Thursday, August 6, 2009
Question #8 (Chapters 13-19)
I found it interesting in chapter 16 that it explained how "public schools do not cause the reading gap" (pg. 178) "The achievement gap in reading is created before the first day of kindergarten" (pg. 178) . As Kindergarten teachers I know that you already knew this. What kinds of things are you already doing to help those students catch up. I know that some use parent volunteers (I even did that for Belinda when she had Tiffany), but what other things are you doing. Sandy Ridge may be another person that you are using to help these students.
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I have used parent volunteers ,Sandy and the overnight sub to help review and catch up on lacking skills. I also have had 5th grade reading buddies with Kelly Edgar the last few years.
ReplyDeleteIn my newsletter I try to list activities that parents can do at home to review skills. Many of the activities( but not all) I suggest are things that can be done orally so parents can do these things while driving or cooking supper, etc.
Before starting my Jumpstart class,I had the great fortune to meet a teacher that had taught Jumpstart Kindergarten one year before I did. She was one of the parents from Breanna's SB team from the Hilliard schools. Two teachers had Jumpstart that year and she said she felt there were two things that seemed to make a difference in her room... one was that she fed her kids breakfast every morning and two...she sent home a book for parents to read to their child every night. I took her advice last year and I fed my students every day before the day began and I sent a book home with them every day. I think they did a great job taking the books home each night and the kids loved picking out their new book each morning to take home for the evening. I also made up my own "tote bag reward system" where the kids earned a cloth tote bag and the right to decorate it with fabric markers to take home their book each night. I eventually used that tote bag for their own "bag of books" to collect books that we made in classroom and Keep Books etc. to reread in the room and read at home over the summer. I thought it worked well for my class and I will be doing that again this year.
ReplyDeleteI do many of the same things that Connie mentioned and I try to constantly put ideas to make reading and all natural and easy in my newsletter to parents. Now that I have learned to Moodle...I plan to get parents excited to visit my site and hook them up with web sites and resources and places to go and from the technology angle. I am going to give it a try.
Wow! Those are all great ideas! I know that many of you are doing wonderful things, so sharing them may give others new ideas! Thanks to those who are sharing their ideas and real things that they are doing in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteConnie and Belinda we continue many of the types of communication you named in your posts in first grade. The newsletters detail what the students are learning, what they will be learning in the near future, and tips on how to help them work on these skills. I believe this information is what helps accelerate many of the students, but these are often the ones whose parents are very involved in their child's education already. On my webpage I did post a variety of online resources they can use. It was discouraging to see so few logged into progress book so I assume these resources were used sparingly. The bag of books is also something I used, but decorating their own bag makes it so much more personal. How do we get to the parents in our district to provide the right learning environment for their young children long before they come to school? If we can get that communication piece in place I feel it would make a difference. Our parents are mostly working parents and they are products of their own environment. Parents often don't realize the changes in education until their children are in school. If we were able to serve more students in preschool it would probably change this culture somewhat. Although, I can't blame everything on the parents there are so many reading problems that I can't reach and it drives me crazy, but I do love working with teachers who never give up trying to find the answers for these students. I sure hope the Title changes will address some of these problems as students should be able to get double the intervention time or that is what I am wishfully hoping.
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