Building the Literacy Foundation

Building the literacy foundation for students starts at home and continues in the classroom.  Cunningham and Allington, the authors of the textbook Classrooms that Work write about "Building the Literacy Foundation" and how to do that in the classroom.  Some ideas are:

• Discuss why we read and write with students
• Encourage writing
• Allowing time for both independent and group reading time (see previous post, "How to Teach Reading" for more details)
• Develop phonemic awareness 
• Teach letters and sounds

The activity below will help with many of the above points that Cunningham and Allington highlight.  For the activity below, students will each receive a q-tip (you can substitute with using their fingers or a pencil) and a ziploc bag filled with hair gel, glitter, and food coloring.  Instructions to create the substance can be found at the hyperlink below the picture.

http://www.playathomemomllc.com/2011/07/squishy-bag-a-tactilemultisensory-approach-to-pre-writing-and-writing-skills/

This activity encourages writing by allowing students to write their own words or letters using the q-tip or writing utensil.  Also, students can work on letters and sounds while at the same time working on phonics by clapping the syllables of the words they write.  This activity can be used in many ways to meet whichever standards you are trying to cover making it a versatile and useful lesson plan!

While these are all ways of creating an environment that promotes literacy in the classroom, there are many ways to do the same at home according to the article "The Jones Family's Culture of Literacy" by Amy Suzanne Johnson.  Some easy ways to do this are:

• Have reading materials out around the house (magazines, newspapers, etc.)
• Demonstrate the importance of reading by taking time to read yourself as the adult of the home and set an example for your child
• Write letters whether that is thank you notes after a birthday party or simple just because notes

Those are just a few ways that literacy can be developed at home through simple lifestyle changes.  By making simple changes in your own life, as the adult, such as reading every night before bed, your child will imitate this behavior or at least be more familiar with the importance of reading.

In my classroom, I hope to promote literacy by teaching my students that reading is not a task to be done; it is something that we do everyday in our lives and can improve by just reading more each day.  Also, I hope to maintain good relationships with my students' parents so I can communicate with them and hear how their student is doing with reading at home while also sharing how they are doing in the classroom.

I will leave you with two questions:

1. How can we, as teachers, continue to "provide a print-rich classroom" during a time when technology is becoming so important in our students' lives?

2. As students, we learned at a young age some common alliterations and tongue twisters, such as "Sally sells sea shells by the sea shore" and those became a game and race to see how quickly we could repeat the same line without messing up.  Sayings like these will help students with phonetic awareness.  Are there other common sayings to help with sounds that we can introduce to our students and practice memorizing for emphasis?