Teaching Literacy

Literacy is so important in any classroom but let's really focus on literacy in the early education classroom to help children start on a solid foundation and develop a love of reading! I recently attended a training on emergent literacy which I found to be so helpful. Research shows that the two best predictors of reading success are phonemic awareness and letter knowledge. Preschool children should develop phonological awareness, print awareness and have oral language and vocabulary. In early literacy children will pretend to write, pretend to read, name letters, "read" print in their environment, write their name and ask questions about print. As teachers we should choose print-rich books to share with or students and then have explicit discussions about that print. When looking for print-rich books, look for big bold letters and unique features. Every book we read to our students should have a purpose. I took all of the books that I have in my classroom for read alouds and I divided them into the following four areas so I can better determine my purpose when I read to the class.
Phonological Awareness-(example:Dr. Seuss books), Print Awareness-(example:"Thesaurus Rex"),

Vocabulary- (example:"House for Hermit Crab"), Oral Language-(example:"Brown Bear, Brown Bear")

Sometimes I choose the book first and then the purpose but other times I choose the purpose first and then the book. "Repeated readings create a sense of familiarity for children and increase confidence in prereading skills. (Justice & Pence, 2005)
The first read should be to give an understanding of the book and try not to interrupt much. The second read is to further the understanding and provide opportunities to use language for thinking and learning. The third read is for story comprehension and to allow the children to pull it all together. So you don't need to read a different book every day, but DO read every day!

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Fine Motor Activities

Fine Motor strength is so important to develop in order to prepare students to write. We have a lot of fun fine motor activities and centers that we use. We find different materials to cut. We use a vertical surface to draw, color and paint. For this activity, we painted blueberries with clothespins and blue pom poms. Mini erasers can be used for many things such as tracing letters and sorting. Giant pushpins can be used with supervision to make our names or letters, numerals and shapes. Q-tips make a fun paintbrush that uses a different hand motion then swiping. Many literacy and math games also use fine motor skills like this pie sorting game. We also practice fingerplays and draw in our journals to strengthen our fingers to get ready for kindergarten.

Daily Preschool Schedule

Our Preschool runs a half day program so we have a morning class and a completely seperate afternoon class. Here's the lesson plan form that I have tweeked and found to be helpful in fitting everything into our short day. Class Name_________ Week #____ Day #____ Theme_____________ 9:00-9:25 Arrival and Free Choice Play 9:25-9:30 Clean Up 9:30-9:45 Morning Meeting and Music 9:45-10:00 Gross Motor Play 10:00-10:15 Math Circle Time 10:15-10:20 Brain Break and Movement 10:20-10:35 Fine Motor Table Work 10:35-10:55 Snack and Quiet Time 10:55-11:10 Literacy/Science/Social Studies Read Aloud Read: Focus: 11:10-11:25 Centers 1)math center: 2) art center: 3) fine motor center: 4)language arts center: 11:25-11:30 Clean up and Dismissal

Body and Senses Theme

I usually spend a day for each of the basic five senses and then further the theme by spending a few more days covering the basic parts and functions of the body such as heart, lungs, skin, and brain. For the sense of taste, I give each child something sour (lemon drop), something salty (pretzel), and something sweet (a piece of chocolate) to eat. We discuss the tastes and which they like the best. Then we discuss our tongues. Each student can be given a mirror to look into to see their tongue and the taste buds on it. We read "Jamberry" and try some different flavors of jam. For the sense of smell, I place items in film canisters and allow each child to smell each item and guess what it is. Then we graph which smells we like and do not like. A follow up activity is to ask students to determine which items will have a smell and then walk the items around and have students smell them and determine if their guesses were correct. I use things like mustard, a comb, or...

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