Early Literacy
It is an exciting time to be a literacy teacher. Teaching literacy is a complex job, as it encompasses many discreet parts, each being an important piece in developing a skilled reader. If you visit our elementary schools, you will see many examples of how our teachers are meeting the literacy learning needs of our students in engaging and joyful ways. The Scarborough Reading Rope helps to illustrate these essential components of learning how to read and how interdependent they are.
Early Learning Helping Teachers and Early Literacy Support Teachers are each working to support teachers in learning more about Word Recognition and Language Comprehension Instruction. Teachers are using sound walls and sound/letter games to help young children with phonological awareness and decoding development. Heggerty is a resource that is successfully used throughout the district in primary classrooms to help increase phonemic awareness in students. These are pieces of the foundational skills children need in developing their system of reading. At the same time teachers are using Daily CAFE and interactive read-alouds to teach language comprehension skills and reading strategies. Using Daily CAFE puts students in the driver's seat and gives them voice and choice in their learning. Daily CAFE also allows teachers to meet the diverse needs of each learner in their classroom, while embedding SEL into their daily practice.
Story workshop is a favorite way for our teachers to engage children in writing. Children listen to a story, reenact it, and retell it. They are then provided with the opportunity to create their own stories through play and inquiry. The children tell their story to their classmates, teachers and then move to recording their story in some format, be it pictorial, written or audio/video recording. The children in AbbySchools are fortunate to have such dedicated teachers who are continually learning and growing their knowledge and practice.