Well, it was another 3 day week for us in intervention! All of the reading specialists in the district had a meeting on Monday, so we were out all day, and then the kids were out for the voting on Tuesday. Three day weeks are kinda nice…but I also feel like I’m just not getting enough time with my kiddos!
Lack of time aside…things are going well with my Kinders! We are continuing to use my letter sounds intervention pack to work on phonemic awareness and phonics. One day we do a letter sheet, and the next day we do a picture sort using that letter. I only have 15 minutes with each group, so there’s no time to waste and routine is KEY!
My 1st grade group is coming along nicely, but I am having some trouble with my 2nd grade group of boys. They are still reading at a Level A, and there are some behavior issues. What I’ve decided to do is basically turn the group into a series of one-on-one reading conferences. We start the group with some activities that all the boys can do. Then, I’m having them work on iPads, iPods, or computers while I read with the boys individually. Then we’ll come back together as a group for a quick closing discussion. I’m hoping that this one-on-one attention makes a difference!
This week I finished organizing my magnetic letters and picture cards (for letter sound sorts) into jewelry organizers! I seriously love these things, and have had them for about 7 years now (I think they were from Wal-Mart).
They don’t have enough compartments, so I do have to “double up,” but it’s fine because that way the jewelry organizers are small enough to be portable. They do make larger ones – I just prefer portability over organization! 🙂 Take a look at these two photos to see how I cut up labels into teeny tiny pieces to organize the letters and word cards:
I love me some jewelry organizers!
OH – one thing we talked about at our reading specialist meeting on Monday was oral language! Oral language is SUPER important to kids’ literacy development, but it often gets ignored. Kids are spending more and more time with technology these days, too, instead of interacting with others. I am going to try to focus on giving my kids more talk time, even though intervention time is so limited. Here is a link to a free oral language assessment – it literally takes 3 minutes to do with your kids and can reveal a lot about how much language they are able to process! The directions are included, too. I can’t use it because it’s in English, but hopefully you can!
Oral Language Assessment from Mondo
This was a VERY random and scattered post, but I hope that you still managed to get something useful out of it. Have a wonderful weekend!!
hi Alison
very organised website with innovative ideas. hats off to you. I am Preschool teacher from Chennai, India. Interesting ideas along with schedules.