USE POETRY TO TEACH READING AND WRITING SKILLS

The key to teaching reading is to motivate and inspire the children to practice. The use of rhyming poetry, songs or stories is an excellent way to engage the children in learning. Kids love to hear and memorize poems. It's a fun and very natural form of expression. Poetry is excellent for choral readings because of its rhythm.

MAKE A POETRY FOLDER OR BINDER

1. Pick a variety of poetry. Demonstrate to the children that poetry can be sad, funny, silly, dreamlike, or mad.

2. Pick poems that go with the theme you're currently working on.

3. When you introduce a poem, read it with enthusiam and drama. Humorous poems usually grab their attention. You can hook a child to poetry for life if they catch your love of poetry.

4. Now pass out a copy of the poem so that students can follow along as you read it again.

5. Define any new words that are important to the meaning of the poem.

6. Read the poem chorally as a class.

7. If there are different characters in the poem, assign each one to a student to act out. Sometimes there's a part the class can say all together.

8. Start with short poems for memorization then go with longer ones.

9. Teach young children about rhythmic patterns by having them clap hands and stomp feet along with the poem.

10. Use the old familiar poems for word skills.

WORD SKILLS FOR POETRY

1. Say a word from the poem and ask the children to find synonyms or antonyms.

2. Pull some words from the poem and put them in alphabetical order.

3. Use words in the poem for word sorts. For example, label three cups people nouns, place nouns, and thing nouns. Then sort all the nouns into the proper cup. Sort by nouns, adjectives and verbs. Or sort by beginning or ending sounds. Sort by word families. Sort contrations and possessives.

4. Find and copy sight words from the poems.

5. Find word families in poems.

6. Use word families or rhyming words to write a class poem. It might be fun to do a class illustration on giant newsprint paper for a bulletin board.

7. Use word families to create student poems. They enjoy drawing illustrations for their poems.

8. Create poems in small groups about certain feelings. (sad, happy, angry, peaceful) These poems usually are great for dramatization. Kids might find out that other kids feel like they do sometimes.

FINDING GOOD POEMS

1. Use classic children's authors like Robert Louis Stevenson.

2. Jack Prelutsky, named the nation's first Children's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation, is the author of more than 40 books of verse and editor of several poetry anthologies.

3. Dr. Seuss demonstrates that made-up words can be poetry too.

GREAT BOOKS TO USE

Sight Word Poetry Pages: 100 Fill-in-the-Blank Practice Pages That Help Kids Really Learn the Top High-Frequency Words by Rozanne Williams.

Read-Aloud Rhymes for the Very Young by Jack Prelutsky.

Wham! Its a Poetry Jam: Discovering Performance Poetry
by Sara Holbrook. (Each poem is paired with explanations on how best to perform the poem out loud, alone or with a group.)

Bird Watch: A Book of Poetry by Jane Yolen (Several of her books pair poems with photography.)

Kathy Stemke's websites:
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http://kathystemke.weebly.com

Teaching Toddlers to Read

Children develop much of their capacity to read in the first three years of life, when their brains grow to 90% of their adult weight. Talking, singing and reading to your child develops and strengthens links between their brain cells which enable them to understand and develop language skills. Therefore, you should read to your toddler as often as possible. Teach him the alphabet, letter sounds, and some simple sight words. Then teach him to blend sounds together to make words. Because a toddler has a short attention span, you need to keep the practice sessions very short and full of fun.

Reading aloud to your child helps your child to learn the correct way to read. By hearing you read the words on the page and sound them out, he learns that letters make words, and words make sentences, and sentences are how we communicate with each other. Communication is very important in how a person relates to the rest of the world. Reading aloud to your child encourages interpersonal communication, which is vital to a child's development.

There are many activities that will make reading fun, and help to keep the toddler engaged in reading.

1. Use musical instruments to create suspense, or silliness. This can bring a story to life as well as keep each child engaged. You can even have them make simple shakers with beans or rice inside a can. They can use it at different times. For example: shake the shaker when you hear the word ______.

2. Have the children act out what you read. If the character walks to the store, they should be able to walk in place as they reach a door and open it and grab some groceries. This should be fun and can help on those days it's raining out and their energy levels are high.

3. Use a prop bag to illustrate parts of the story. If your reading “Miss Spider’s Tea Party,” you might have a rubber spider, silk butterflies, a tea cup, and a handkerchief to wipe the spider’s tears away.

4. Ask your child questions about the story. Reading comprehension is one of the hardest things to teach a child if it doesn't come naturally to him. In order to comprehend something, you must be paying attention to it. Help your child to develop his ability to comprehend stories by asking him questions either about what he thinks is about to happen or what has already happened. This develops critical thinking, which helps later in life in making major decisions.

5. Do a fun activity after you finish the book that relates to the book in some way. For instance, if the book is about a tall person, make your own stilts using metal cans. If you read a book about lions or the circus, you can have your child jump through a hoop like a lion at the circus. This activity may be done indoors or outdoors. Add words of encouragement such as, "Come my beautiful lion!" Continue raising the hoop, then alternate between high and low.

Reading to your child on a regular basis will give him an appreciation and respect for reading. If reading is important to you, it will become important to your child. A bookcase full of a variety of great books should be available. The "Dr. Seuss" and "Dick and Jane" books are wonderful, because they are full of repetition. This will enable your child to learn sight words such as: it, at, on, in, the, etc. Learning sight words will help keep the frustration level down when they start to read books.

Here’s a fun sight word game called, “Stinky Cheese.” Cut triangles out of yellow construction paper. On 20 triangles write sight words that you want to practice. On 5 triangles write “stinky cheese.” Put the triangles in a sack and shake them up. The toddler pulls out a triangle. The child reads the sight word on his cheese. If he chooses “stinky cheese,” he holds his nose and says, “Stinky cheese!” in a silly voice.

Most toddlers are physically active and love to move. Take advantage of this natural trait by moving to short rhymes that introduce letter sounds. An A-Z list of Action Animal Phonics Rhymes that promote lots of movement can be found on this blog in the blog archive. Introduce a new sound each week and have fun.

Toddlers learn quickly with hands on activities. Make clay out of flour, salt, and warm water. Form a large A, a, and apple out of the clay. After the letters and apple dry have fun painting them and practice the letter sounds by singing silly songs. Take turns thinking of a word that begins with that letter/ sound. For example: say "A is for a a a a aaaaligator." You’ll be surprised what words the toddler will come up with. Your toddler will be proud of the letters he makes and will want to show them to everyone.

Another great way to teach a toddler letter sounds is to make a personalized book. Take a photo of the toddler with food that starts with each letter and paste it on top of an 8”-11” piece of paper. Under each picture with large letters write, Aa – Brian eats an apple, Bb- Brian eats a banana, Cc- Brian eats a carrot, etc. He will certainly learn his name, learn the letter sounds, and enjoy seeing himself in his phonics book.

Once your toddler has learned the letter sounds, it's time to start blending them together to make words. Here, too, fun must be a vital ingredient. Plain Unifix cubes are a wonderful manipulative for the development of small motor movements in toddlers. By gluing uppercase and lowercase letters to each cube and cover with clear nail polish for durability you can use them to teach reading skills as well. Make several sets of each. Make sets of opposite words, rhyming words, and sight words.

1. These are great for practicing the alphabet. You can link them together using all uppercase, all lowercase or uppercase A-lowercase a.
2. Put each child’s name in a zip lock bag for name practice.
3. You can build words with them.
4. They are great for word families too. Have (a-t) linked together and ask what letter can go in front to make a word.
5. Link together word opposites like, big-small, or long-short.
6. Link together words that rhyme like red-bed, or tall-fall.
7. Practice reading sight words that are on the cubes. Make a tower of correct and incorrect words. Try again on the incorrect words. Try to make a giant tower with all the sight words correct.

By making reading fun with exciting books, games, and manipulatives, toddlers will learn to read naturally. Fill their world with letters and words by decorating their rooms with alphabet posters and shelves of colorful books. My daughter was eager to learn, and she was reading just before her third birthday. But, each child is an individual with their own interests and timetable. The key to teaching toddlers to read is to surround them with fun reading tools, and let them set the their own pace for exploration and reading.

USING UNIFIX CUBES

Preparation: Glue uppercase and lowercase letters and digits 0-9 (or more) to each cube and cover with clear nail polish for durability. Make several sets of each. Make sets of opposite words, rhyming words, sight words and punctuation cubes.
1. These are great for practicing the alphabet. You can link them together using all uppercase, all lowercase or uppercase A-lowercase a.
2. Put each child’s name in a zip lock bag for name practice.
3. You can build words with them.
4. They are great for word families too. Have (a-t) linked together and ask what letter can go in front to make a word.
5. Link together word opposites like, big-small, or long-short.
6. Link together words that rhyme like red-bed, or tall-fall.
7. Practice reading sight words that are on the cubes. Make a tower of correct and incorrect words. Try again on the incorrect words. Try to make a giant tower with all the sight words correct.
8. Build sentences with word and punctuation cubes.
9. Have the children cover the outline of a large letter on an 8”-11” paper.
10. Count the red cubes.
11. Great for measuring objects. How many cubes long is your pencil?
12. You can make color patterns for the children to copy. Example: Red, red, blue, blue, red, red, blue, blue. As students are creating patterns using connecting cubes, teachers can ask them to describe different patterns that they find in different sequences of cubes. Have the children create and describe their own patterns.
13. Practice ordering numbers 0-9.
14. Link the even numbers together. Link the odd numbers together.
15. Start with one cube, next to it put two cubes, then three cubes. (This works best when you make towers that lay flat on their backs)
16. Race to Make a Staircase- Object of the game is to build a staircase. (1 tower of 1 unifix cube, a tower of 2, a tower of 3, ...until a tower of 6. You stand them next to eachother so they look like stairs. This is a partner game. Player 1 rolls the dice and builds a tower of that many cubes. Player 2 does the same. They keep going until someone comletes a staircase of 6. If a player rolls a number they already have, they lose that turn.
17. Race to Make 30. Similar object--using unifix cubes, make a long tower of 30. Each player rolls the dice and adds that number of cubes to the tower. This tower has to stay flat on the ground. Keep going until 30. Partner game.
18. Practice adding or subtracting with the cubes.
A. The teacher will give each child 2 unifix cubes.
B. The teacher will ask the students to write down how many unifix cubes they have on paper (2).
C. The students should then write a + sign below the number 2, like this:

+2
+

D. The teacher will then pass out 3 more unifix cubes to each student.
E. The students will be asked to write down how many unifix cubes they were just given. They should write this number below the number 2 that they just wrote, so that it looks like this:

+2
+3

F. Students should now draw a line under their 3.
G. Now the students should count how many unifix cubes they have together and write this number just below the 3, like this:

+2
+3
----
+5