Nature Cooperated
Its a good day when things naturally occur that coincide with your lesson plans. It makes you feel like a rockstar teacher though NONE of it has anything to do with a plan you made .
Like today !
We went outside early to beat the rain. This weather is amazing ! Mr Randy bought a new block box for the font yard so we were working to unload the old one and clean out the area to place the new box down. Under the leaves as Ms Dallas swept was a toad. He was camoflauged under the brown leaves. Toad live near ponds. We are talking about ponds. Hallelujah its a teachable moment. The kids looked, talked about , observed and taunted that frog for over 20 minutes. If you want to see the live feed from the frog experience it is on my Facebook newsfeed .
Inside one of the fun activities was acting out the ” Five Little Ducks ” book / song with props. Using a book like this is a great way to inspire a child to read. This is also a great time to point to words as they sing so they start seeing the left to right progression as they read and knowing to start on the left side of the page .
From the blog ” A struggling reader ” –
A predictable text contains repetitive phrases that appear in the story over and over again. Besides the wonderful stories currently in circulation, many of our traditional literature or fairytales are predictable texts. Think of the repetitive lines that you hear in the following stories:
The Three Pigs (I’ll huff and I’ll puff…)
The Little Red Hen (“Not I,” said the cow; “Not I,” said the dog…)
Jack and the Beanstalk (Fee, Fi, Fo Fum…)
Rapunzel (Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair…)
I don’t think that many adults who read these predictable stories to children realize how critical they are to the development of good readers. Predictable books have rhyming or repetitive word patterns, familiar concepts and simple story lines.
When children are pre-readers and beginning readers, adults should continually model for the future reader how the reading process works. Predictable books can be a vital part of this modeling, without necessarily instructing the child in these skills. Predictable books are excellent examples and provide support in the following ways:
The text and illustrations enable children to anticipate words, phrases or events.
Predictable books can be stepping stones in the reading developmental process because they are engaging and interesting to young children. The listener can also participate in the reading.
Repetitive phrases can help children follow storylines and more fully understand the sequence in a story.
Predictable books have wonderful story patterns that help the reader deliver the story with fluency and rhythm.
What predictable text books do you have at home ?