Beginning to write and read with Letter Stories

I came across a resource last week that I would love to try out-- but alas, I have no pre-readers to try it out on!  Jill Pike's Printing With Letter Stories  ($19, Institute for Excellence in Writing) is a set of reproducible, ready-to-go lessons for teaching letters.  Each letter is introduced with a funny picture and a "story" (one or two lines) that cleverly helps the student remember how to form the letter as well as a sound that it represents.  From the IEW website:  Example: The letter c is the happy letter, because he is a cookie that someone bit: c, c, cookie! The letter o is the sad letter, because he is a cookie that nobody bit. He says, “Ah,” (short o sound) “nobody took a bite out of me!”

The little stories in this program remind me of Times Tales, a resource for for memorizing multiplication facts.  One of my students said Times Tales made the facts "sticky," so they would stay in her brain.  I suspect Letter Stories will make learning to read "sticky" for many currently frustrated children.

Printing with Letter Stories includes a lesson for each new letter, and after every few letters there is a review.  Initially, the letters are copied into squares-- which I think is a super idea, much easier than trying to form the letters on a line or a group of lines.  The lesson plans include introducing secondary sounds and capital letters, and there are games along the way. By lesson 20, the student begins copying simple words (and since he knows the sounds of the words, he can easily read them), and later transitions into writing on lines.  By the end of the book (lesson 45), students are writing complete sentences.

This resource is not necessary for every child, of course-- many learn their letters and sounds effortlessly simply by being read to-- hearing Dr Seuss' ABC over and over, for example-- and have little trouble writing the letters once their hands can hold a pencil.  However, for those who could use some fun infused into their early literacy endeavors, I heartily recommend this resource!

As a follow-up to this program, I would advise checking out Reading Reflex, a wonderful hands-on program which will introduce sounds represented by two or more letters, words with two or more syllables, and longer stories for your child to read.  The two programs combined are less than $40 and, in my opinion, take a child from complete beginner through at least the second grade reading/writing level, if not further.

Teaching with Games

I came across a helpful resource last month, but am just now finding time to post.  (Ah, the holidays!) This is another offering from the people at the Institute for Excellence in Writing-- aka IEW-- and I have already used it with my tutoring students as well as my Sunday morning Bible class.  It's that versatile!  And, no, this is not a paid or compensated endorsement.

The book is called Teaching With Games, by Lori Verstegen, and can be purchased either as a book only or as a dvd workshop course with the book and video examples of teachers using the games with actual students. I'm cheap, so I just bought the book.  It has reproducible games and templates for customizing your own games, plus ideas for easy "no-prep" games.  Granted, many of them are old standards like Bingo, Hangman, and Jeopardy, but having them all together, with ideas for using them in the various subjects, is very helpful for teachers like me who get stuck in a rut.  It's like reading a recipe book when you find yourself making the same dinners over and over: sometimes you just need to be reminded that other meals exist.

One of the first games I tried was "Fun Times" with my math kids.  It's pretty simple-- the game board is a one-page reproducible table with columns labeled 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 across the top, and rows labeled 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 down the side.  Within the table are the products of the numbers; e.g., where 4 and 7 intersect, the square is labeled 28, and the square where 9 and 6 intersect is labeled 54. Also, some squares are grey and others are left white.  To play the game, students use two dice that have been modified so that one has the numbers 7-10 and the other has the numbers 2-7.  The player rolls the dice, and multiplies the resulting numbers, placing his marker on the appropriate square on the board.  The second player then goes.  If he rolls a number that has already been played, he can replace it with his own marker if it is not a gray "safe" square.  The object of the game is to get four squares in a row (like Bingo, in any direction).  Any markers can be used-- I used pennies and covered half of them with pieces of paper to distinguish the two players.  The game is easy, fast, and my students enjoy it more than regular multiplication drills.

My Bible class has also recently played Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune as suggested in the book.  They loved both, and for Jeopardy I was able to reuse game cards I had made for a previous board game that we had all grown tired of.  Funny how a different format can renew their excitement over old material!