Literacy in the Classroom

Dear Parents,

As we move into October, our focus has turned to letter shapes and sounds. I've shown you some of the science activities we've been working on at the school. Many of these include literacy, but learning to read and write is a key focus of our program, so I wanted to give you a little window into all the ways we're working on that in Kindergarten:

First, is the vision of literacy you're probably most familiar with. Today, Ms. Fish, my student teacher, read aloud "The Missing Piece" by Shel Silverstein. You can also see the daily schedule, our calendar and birthday wall, as well as the message of the day, written on the white board. Students read the message of the day along with the teacher. Below, you can see some examples of students taking learning into their own hands.

In these photos, students are playing at the "Teacher Centre", writing their own message of the day and using a pointer to remember the days of the week.

Play Based Learning Opportunities:

These pictures show our recent art project using foam letters. As each child came to the painting centre, an adult asked them to find the letters in their name and sound them out. Some students made patterns with these letters. Some students spelled their name or other names that were important to them. Interestingly, many students spelled backwards, so working on text direction will be important as we move forward with reading. 

We also have letters in our playdough centre right now. This student decided to spell a word he knew without prompting, but mostly students are making cookies  or pasta with the letters in their names. I've heard many students reciting the Patty Cake rhyme. 

In this picture, students are playing with an alphabet fishing game, where they match letters to their upper case or lower case equivalents. We've also been playing memory games with pictures and letter sound matching.

Here are some other examples of student writing, from their journals. Each student will write an entry at least once each week. 

In the left hand journal, the JK student has recounted a story about his picture. In the right hand journal, an SK student has sounded out a word that reflects her picture.

In the left hand journal, the JK student has written a word based on sounding out the word snake. In the right hand journal, the SK student has sounded out a sentence to say: "Rabbit is drinking tea".

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Sometimes, writing also happens spontaneously:

Here, students have found clipboards and brought the writing to the carpet. They are drawing and writing about their carpet creations. 

Literacy in kindergarten can look a bit different than it might in other grades because so much of the learning is based on student interest and engagement. I hope that you can see the learning and engagement happening in these pictures too.

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan

P.S. Tomorrow is library! Please remember to bring your books. :)