Teachers are often missing one simple key to their phonics lesson: visuals. You need to include visual instruction when planning your systematic and explicit phonics lessons. Visuals are essential to multi-sensory learning, and effective lessons will always start with some phonics type of visual reference. This is probably the simplest
You may have heard of a term floating around called “multi-sensory learning”. Maybe you know what it is but need help applying it to your daily lessons. Today, I am going to share what multi-sensory learning is and why it is important for early childhood educators. What is Multi-Sensory Learning?
Did you know that teaching kids to how to spell starts with phonemic awareness? Spelling, or encoding, directly correlates to oral segmentation, just like decoding stems from oral blending. Before a student can spell a word, like h-a-t spells hat, they need to know how to orally segment the word.
Are you looking for a last-minute, no-prep Kindergarten writing activity? As teachers, we tend to overthink and plan elaborate and engaging lessons every day. In reality, we need simple and no-prep activities that you can do with your students repeatedly. I’ve always liked to keep a list of quick writing
Are you tired of the “I’m done, now what” problem? It always seems like a few students finish any activity SO quickly, and then you are scrambling to give them additional work. I tried early finisher bins with activities they could pull out and do independently while they waited for
Do you feel like you are on a constant hamster wheel planning your lessons every week? It feels like it takes so much time and effort to plan every single lesson, center, and activity every week. That’s exactly why I switched to batch planning and never looked back! I’m going
Do you ever feel like there’s NO TIME in your day to practice handwriting? Sure, in the first few weeks of school, you do daily handwriting practice, model each letter, and make sure your students know how to write each one. But soon, you will need to move on to
Report card time is approaching and grades are almost due! You know you have to complete lots of one-to-one assessments in your Kindergarten classroom in a short period of time. Giving one-to-one assessments is time-consuming and it can be hard to find the time to assess all of your students.
Do you use a weekly assessment to keep track of your student’s progress for each phonics skill or unit? It may seem like A LOT more to add yet another assessment to your plate. However, getting a glimpse at where your students are can be so helpful. I’m going to
