Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Letterland Day at Tweetsie Railroad

   This was an exciting day in kindergarten!! We went to Tweetsie Railroad in the NC mountains for Letterland Day.  Letterland is a wonderful multisensory phonics program that we have been using at Valmead for several years to teach our children to read, write, and spell. It was first written in England by Lyn Wendon nearly 40 years ago, but I started using it 7 years ago.  Since then, it has been adopted by my whole county and we have seen excellent results. So today when I got to see Mrs. Wendon -- and she recognized me -- it was like seeing a rock star!  Because our school was one of the "pioneers" of Letterland in our area, she and her son came to visit and take pictures a few years ago -- there are even some pictures of my students in the teacher's manual.  But today, when she kindly told me that my enthusiasm played a part in the success of the program -- well, I was floating for the rest of the day! It really had nothing to do with me -- I was just responding naturally to a program that I loved! But it sure made my day!
As for the rest of the day -- we all had a great time -- the weather was perfect -- and one said, "This was the best day ever!!" The kids were so excited to see the Letterland characters they knew so well -- running up to hug complete strangers because they were dressed like a letter of the alphabet.  It was a laughing out loud kind of day -- and I am thankful to everyone who helped the children have so much fun celebrating their accomplishments in reading. I love my job!!

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Pete the Cat and his Buttons






  Our new "Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons" book came this week, and it is a hit!!  Every free moment today found a kid -- or group of kids -- reading about Pete and his groovy buttons. Too bad it's not on the reading assessment -- they would get a great fluency score!!And what a great way to incorporate some math into literature!  I love to introduce new books they will  read again and again.

The other new one last month was "Go Away Big Green Monster" and it's another favorite.  I learned of both books when they were mentioned in a teaching blog -- I am so grateful that I discovered  the blogging world last summer!

(I also found out about the Green Monster smoothie on a blog -- and I've had one about every morning  since then.)