Both of these are comprised of different articles on the subject matter and I am slowly making my way through each one with highlighter in hand and Post-it flags close by. I keep coming across passages to which I think, YES! when I read, so I highlight and flag away knowing that when it comes time to write my dissertation, theses meaningful words will come in handy.
As I was reading, I got to a part that discussed talking with parents about literacy and involving the entire family in the children's literacy and learning. I was thinking that it might be fun to invite families to join me at the library on a Saturday in order to sign their children up for library cards. It would be a great way to spend a little bit of time with the kids and their families and I would love to know that the families are utilizing the free resources at the local public library. Maybe I could even do this once a month to continuously encourage families to check out books so they are available at home on a regular basis. I know the library puts on some good events, so I plan to familiarize myself with the programs they have and encourage my students and their families to participate.
I was also thinking of doing a guest reader program again ( I experimented with this during my first year of teaching) and inviting older siblings, parents, and grandparents to come in and read a story to the class (maybe every Friday?). I just feel like I will be so short on time with the half day Kinder schedule. According to the schedule my team member gave me, there is about 10 minutes for a story and/or student of the week which apparently includes pack up time...that seems near impossible to me. I contemplated having an extended story time that allows kids to stay after/come early, but that would then require parents to bring them/pick them up because that activity would be before/after the bus routes. I think that some parents would be willing, yet not all parents are available to come to school so I would be afraid it would exclude the kiddos who need to take the bus to and from school.
I am trying to come up with some fun ways to buy myself more time with the kiddos because I don't think there is enough time built in the schedule for read alouds and story time. That is sad!
What kinds of creative literacy activities do you do with your students?
Do you use guest readers? Who was the most popular guest reader?
3 comments:
You've gotta find more time for read alouds. 10 minutes is crazy-insane! My read aloud times were cut short the last few years, but with a tweak in our schedule, I will get 3 in a day, or most days anyway! I feel so much better about it now. Good luck! Oh, I am still reading trashy novels. I'll wait til school starts to read something more brain-stimulating. Or maybe not! :)
I have always loved the idea of guest readers. The primary teachers at the school I student taught at would have parents/siblings come in on Fridays. They were actually mystery readers meaning the teacher gave students clues about the reader and they had to guess who it was.
After I get into the grove of things, I would love to incorporate this into my classroom! This may be way out there and time consuming, but how about recording parents/families reading on a flip camera and incorporate it as a listening station during your literacy rotations?? Just a thought!
Oh boy, you are bringing me back to the days of half day K here. I actually do Secret Reader and the kids do love it BUT I did not do it when we had half day K, so I'm not sure how you'd fit it in there. Usually our secret readers are the kids parents, siblings, cousins etc- so no one is particularly popular to anyone but their own kid, but I would like to get some other people into the classroom that everyone would be excited about.
However, I did fit in read alouds. I mostly did them as part of a lesson- so during math I'd find a book that was somewhat related to what we are learning about- obviously this is a bit easy in literacy. I also always had books ready in case we shockingly finished something early or it was too rainy to go out to recess etc.
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