Preschool Teachers - Convention Ideas

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Janet Steever on March 2, 2009 at 9:44am

The Thursday crew ended up mainly attending Debbie Clements wksps. She was fabulous and her songs covered each area of our curriculum. Katie purchased 2 cds and I believe she has a friend that acquired a couple. We are hoping to burn these cds so we can get started using them. Many of her songs are in echo mode which will strengthen listening skills. Her songs get the children up and moving at the same time covering sm motor, lg motor, handwriting, math, self-esteem, science, etc.

My materials are in school at this time, but I do know that when we air write letters to practice their shapes, I will have the children air write with the 3 finger crayon/pencil grip. I've always had them do it w/ a pointer finger. Using the correct grip in the air will continue to promote the correct grip used with a writing tool.

Permalink Reply by Jennifer Luff on March 2, 2009 at 10:04am

Thanks Janet - This just made me think of something and I wanted to see what your thoughts were.
My daughter is in preschool (3 year old program) and her teachers sent home a note asking us to only write in capital letters. Then I was reading something that came with Fundations and they indicated that research says not to do that. That lower case letters appear more frequently so we should not wait to teach lower case. Plus they are easier to write because usually they are only one stroke. What do you think?

Permalink Reply by Janet Steever on March 2, 2009 at 10:37am

HWT states that the pre-kers are developmentally ready for the uppercase only. Any written text in the classroom, I use both upper and lower but with the children writing--only upper is used. Right after teaching 1st grade and going into pre-k, I thought it would be great to start the lower right away, but all I saw was bad habits starting as the children tried to duplicate the lowercase letters. Maybe every year I might get 1 or 2 children who start to incorporate the lowercase letters into their name. If they are ready I show those few the correct forms.
HWT feels the children will catch on to the lowercase letters naturally and easily in K because they are developmentally ready.

Permalink Reply by Katie Schmid on March 2, 2009 at 2:50pm

Janet I totally agree with you. Although I have had a few kindergarten teachers ask me why I am not having my students write their names in lowercase and I explain to them about the research, but I still think they (k teachers) feel that we should be teaching them lowercase as well. I have been showing some of my students how to make the lowercase letters when they write their name because they have been asking me.

Permalink Reply by Jennifer Luff on March 2, 2009 at 3:49pm

Thanks for the input! I found the site were I read that information here is the research they cite

"Q. Why does Fundations teach lower case letter formation before upper case letter formation?

A. When teaching students to read and write simultaneously, instruction of lower case letters first works best. Fundations presents lower case letters first because lower case letters occur much more often in text than do upper case letters. Lower case letters also ‘pull together visually’ more easily than upper case letters when students are forming words, and, since lower case letters are rounder, they allow for faster writing once the formations are learned. In addition, children often enter school knowing many upper case letter formations, but few if any lower case letters. (Mann, V.A. and Foy, J.G.; “Phonological Awareness, Speech Development and Letter Knowledge in Preschool Children; Annals of Dyslexia, Volume 53, International Dyslexia Association, 2203).

Permalink Reply by Robin Wolf-Smith on March 2, 2009 at 4:02pm

What about physical development, especially fine motor and eye/hand coordination? These also come into play when asking children to write letters, not just see and hear them. It's developmentally appropriate to begin teaching the uppercase letters because of size and shape.

Permalink Reply by Katie Schmid on March 2, 2009 at 2:46pm

There was a song that we heard from Debbie Clement that focused on handwriting. I absolutely loved the song, because it had the kids using the tripod grip and talked about going from left to right and top to bottom. The CD that the song is on I purchased and would like to burn it for the other pre-k teachers. Do you know if we have any blank cd's around? I also think that it would be a great idea for us (pre-k teachers) to all get together and do a share session. I think this would be good especially for the people that went on Thursday, because we learned a lot of cool songs that we can show the others.

Permalink Reply by Sue Castellano on March 2, 2009 at 3:03pm

In the resource book we got at the convention, page 89, is an activity called "I'm All Ears." Stephanie Record suggests having one child be the conductor (give them a baton or something to use to conduct the "orchestra"), one child is the listener our audience, and the rest of the class is the orchestra. The listener can wear ears - a headband with animal ears was suggested. The conductor shows the orchestra a picture of a sound to make (ie, a cow so the orchestra will MOO, or a pig so they will OINK), but doesn't show the listener. The orchestra makes the sound on cue from the conductor, and the listener has to guess. The idea is that it sharpens listening skills and requires focus from the orchestra members. I'm thinking that besides environmental sounds the game could be played by showing pictures of the Letter People - the orchestra makes the letter sound, listener guesses, so that letter sound associations are reinforced.

Another idea she had was an extension of the Phonics Phone - those PVC phones. She suggested making a Partner Whisper Phone - when I get a chance to go to Home Depot I'll try to make one. Materials are:
5 ft. vinyl tubing 5/8"x1/2"
4 1" pvc elbows
2 3/4"x3/4"x1/2" T's
2 1/2" threaded connector
It's easier to see a diagram, or to see one already put together, but the idea is that you connect two phonics phones so that kids can work together to develop language skills (pair a strong student with a weaker one).

Clarissa Willis was a good presenter - a lot of her materials are on her website clarissawillis.com.

Permalink Reply by Susan Dugan on March 3, 2009 at 11:25am

I attended 2 workshops on developing literacy through music. Stephanie Record gave us lots of activities that help build phonological awareness through song. Many of the activities are in the conference book. She said teaching phonemic awareness through song is a natural parallel since music is based on repetition and patterns which is similiar to rhymes and sounds.
Clarissa Willis did a workshop on children at risk. Interestingly, some signs that a child may be at risk is if they walk on thier toes, cannot identify the number when it is traced on thier backs, tend to zone out.

Permalink Reply by Michelle Baltz on March 3, 2009 at 6:01pm

I loved the Pre-K convention and am so happy that I had a chance to go. I went to one Debbie Clement seminar in which she stressed the importance of using music and sign language to activate learning and to build early math and literacy skills. One song was about a ladybug flying high and low and had the students moving up and down across the midline of their bodies as well as identifying red and black and circles. The songs were all filled with rhyme, which research shows is a skill that Pre-K students should aquire before starting Kindergarten. We still have Kindergarteners struggling with identifying and producing rhyme. Another seminar that I attended was about the importance of theaching Phonemic Awareness in Pre-K and Kindergarten. There were many things that I will be sharing with the Pre-K teachers on April 1st at your after school PLC, but the top two areas of Phonemic Awareness that should be mastered by the end of Pre-K are Concept of Word (The student can identify how many words are in a sentence - Kid Writing is great for this because it asks the students to draw lines for each word they are writing in a sentence). Lucy Calkins also talks about rehearsing a story across your fingers (You can have the students rehearse the sentence across their fingers by touching one finger for each word in the sentence). Finally, I attended a seminar about Kid Writing which was great. I got some wonderful ideas about putting novelty into the program to make Kid Writing a special event in the classroom- without driving yourself insane. I will share these ideas on the 1st as well.

Permalink Reply by Janet Steever on March 3, 2009 at 6:22pm

That was an another reason why I liked Debbie Clement. Just about every activity and possibly all of her activities stressed the importance of getting the kids to cross the midline. I've always known the importance but have never made it a top priority. With her songs and the signing, you are addressing this skill automatically. She also gave us a website where you can find just about anything in signing and video also shows how to sign whatever you type in. As usual I am home and have this info at school but will get the website to all.