Raising a Reader
Handwriting Without Tears ®
Letter to Parents Pre-K
Help Me Hold My Crayon
Capital Letter Formation Chart
Meet Mat Man
Fine Motor & Letter Practice for Home
Handwriting Without Tears is a widely recognized, award winning handwriting curriculum that has been adopted by many school districts. The curriculum uses a developmental approach that is based on the most relevant research about how young children learn best. RDC has adopted the Get Set for School® portion of this curriculum and has been focusing on pre-writing skills and readiness for kindergarten. The Purple Class has been using this program since September of 2011. The Yellow Class teachers are planning to include some fun singing-moving activities in to their circle time that will emphasize body awareness, directions and size. Even the babies are enjoying some of the program's catchy songs.
Get Set for School® has unique strategies that appeal to different learning styles and levels. The lessons and activities introduced in a developmental sequence. The curriculum teaches the easiest skills first and then builds on that knowledge. Lessons are taught in a sequence that makes sense developmentally. There is no assumption of prior knowledge. After children master the easier skills, they are ready to move on to more difficult lessons. As such, the needs of children at different levels and ages can be met with this program.
Research demonstrates that children develop through multisensory play. Therefore with this curriculum children use hands on materials such as:
- Sing, dance and move along to a CD with fun engaging songs that prompt social skills along with motor and language skills.
- Build capital letters with wooden pieces (Big Line, Little Line, Big Curve, and Little Curve) and also learn about concepts such as directions and size.
- Create capital letters by rolling play-dough.
- With Wet-Dry-Try children use small slates and chalk to draw the letters, and experience success after erasing it with a tiny wet sponge.
- Children also draw, color and make letter strokes on worksheets using small crayons to encourage correct crayon grip.
- Mat-Man is built using the wooden pieces and a mat to learn about body awareness
To meet all Individual needs the curriculum is taught in different size groups. We know that teacher demonstration and student imitation is essential to Pre-K learning. Throughout the curriculum, children learn on their own as well as with adult demonstration. Activities are structured in whole class, small group, and individually to maximize teaching and learning.
Although the children are exposed to both lower case and capital letters for recognition purposes, they are going to be taught to write only capital letters in preschool. (Capital Letter Formation Chart)
We encourage parents to get involved in this program and continue the pre-handwriting practice at home. You can find more information, sample songs and video lessons online at www.hwtears.com/gss And just in case you want to sing along with your child here are the lyrics to "Where Do You Start Your Letters?" (Sing to the tune of "If you're happy and you know it") Where do you start your letters? At the top! X2 If you want to start a letter, then you better better better Remember to start it at the top!
A child’s literacy success is directly related to their early experiences with books. The way we read books and what we read play a critical role. Dialogic Reading is a technique that will help your child develop comprehension, critical thinking skills, vocabulary, sound structure, and the meaning of print.
It was developed by Grover J. (Russ) Whitehurst, Ph.D., Director, Institute of Education Sciences, and U.S. Department of Education. There are sequences and prompts that are used in the dialogic reading technique.
The PEER sequence is an interaction between a child and an adult. • Prompts the child to say something about the book
• Evaluates the child's response
• Expands the child's response by rephrasing and adding information to the response
• Repeats the prompt to make sure the child has learned from the expansion
• Evaluates the child's response
Except for the first reading of a book, PEER sequences should occur on nearly every page. Sometimes you can read the words and then prompt the child to say something. For many books, you should do less and less reading each time you read it. Leave more to the child.
The CROWD sequence is another tool.
• Completion prompts: Leave a blank at the end of a sentence and get the child to fill it in. These are typically used in books with rhyme or repetitive phrases. For example, you might say, "I think I'd be a glossy cat. A little plump but not too ____," (fat). Completion prompts provide information about the structure of language that is critical to later reading.
• Recall prompts: These are questions about what happened in a book a child has already read. They work for nearly everything except alphabet books. For example, you might say, "Can you tell me what happened to the little blue engine in this story?" Recall prompts help children understand story plot and in describe sequences of events.
• Open-ended prompts: These focus on the pictures. They work best for books that have rich, detailed illustrations. For example, while looking at a book that the child is familiar with, you might say, "Tell me what's
happening in this picture." Open-ended prompts help children increase their expressive fluency and attention to detail.
• Wh- prompts: These usually begin with what, where, when, why, and how questions. Like open-ended prompts, wh- prompts focus on the pictures. For example, you might say, "What's the name of this?" while pointing to an object in the book. Wh- questions teach children new vocabulary.
• Distancing prompts: These ask children to relate the pictures or words in the book to experiences outside the book. For example, while looking at a book with a picture of animals on a farm, you might say something like, "Remember when we went to the animal park last week? Which of these animals did we see there?" Distancing prompts help children form a bridge between books and the real world, as well as helping Remember to keep it light. Don’t push the child with more prompts than they can handle.with verbal fluency and conversational abilities.
Look for our Rainbow Reader Backpacks with Dialogic Reading books to take home in May! For More information go
to: http://www.readingrockets.org
