Purple, Green, and Yellow

Happy almost May everyone!! 

I wanted to focus this blog on the benefits of  rhyme & repetition in the early childhood classroom, as well as to try inspire you to create an interactive wiki for your students. 

Who better to celebrate the art of rhyme & repetition than the stories of Robert Munsch.  There are many reasons I enjoy using Robert Munsch's stories in the classroom.  My students love them, the rhyme & repetition is clever, and I haven't  read his book without at least 5 or more giggles from my sweet audience of listeners.......the joy of reading at its best!   When I was teaching first grade, we read his books daily.  I can recite most of them without opening the cover.  Through my experiences, I found reluctant readers could read the chants in his books very easily. The rhythm in his stories provided great reading support for emerging readers. His stories also provided many opportunities for choral readings in the classroom.  To learn more about the benefits of choral readings, click here: Benefits of Choral Reading  

Robert Munsch has a great website that supports his books & offers the chance for students to click & hear him read the stories he has created. It is a very user friendly site for even the youngest students.  In my opinion, there is nothing better than to hear an author read his own works. Here is the link:  Robert Munsch Interactive Website It is the best author site I have found in recent years. He also includes students' writing samples and questions. He is an author who values our students' voices, which is very important to me.  

I would  like to share with you my wiki page inspired by Robert Munsch's dedication to literacy.  I created an author fan club for my students with bi-weekly & monthly assignments to encourage computer literacy opportunities at home and to promote the home/school connection.  Within my wiki, parents will find a reading tip of the day & a book selection of the day.  They can click on the link & print the reading tips too. Students will find follow-up activities from our class readings and links to post their thoughts and opinions.  Our first wiki author study focuses on the author Robert Munsch's story  Purple, Green, and Yellow.  It is a story about a little girl named Brigid. She really loves markers, but when she draws on herself with super-permanent ink, she knows that spells trouble. The illustrations make the text jump off the page. My students love to try and pronounce the funny words throughout this story, as Brigid has a big problem to solve. Munsch shares this about his story, " When he thinks about it, his daughter Tyya went through a long stage of coloring herself with magic markers and face paints." This inspired his story Purple, Green, and Yellow.

I hope you will take a few minutes to explore my wiki page. I am a novice, so I am hoping my first attempt is a great one.  Also, I am hoping this will inspire you to create an interactive wiki in your classroom too.  Here is my wiki link:  Munsch to Talk About Wiki  You will find our author video there this week. 

 (A little brag here: I hope you have time to scroll to the bottom of the home page to hear my little girl's podcast detailing the  Purple, Green, and Yellow class assignment.)

Lastly, here is an article supporting the uses of wikis in the classroom. When deciding on who, what, & why to have a wiki, I found this resource to be very valuable.

50 ways to use wikis in the classroom

Where the Sidewalk Ends.....

Hi Friends! I am blogging about one of my favorite teaching strategies. I first discovered "Environmental Print" as a first grade teacher. Being a graduate from Montevallo, I always welcomed interns in my classroom. I also had interns from UAB. One year, a professor from UAB, had co-authored a book about the benefits of environmental print in the early childhood classroom. She was there observing a intern in my classroom and we started a conversation. I bought her book, had countless conversations with her throughout the year, and environment print became an important part of my classroom curriculum. Here is a link to the book that started it all in my classroom: Integrating Environmental Print Book

What is environmental print? Environmental Print is the print that a child sees every day on street signs, signs on buildings, the store shelves, while in the checkout line, or anywhere there are words. Reading print from the world around us is one of the beginning stages of literacy development. The letters, numbers, shapes, and colors found in logos from products and stores such as McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, Coke, and Taco Bell all provide opportunities for emerging readers to interact with print and the written word in their own environment. I believe environmental print is the first print a child learns to read.


Here are a few ideas I used in my classroom every year. It is a perfect beginning of the year unit. It makes the home & school connection through lessons. Here are a few activities I enjoy with my students:

For Blog purposes I am going to refer to Environmental Print as (EP)

Make an “Eat the Alphabet” book: The children collect EP of all different foods & put them in a class book next to the corresponding alphabet letter. Take a look at this example :)
Environmental Print ABC Example

Make a class “ I Can Read” chart: The students glue on the chart the words from their environment they can read.

Sorting: Students can bring in all sorts of EP and you can have them sort them by category (food, toy, store, signs )

Find rhyming words, example of short & long vowels, and any other word building skill.

A field trip to the mall to look for EP or around the school building is a great way to experience environmental print. Walking around the school with a digital camera looking for EP to add to our class chart is always a favorite activity.

Can’t go on a field trip? How about accessing online games with environmental print? This is one, simple example of activities found online. This would be a great assessment tool at the end of the unit too. Street Sign Gallery Game

A reminder of how a love a reading begins at home.....Judy Blume.

 My personal, childhood FAVORITE author! 

Koala Lou and Social Bookmarking TOO!

Welcome Readers! How enthusiastic I am to share with you a few things I have been learning while exploring a social bookmarking site named Diigo. I learned a lot while creating my social bookmarking site. I started by comparing traditional bookmarking to 21^st century bookmarking. It is like comparing apples to oranges. In my opinion, browser bookmarking systems have not kept up with the changes and growth of the Internet. Traditional bookmarking can be time-consuming and the lists of favorite sites are only available on the individual user’s computer. In contrast, Diigo allows the user to bookmark important websites and access them from school or home and share them with other students. 

Large collections of bookmarks can quickly become unmanageable and disorganized, but using a social bookmarking site allows teachers or students to write comments directly on web pages.  Many times, when I traditionally bookmarked my favorite websites, I may not have remembered why I created a bookmark or what part of the page I was trying to save. Using Diigo, categorizing websites with titles, notes, keyword tags, lists, and groups is easy.  The Diigo toolbar gives the user instant access to the social bookmarking service’s features and marking your favorite sites is very efficient.

One very beneficial way I will use my collection of resources is to collaborate online and share information.  It is a wonderful professional development tool.  I recently discovered there are hundreds of educator groups on Diigo where educators are collaborating together. There are over 200 K-12 groups available for educators through Diigo. I will continue to use this site to access current articles for professional development and have a collection of resources available for parents in my classroom. I am always looking for articles to support early literacy at home, provide solid documentation of specific strategies I am using in the classroom, and to enhance my teaching to keep up-to-date on 21st century learning. You can access my Diigo list located in the sidebar of this blog or simply click this link Literacy & Technology List

My favorite site for sharing everything about literacy is www.readingrockets.com  It is a site I frequent weekly and site regularly on my blog and wiki.  It is a combination resource for parents and teachers. From podcast, videos, articles, author interviews, and current education topics, this resource is filled with valuable information for anyone concerned with education.  Little discoveries like these that are easily bookmarked, compiled, and stored using Diigo. I hope professionals will use my resource list as a practical list of early childhood articles to enhance their instruction, while providing productive resources for their classroom. 

Here is one example of how I use my social bookmarking resources:

Each week, on my blog posts, I focus on a specific author.  Reading Rockets, which is located in my social bookmarking site, has a huge library of author interviews available to readers. I post a video each week to my blog.  In addition to providing video, I can then search this resource for articles supporting the use of author studies in the classroom or a specific reading strategy.  I found this article showing how author studies are beneficial in the classroom.
10 Reasons for Author Studies


Mem Fox 

 

Here is an example of a wonderful author interview sharing about seeing herself as a writer for the first time. The addition of a supporting article for adding author’s studies to your classroom’s literacy instruction is a win, win for educators & parents of emerging readers. 

Brown Bear, Brown Bear......what can you DO?

I am very excited about my post this week.  I hope you find something special tucked inside this post to use in your daily teaching.  I have been researching ways literacy and technology work together in the early childhood classroom.  I also wanted to leave you with my NEW FAVORITE find to help with organizing classroom volunteers and encourage parents to be part of the classroom…..More about that later in the blog.

I believe technology has the power to potentially affect 3 main areas of our teaching profession.  In simple terms:  How we teach, what we teach, and how we share with others. I realize while trying to put each section in categories they overlap, which I feel is an added benefit to integrating technology into our classrooms.

What we Teach:

The internet helps support the various student abilities in the classroom. The different types of reading materials are more accessible to all students. Adaptations can easily be created to make accommodations for the individual learner. Text size can be increased for students with visual impairments. Vocabulary can be simplified for emerging readers. Key words, sounds, and concepts can be highlighted using different colors or fonts.  Additionally, text can be translated into almost any language with the click of a button.  Electronic books provide a multi-sensory approach with related pictures, sound, and video and it appeals to all learners. 

How we Teach:

I have been enjoying learning about virtual field trips.  With cost cuts and budget constraints, this is our 21^st century way of using technology in a new way. Virtual field trips allow children to travel beyond the classroom without actually leaving it.   
Click Here & Explore a Virtual Field Trip  
I also want to provide you with a great article about the benefits of virtual field trips and more top sites to visit.  To explore further, please click this link from Edutopia.com  Article About Virtual Field Trips

How we Share with others:

Collaborating with other educators is important, but I wanted to share my NEW favorite find for encouraging parent participation in the classroom.  Here it is…..Sign up Genius    ( I am secretly hoping this is new to all of you too.) On this free site, you can customize your theme or need, enter days and times, list slots for sign up and best of group members (your class email list) are automatically emailed your volunteer needs. The website emails reminders before the event date, members can even work together to “swap” times, if they change their minds about an event date.  What a wonderful tool for any teacher or room parent!  Even organizing a kindergarten snack list is possible through this website.  

Author of the Week: I have read this book too many times to count.  Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin.  I can’t believe he wrote it in 15 minutes!!  Rhyme and repetition at its best for teaching literacy skills.