Early experiences at home contribute to future reading success! Here is a photo of some alphabet magnets and the link below provides "do it yourself" instructions...
I especially loved the shaving cream writing activity suggestion!
This may be outdated but I learned a lot about letters, sounds, reading, and writing from the letter people. Does anyone else remember these lovable characters?
I also enjoyed reading the article about the Jones' family. This article conveyed the importance of the family unit in regards to literacy. In this family, the Jones', literacy is held in high regard and the adult members of the family are committed to help Kiki learn to read with anticipation, comprehension, and application.
Teachers must constantly remember that children come from different backgrounds with different perspectives on literacy and its uses.
How do early elementary school teachers accomodate all of the students in their kindergarten class? How should teachers prevent initial categorization of students based on their previous literacy experiences? We don't want children to feel hopelessly behind from their first week of school.
Also, for all you creative folks, do you have any ideas regarding using different materials to teach reading and writing such as shaving cream on desks, letter people, etc.?
I never realized how much "pretend reading and writing" mattered in terms of a child's knowledge of reading and writing. But this just goes to show how important early experiences at home with reading and writing are and how those greatly contribute to a child's success. I loved all the examples the book provided about activities to use when teaching reading and writing. I think you make an important point that we as teachers must always remember that each of our students come from different literacy backgrounds and that our students will not all enter in our class on the same level.
ReplyDeleteI actually have some creative ideas for reading an writing activities. When I was in elementary school we would use various objects such as Cheerios to form letters on our desks. This was in kindergarten when we were first learning the alphabet. I also recall making "alphabet soup" where we had a huge bowl in the classroom and we would each be responsible for drawing a letter on construction paper and take turns presenting our letter. We then droppe our letter into the bowl. After the activity we had actual Campbell's alphabet soup so it was a fun activity!
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