First & Last Letter Power!

For First and Last Letter Power, Spiderman brings us his letter in addition to a bag full of Alpha-Bits cereal! 

I give each student a handful of the cereal and they turn to their partners.  On First Letter Power day, they have to hold up one of the pieces of cereal, say the letter and sound, and then think of a word that begins with the given sound.  For Last Letter Power day, they do almost the same thing, except they think of a word that ends with the given sound.  

We practice checking the first and last letter with tricky pictures on the Smartboard.  In the images below, you can see us practicing First Letter Power!  

Top left: This picture shows something that could be a puppy or a dog.  In order to know which word is in the sentence, we have to rely on our sight words and the first letter.  I can see a DOG would start with a D, but this word starts with the letter P.  That means it must say "I can see a puppy."

Bottom left:  This picture shows something that could be pizza or a slice.  In order to know which word is in the sentence, we again have to rely on our sight words, first letter, and now pointer power.  I can see pizza would have four words and the last word would start with the letter P.  This sentence has 5 words and the last word starts with the letter s.  So we know this sentence says "I can see a slice."

Don't forget, you can find a scanned copy of all the Spiderman letters I use in this unit by clicking HERE!

Tim Rasinski Conference Notes

K-2 teachers from Houston County were invited to attend Tim Rasinski's From Word Study to Fluency to Proficient Reading conference today.  Those of us that responded quickly enough showing interest got to go! Below, you'll find notes from the conference.

Whether you're a teacher or a parent, it helps to see how important songs and poetry are in building literacy skills!

Rasinski Conference Notes_Sept 30 2015

I LOVE Fundations.

It's no surprise that when kids come to kindergarten, you as the teacher have absolutely no idea what you're going to get. Some kids will be reading at the beginning of the year, others will have never seen their name in print.  So how are these kids who have no idea what a letter is supposed to catch up? How can you guarantee that those kids--the ones who tell you an O is a circle and a U is a smiley face--will leave reading on a level D? 

Well, they've got to learn their letters and sounds first--and quickly.  The Fundations letter tiles provide a routine way to review the letters, their sounds and alphabetical order on a daily basis.  Just give each kid a tray and call out the letter-word-sound combo.  Have the students find and match the letter tiles as they repeat the letter-word-sound combo back to you. 

This type of exposure, combined with instruction in text (poems, guided reading books) allows children to rapidly pick up the letters and their sounds.  And for you, the teacher, it helps you assess whole-group daily to see who knows which letters and who still needs help! Download the template HERE.  It's not the actual Fundations one, but I made it as close as I could.

The thing about the Fundations letter/sound combination is that they're easy to remember. "A-apple-/a/, B-bat-/b/, C-cat-/c/." They're also easy to recite and isolate as needed.  When I ask a child, what sound does F make? I'll hear them whisper to themselves "F-fun-/f/... it's /f/."  In my classroom, students have the Fundations cards on the word wall, they've got the Fundations alphabet chart in their writing folder and their take-home binders and there's a poster-size alphabet chart hanging on the wall for quick reference. Plus I show it on the SMARTboard when we're not using it for something else. So they're pretty much drowning in a sea of Fundations. ;)

Whether you're a parent or a teacher, you can use Fundations to help your children learn letters and sounds.  Just Google "Fundations support pack filetype:pdf" explore, print, and teach away!