 4 or 2 and have them change one letter in a word to make a new word. I would see how many different words they could make in a 3 minute time period. This also helped them understand word families.

I hope some of these games are helpful in the classrooms of fellow teachers! Let's keep the fun in vocabulary development!!

Balance

Balance is essential in the classroom, especially when working with emergent readers and writers. I listened to a very interesting podcast with an interview with Dr. Piasta, a developmental psychologist and applied educational researcher. She has spent her life finding ways to incorporate alphabet instruction into the classroom without just drilling children with flashcards. She said that we, as teachers, need to find the balance between alphabet instruction and phonological awareness instruction. But where is this balance? And how do we make this interesting for children? I have some ideas :) 

One way to bring alphabet instruction in a fun way is to have the kids make their own alphabet book. As a class, the students and the teacher can brainstorm different objects that start with each letter of the alphabet. The kids can then make their own books by writing the uppercase letter and the lowercase letter and drawing or painting the object. This will be fun and it will help the students understand not only what uppercase and lowercase letter go together, but what order they go in with respect to the alphabet. This also can help with phonological awareness because the students can read the book by saying the letter name and then read the book again by saying the sound the letter makes. 

Another way to bring alphabet instruction into the classroom in a fun way is to play alphabet charades. The teacher can pair up the children. Each pair can draw a letter of the alphabet out of a bowl. Each group will have a turn to come in front of the class and use their bodies to make the letters. The students in the class can guess what letter the students are making by either saying the letter (or saying the sound the letter makes if the teacher is trying to incorporate phonological awareness). 

There are so many different ways to find this balance between alphabet instruction and phonological awareness. What ideas can you come up with?