Teaching Beginning Readers

Wow! Sorry that I have been M.I.A. for the past few months! I got married in July and then school started in August and I have been busy, busy, busy! I absolutely LOVE married life! My new hubby is so good to me!! I feel so spoiled having someone who helps with the laundry and who makes me dinner when I come home from work! He's truly one in a million!!

I hope everyone's new year is off to a great start! I have been exhausted the past couple of weeks from working long hours at school. Tis the season for putting in long hours to make sure everything gets off to a great start! I have an adorable new group of firsties! They are so cute and so well-behavied! It's been a nice start to a new year!

I love the beginning of a new school year and teaching reading to my fresh batch of first graders. It always takes me by surprise how little and cute they are! Our Kindergarten teachers at my school do a fantastic job of preparing our first graders every year. One of the programs we use at our building is Jolly Phonics. It was introduced to us by an exchange teacher we had from England.

I love Jolly Phonics! It systematically teaches the letters of the alphabet along with an action that the students do while saying the letter name and sound. The interactive whiteboard version has a large letter the students can trace, a song using the letter sound in words, and a text version of the song where students can see the letter in words. My students come in knowing all or almost all of their letters and sounds! I am using Jolly Phonics to help teach CVC words to my kiddos right now. They use the actions for each letter sound as they make the CVC words. I really love how it helps my kinesthetic learners make a connection to each letter sound!

I also love this parent handout put out by www.studydog.com! This gives very easy to understand information to parents on how they can help their child with the beginning stages of reading. I hope you find this useful!

Lots of love to you,