Blog
Blog
What To Do When Your Students Don’t Know The Alphabet
How do we help teach the alphabet to students who are already behind their peers? It’s the goal of kindergarten to teach our students to read. The very first step is learning the alphabet. Many students come to kindergarten already reading. Most of our students will know many letters. But what about the kids who don’t have any letter naming skills? How do we help teach the alphabet to students who are already behind their peers? You may have some catching up to do. Read read read. The students who come to us reading have had a rich experience with books. If our students haven’t had that experience we have some catching up to do. It starts with books. Read to them every chance you get. Exposing them to rich picture books that are engaging, and entertain, are the best. If your students are struggling with their letter names then read alphabet books. Here are some of my favorites alphabet books. What’s your name? Start with their name. Often the very first letter students learn is the first letter in their name. You can make name puzzles for each child. Use your pocket chart to sort names, count the letters...
read moreBest Alphabet Books
Alphabet books are a great tool for beginning readers. One of the best ways to get your students fluent with alphabet skills is to read, read, read. Alphabet books are a great way for your students to have exposure and experience with the letters. Read my top tips for helping struggling learners. Here are some of my favorite books. Alphabet Adventure by Audrey Wood Alphabet Adventure by Audrey Wood you know Audrey wood she’s the amazing artist/author from The Napping House. This book does not disappoint it’s a great way to look closely at letters. No list would be complete without Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. Who doesn’t love all that rhyming. You can extend the book by having your kids make trees out of toilet paper rolls. Place some tongue depressors on top and see if you can balance some magnetic letters. AlphaOops the Day Z Went First by Althea Contis If you have a Zahra or a Zayden in your class they will flip over this story. It’s time Z gets a chance to be first! LMNO Peas by Keith Baker there is something about the colors in this book that I just love. ...
read moreThe BEST way to teach sight words.
Whether you call them sight words, trick words or high-frequency words, if you want your kids to be fluent readers they need to know the words that don’t follow the rules. It’s crucial that our students have a library of words they know. If you look closely at the leveled texts that our primary students are reading, you will see the same sight words show up over and over and over. The goal is to have our students know these words so they can read with automaticity. If they stop and struggle at sight words they start to lose fluency and comprehension. It’s crucial that they have a library of words they know. So how do we teach sight words to beginning readers? When you are thinking about teaching sight words it’s helpful to think like you would with any other word. Use graphophonemic analysis so what does that even mean? Graphophonemic Knowledge is the recognition of letters and the understanding of sound-symbol relationships and spelling patterns. In simple terms think of it as phonics. We often think that we need to teach sight words in isolation. That they make no sense at all and we just need our students...
read moreNovember STEM Challenges
My focus has been on creating STEM challenges for primary students. Here comes Thanksgiving. As soon as Halloween is over my mind shifts to Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. No gifts, no stress, just a great meal with family and friends. It’s fun to celebrate Thanksgiving at school as well. My focus has been on creating STEM challenges that work for my primary students. I have fallen in love with STEM challenges. I love watching my students design and build new solutions to problems. STEM is still new to my students so it gives me the opportunity to focus on the process – not the product. The Engineering Design Process creates an environment for exploration and creativity. It also constantly reminds the students that re-design is part of the process. The goal is to look at what worked, what didn’t work, and make it better next time. It’s a terrific life lesson. Tie your STEM Challenges to literacy to increase interest. I love tying my STEM challenges to literacy. It allows me to have an easy way to create critical background knowledge that my students so desperately need. This November we will be thinking about how to add STEAM challenge. Most...
read moreUsing Picture Passwords on Boom Learning
Picture Passwords are a game-changer for primary students. If you have spent any time in the younger grades you know that getting your students logged in is the hardest part of using Chromebooks and iPads in kindergarten. Well, not anymore. Boom Learning has announced picture logins. Using images instead of letters, numbers, or words will help your students get started working much faster, and with more independence. There is now an easy way for our youngest students to access Boom Learning. Boom Learning has introduced Picture Passwords. They. Are. Amazing! It is so easy for my kindergarten students to log in independently. Your students just need to choose 2 creatures they want in their password. Make sure you have them choose 2. They can change their password as many times as they want. It’s so much easier for them to remember the bat and the frog than a string of letters and numbers. Watch my video on how you to use picture log in cards. Using picture passwords takes the pain out of logging in. If you would like a free picture password card just click here. Make sure you scroll down to the supporting document. Just download and print. Make...
read more