Callirobics For Kids

We are continually finding ways to strengthen kids fine motor skills, especially for forming and writing letters with efficiency.  In our class we use a program called Callirobics For Kids for that purpose.  Founded by Liora Laufer, Callirobics is a program that consists of  repetitive handwriting exercises set to music with straight lines and curves.  The music helps to relax children and adds rhythm to what can be more tedious penmanship exercises.  We repeat these exercises for at least four days in between letter writing practice to build stamina and a flow for writing and improved eye-hand coordination.  

When your child brings home each exercise, have them repeat it at home... try with a dry erase marker, crayon or pencil and paper, making the exercise on their own without the aide of the worksheet.  Play some calming music...the program uses instrumental music only.  Just a few minutes a day will have dramatic effects on your child's hand strength and accurate flow of letter strokes. When your child has fluid writing movements, their ability to make letters quickly has a positive effect on their work production in Writer's Workshop.  A child who can form letters with flow and facility will concentrate more on the content of their writing, not on the struggle to form letters which interrupts their creativity.  After Thanksgiving we will move away from narrative writing and toward a new genre of writing.  Handwriting flow will help them to focus on that style of writing with more ease.   

Phonological Awareness

Literacy development spans a broad array of skills elementary school.  In kindergarten we plan lessons that target specific aspects of literacy which can support reading, writing and word study. You may hear teachers refer to a child's "phonological awareness" and it's role in their overall literacy development.  Here is how we approach growing a child's phonological awareness so far this year.

Phonological awareness is an ability to consciously notice, identify, and manipulate individual sounds or sound structures of oral language.  These may include parts of words, syllables and individual speech sounds and units of sound made by more than one letter.  Individual sounds in isolation are called phonemes.  These are the /b/ in bat and ball. Young children naturally play with sounds through oral language play; often "dancing" with word play, rhyme and alliteration.  When we ask children to consciously take apart that word play and purposely change sounds or units of sounds they are building phonological awareness skills.

In our first trimester we focused heavily on individual letter sounds, the beginning sound in a word, changing the beginning sound in a word to make a new one, rhyme recognition and being able to produce rhymes. 

Identifying initial letter sounds in words and labels for objects.

As we learn individual letter sounds, it is critical that children know the name of letter and its sound as two different aspects of a written letter.  Recognizing lowercase letters can be more challenging, especially amongst d, b, p and q!

Movement songs with rhymes and initial letter sounds help engage children in oral language play. Connecting sound play to the name of a letter and it's written form in handwriting instruction.

Dictation: At least once a week we practice writing the letter to match a dictated sound.

Poems and songs with rhymes help build oral language play.  In our word work center there are materials for individual practice with phonological awareness skills.

Separating individual sounds, syllables, and words as they create a full sentence.  We also practice counting words in sentences and pointing once under each word with a reading finger.  This skill connects reading and writing as kids say a word over and over, stretching all the sounds and recording them all to create one word.  We are learning the importance of capitalizing the first word and placing a period at the end of a sentence!

Four Winds

This year we are fortunate to have Four Winds taught by parents in our classroom!  Four Winds is a hands-on natural science program that excites children to explore the world around them beginning with our very own schoolyard at PPS. The program uses rich outdoor activities and materials to guide children to explore, ask questions and make discoveries about the natural world.  When young children understand their environment they begin to see how they are connected to the our precious earth.  From there they begin to learn that they have a critical role in caring for and protecting it.

Each year a different topic is chosen for our school and outlined by the Four Winds Foundation.  http://www.fwni.org/   Our school district has two coordinators who organize the program in all the schools.  They set up trainings, gather materials and ensure all classrooms have parent volunteer teachers to carry out the lessons.  The parent teachers attend a monthly training sessions, review teaching materials and videos and bring the lessons to our classroom each month.  

In September we were fortunate to have Rory and Aya's mom begin the program with a lesson about life cycles and metamorphosis.  That lesson dovetailed perfectly with our study of the life cycle of a caterpillar and the cycle of the four seasons.  In October Aya's mom taught us all about traveling seeds and inspired us to observe and compare different seed and how they begin to grow new plants.  Each lesson begins with a (very popular) puppet show, then allows for hands exploration and outside time.  In the weeks that follow, I try to follow up on the concepts they learned as well.  We give thanks to our Four Winds teaching parents for their time and commitment to enriching our science program.

The opening puppet show targets vocabulary and how plant and animal life are affected.  We have to listen carefully to the words as they explain some really big concepts in a kid-friendly way.

Looking for living organisms in leaf matter.

Capturing bugs just long enough to explore them, then releasing them back to their habitat.

Traveling Seeds Puppet Show... Learning how animals, wind and water move seeds... and how important the process is to our environment.

Even humans move seeds... who doesn't love blowing those milkweed seeds?!

Finding and comparing seeds; recording our findings.

Name Work and Our Class Presentation

Learning to read and write the names of our classmates and teachers is a starting point for learning to read and write this year.  We can now recognize whose name begins with a particular sound and sort names by letters, vowels, and initial sounds.  We are beginning to look for spelling patterns in names and apply that knowledge to spelling more words.  

Young children love seeing photos of themselves and their friends in class projects.  Over the last two months we have made several class books with each child contributing at least one page to the overall structure of the book.  We have modeled our books after exemplary published texts.  For example, we made our own version of Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Dr. Seuss's Ten Apples Up On Top.  In each book we placed a photo of the classmate who wrote that particular page.   In our version of the Sesame Street book, A, My Name is Alice, each child wrote about what they liked to eat, choosing a food that began with the same initial sound as their name.  For example, Charlie likes to eat Cherries and Paxton likes to eat Pizza.  Every morning after snack our class loves to gather these books on the floor and read them together, smiling and giggling at each other as well as learning to read the words and practicing the reading behaviors we are learning in Readers Workshop.  

In mid October we created a teacher version of A, My Name is Alice to help us learn the names of familiar adults at PPS beyond those in our own classroom.  This not only supported our work with letters and sounds, but also helped us learn the names of almost twenty adults our class interacts with during any given week.  Knowing someone's name a little bit about them is essential to building a sense of belonging and community.  

We asked each teacher to complete a page in the book and think creatively about what food they like to eat that begins with the same initial sound as their name.  Everyone was quite creative as they used alliteration to describe their food.  For example, Mrs. Gamache wrote that she likes to eat "Goulash Garnished with Garlic Galore" and Ms. Millham likes to eat "Mushy Marshmallow Muffins."  

We put the pages of both name books into a short video and presented it at Friday Whole School Meeting.  To begin our presentation each child spoke into the microphone in front of the student body and introduced themselves and named the first sound in their name.  Despite some technical difficulties in playing the video online that morning, everyone was able to see the video later in their classrooms.  I was so proud of our class for being the first class to make a Whole School Meeting presentation and use the microphone to speak in front of a large group.  They did a great job!  Since the book contains photos and names of our classmates and teachers, I won't publish the book video here.  I will send parents an email with the video link to view the book.  Here are some other ways we have used names to learn about letters and sounds.  

Names cards to sign in for attendance... name posters... name bottles for spelling names.

We are fortunate to have two classmates whose names begin with Ch, giving us a springboard for learning common sound chunks.  Charlie and Chelsea's names can be seen our our word wall so that children can search for how to spell a classmate's name along with sight words we are learning to read and write.  To learn familiar sound chunks we sing along with HeidiSongs, learning a short, catchy song lyric that helps us when we go to write the chunk.  

Chrysanthemum, but by Kevin Henkes helped us learn the importance of owning our own name and the pride of being who we are in this world.  We illustrated the teacher pages in the our alphabet book.

Some still photos as we presented at Friday Whole School Meeting!

Writing Workshop

A balanced literacy program combines a multitude of experiences for children within a structure of four main components: Reading Workshop, Writing Workshop, Word Work and Read Aloud.

For Writing Workshop I primarily use the work of Lucy Calkins, founding director of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Teachers College (Columbia University) to immerse ourselves in writing instruction.  Although I have been using her research to teach writing for many years, over the last two summers I was fortunate enough to study her latest work more in depth through my own graduate studies.  Launching Writing Workshop this year has been a very rewarding experience for me and I cannot wait to share with parents how much their children have learned.  I began the first week of school.  In the first three days of school I had all students write independently to capture on paper what they knew and provide a starting point from where they will grew as writers.

My first goal for writing is to develop each child's identity as a writer and surround them with the work of being writers.  This can seem like an impossible undertaking for young children, but with instruction that is developmentally appropriate, even kindergarteners can begin to identify themselves as writers who have something important to say.  All year our class will be immersed in learning to use the same tools all “published” writers use to put their ideas on a page.

Our first unit of study builds the foundational skills children will use all year as we learn to write for a purpose.   Behind the lessons are some core beliefs about what writers do.  For example, writers write to put meaning onto paper.  They start with something to say and do everything they can to put that meaning on paper for an audience of readers including stories, opinions, and thoughts.  Writers write about subjects that are important to them and so students also choose their own topics most of the time.  Writing starts with having an image and then drawing representationally to put that meaning on paper.  Writers then pause and ask themselves if they need to add anything else to show their mental image or intended meaning.  In this way, we learn to use our first “anchor” chart that reminds children that, “When we are done, we have just begun.”  This chart references how they continue to convey their meaning by “adding pictures, adding word, or starting a new piece.”  As children develop skills around writing letter sounds in words, they learn to stretch out, listen to and record all the sounds they hear in a word.  In time students will learn other mechanics writing including spaces between words, uppercase letters at the beginning of a sentence and punctuation marks.  For now, we are immersed in putting ideas on paper with pictures and words.

I must say I am brilliantly pleased with what your children have done in such a short time span to see themselves as writers and carrying on as independently as they can with bravery and confidence.  They are learning to use the tools of self-reliance when they have a problem, reminding themselves to say, “I can solve this problem myself” when they get stuck.  I love when they can look inward for help before 20 of them all call my name!  As we say “no, writers carry on with writing and think how can I solve this problem by myself” while Mrs. B. is conferencing with someone else.  When writing time is done we often end the workshop with a share by a few students.  This builds self-confidence and helps others to learn from their work.  As children share, I point out strategies they used so that others can use them, too.  You should see the smiles on writer’s faces when they are the reader of their writing and their classmates acknowledge their work! 

Each day’s lesson brings new learning along with links to previous lessons.  I use “anchor charts” to list strategies we are learning so that children can reference them when they get stuck or don’t know what to do next.  For example, several days were devoted to the how to make writing more clear to the reader, including stretching words, putting two finger spaces between words, capitalizing the first word in a sentence, placing a punctuation mark at the end of sentence.  Over successive days the anchor chart grew to include each of these tools.  I don’t pre-make my anchor charts, but rather write them little by little each day to go with the daily mini-lesson.  In the photos that follow you will see various anchor charts and the progression of learning.

Although this first trimester was devoted to narrative writing, we will continue to write in this genre and use the writing tools learned for new writing opinion and informational books as well.   At parent conferences you will see the many books your child has written and you, too can share in their joy of writing!

Establishing routines... writing folders placed to support writing, small groups of children at a table, supplies on the table, voices kept to a whisper.

The Power of the Share: building confidence and gaining feedback from peers by reading one's writing.

Reading our Writing... weaving how reading and writing instruction and behaviors are linked.

Early Writing Experiences... some writing was broken down into smaller parts with focused writing about a particular learning experience.

The Power of Planning and Rereading... In writing books, writers add on to their story over successive days.  Children start by organizing their pages, rereading what they wrote, deciding what they will write next and then applying the new strategy just taught in that day's minilesson. 

Writing Partners... as we plan our books, touching and telling our stories across the pages, writing partners can ask questions such as Why? How? Who? What? to stir up ideas and be sure we are adding all the details that make the book interesting and stick to the story we are writing.

Putting It All Together... planning, touching and telling across pages, working with writing partners, going to the table to work independently, using knowledge of letter sounds, words, and spaces between words and completing a book over several days.  WOW!

Minilesson Tools... Working through hard to write experiences with the analogy of The Little Engine That Could to build confidence.  Anchor charts built over many days with a reminder of that day's lesson and displayed for reviewing and reminding what strategies can be used.

The Share... using the document camera to share our work with the class.  This not only builds confidence, but reminds others that they, too can try the strategies their classmates try.  As I teachers, I can use their work as an example of what I taught at the beginning of that day.

Linking Reading and Writing... the word "a" found in Shared Reading books to show that they can write the same word in their writing.  As we learn to read and touch our reading finger under one word at a time, so, too can we write one word at a time, stretching out every sound in that word and adding spaces between the words.  Our writing genre this trimester was narrative writing about true events.

Practicing Spaces Between Words... using imaginary word boxes to help write all the sounds in one word at a time with word spaces.

Planning... all writers plan what they will write and keep in mind that someone else needs to read it.

Rockin in out!  Very proud writers!