Elbow, knees, dreams

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

We’ve finished learning the whole alphabet, and some of my little friends actually know the whole damn thing, so we’ve been celebrating our accomplishments with some spirited readings of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. On Monday we made a mural, Read More...

Miss Nelson is Missing

Now that we’re in the home stretch, our theme is “Ready for Kindergarten,” and all the books on our shelf are about kindergarten and school. Z. commented that some of them looked familiar, and I told her that we’d had a bunch of Read More...

Literacy begins at home?

Well, duh, yes of course it does. But when I saw that that was the title of an op-ed piece in the LA Times, explaining why Reading First isn’t working, I rolled my eyes and figured it would be more moaning about how parents aren’t doing their Read More...

Taking a test to teach reading

New Connecticut teachers are going to have to take a test to prove that they know enough about teaching reading. I’ve been following this with interest, and have read several angry comments from CT teachers. I’m for it, and would have no problem Read More...

Teaching grown-ups

Some weeks ago, a person from the early childhood department was visiting my classroom, and she saw me doing story time using the repeated interactive read-aloud strategy, so we talked about how it works, and I offered to do a little workshop on it for Read More...

Reading First schools aren’t getting results?

I read in the paper yesterday that schools designated as Reading First schools, who get extra funds to do extra work in teaching reading, are not getting the hoped-for results. My school isn’t a Reading First school, but my heart sank when I read Read More...