Creating Joyful Readers and Writers Deb Vanderwood

My Intentions  Share a brief overview and definition of a comprehensive literacy program  Share my foundations and beliefs upon which my teaching is based  Share some meaningful, engaging, and purposeful literacy activities you can use with your learners all year long  To connect Purposeful play and literacy

A Comprehensive Literacy Program  Has these components:  Shared Reading and Writing  Guided Reading and Writing  Interactive Reading and Writing  Independent Reading and Writing  Read Alouds  Responding to Reading and Writing  Word Study  Lots of Oral Language

My Beliefs and the Foundation I base my Literacy “Instruction” on  Student driven  Comprehensive not balanced  Engaging, authentic, and meaningful  Open ended and differentiated  Allows for creativity, higher level thinking, and choice  Developmentally appropriate  Social, emotional learning and self regulation is at the heart

Literacy and Purposeful Play  Recognize the opportunities for learning during play both inside and outside  Create opportunities for the independent practice of literacy skills during play  Reading and writing about what they are playing  Reading and writing as part of the play  Ie. labels, directions, using books to research and the use of oral language to extend the learning As a teacher, we observe, question, reflect and suggest.

My Top Ten Literacy Activities you can start tomorrow  Most of them are multi-levelled so you can gear them to your students’ needs  Please adopt and adapt  Most of them are activities you can do all year long – just changing the instructional focus and the expectations  These do NOT make up a literacy program

1) Reading/ Writing workshop  Choose a focus ie. interesting beginnings, adding detail, connecting, predicting, etc. or a genre such as poetry, memoir, non-fiction, etc.  Involves modeling (shared or interactive), a mentor text, mini lesson (I do)  A shared component (We do)  Independent practice (You do)  Lots of time spent writing  Conferencing, personalized instruction, feedback and assessment

2) Weekly Review *  Great communication between school and home  Class brainstorms what they learned during the week, organizing the information according to needs, students choose what they want to include and use the framework provided. As the year progresses the given framework provides less scaffolding for the students.  A form of documentation to show what students are doing and where they are at  Builds in meta cognition and reflection on learning  Another opportunity to teach and reinforce the conventions of writing and have students write for an authentic purpose

3) Morning Message  A short note or letter to students from teacher  Multi levelled and there is an entry point for all  Show What You Know – students point out anything in the message they know or can read. Can be individual letters, sounds, words or complete sentences.  Cloze activity using the cuing systems- the teacher leaves out a few words and teach students how to use the cuing systems to figure out the missing word. I have students give me three possibilities and we try each one asking “Does it make sense?, Does it fit?, Does it work given the initial or final letter?  Edit and proofread- students find a certain number of errors in the message and correct them

4) Wonder Wall *  Students write/draw whatever they are wondering about  Way to gather ideas for an inquiry project or new provocation  A purposeful way to assess background knowledge on a certain topic  Can set purpose for reading  Great way to generate interest in non fiction reading and writing

5) Word Wall  Add five new sight or commonly used words a week  Have them visibly accessible in the room  Students are expected to have these spelled correctly in their writing  Have students become familiar with the words by playing games or just reading the word wall  Ie. I spy…

6) Making Words  Great whole class word study activity  Multi-levelled – all students can participate and get something out of it  Students are practicing word detective skills and learning strategies to spell new words rather than just memorizing the spelling of words

7) Word Challenge *  Students are given one long word – theme or season based  As a group identify the vowels and consonants and how many of each  Students come up with as many words as they can using the letters in the word  Can work together and see how many as a class they can find  Great way to increase vocabulary – talk about homophones, synonyms etc.

8) Alphabet Stories *  Based on the book “Once Upon an Alphabet” by Oliver Jeffers  As a class, students brainstorm words beginning with the letter chosen- great opportunity to model and reinforce spelling strategies and teach vocabulary  Students each choose 4 words, illustrate and then use the four words to write a short story

9) Documentation (Learning Stories) *  Students write or draw to explain the process of a learning activity – what they were thinking, doing and wondering during the activity  Could use photos and students write to explain the learning in a photo  What is happening?  What are you learning?  What are you wondering?  What do you want to do next?

10) Play Plan or Play Review *  Students write or share orally what they plan to do during Explorations (Centres)  Students write or share orally what they did, how they did it, what they want their peers to notice, what they are going to do next, etc.

Resources  Emergent Curriculum in the Primary Classroom Carol Anne Wien (Editor)  Reading with Meaning Debbie Miller  The Café Book Gail Boushey and Joan Moser  Writing Workshop Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi  6+1 Traits of Writing Ruth Culham  Learning to Write and Loving It Miriam P. Trehearne  Guiding K-3 Writers to Independence Patricia L. Scharer and Gay Su Pinnell  A Place for Wonder Georgia Heard and Jennifer McDonough  Month By Month Phonics Patricia Cunningham and Dorothy P. Hall  Making Words Patricia Cunningham and Dorothy P. Hall