Mrs. Brooks'
Round-Up News
2002 - 2003
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Words We Are Learning
Phonemic Awareness Activities For Kindergartners
How to play with words and sounds during everyday life
...in the car, in the bath, waiting for appointments, in line, etc.
Tips for parents from Mrs. Brooks
Do you know why reading to your child is important?
50 Fun Ways to Improve Reading
Here are some guidelines to help your child learn to write.
from the United States Department of Education
Guys Read is a literacy program
to connect boys with books they will want to read.
Mrs. Whitehead made "word family" lists.
See how many words your child can read.
The Punctuation Song by Mrs. Whitehead
Ridley's Early Childhood Education Program is a Winner!


Round-Up News

Nov 27 - Mrs. Brooks' Grandparent's Day Photo Album
After you enjoy the pictures, please sign the guestbook.
The children love to know who has stopped by!

Our grandparents listened to us sing some songs about the "short i sound" and spell the words "in, is, if, and it." We sang songs about turkeys and Thanksgiving. Then our grandparents sang and acted out "The Turkey Pokey" with us. Our Reading Teacher, Mrs. Brooks, read a book by Laura Numeroff that was 2 stories in one. She first read What Grandmas Do Best then flipped the book over and read What Grandpas Do Best. She showed our grandparents how the children make predictions and guess words by looking at the pictures. Our grandparents helped us write a sentence and draw a picture about things we like to do together. At snack time, the children walked around with trays of cookies and other snacks to serve our grandparents. Our teachers let us carry the drinks to our grandparents, too! To end our day, we sang some Grandparent's Day songs and gave them a Grandparent's Day present we made with our handprint. Thanks to all our grandparents and special friends for attending! It was a memorable day for all of us!

Nov 19
Segmentation game:
I will play another listening game, using the "telephones."
1. Say to group: "I am going to say a word. Listen closely! You must take off the first sound and say the new word.
2. Say the word "cat" and ask the children to repeat the word.
3. Say the word again, but this time leave of the /c/ sound. Ask children to repeat the new word. What word do they hear?
4. "You are right!" the new word is "at!"

Other words to segment:

ice (mice, dice)
is (his)
age (cage, page, wage)
old (bold, cold, fold, gold, hold, mold)
ace (face, lace, pace)
ox (box, fox)
it (hit, bit, sit, pit, quit)
all (ball, call, fall, mall)

Nov 12 - Auditory Discrimination
Using musical "Boomwhackers" (two lengths of plastic, like paper towel tubes), we listened carefully to the sounds and practiced noticing when the sounds were the same and when they were different. After we practiced noticing differences in sounds, Mrs. Brooks then said pairs of words, such as BIG-BIG and BIG-DIG and DIG-DOG. Our job was to listen to the word pairs and notice if the words were the same or different. Once we got good at it, she helped us to notice WHERE in the word the differences were. Once we guessed if it was beginning, middle, or end, she showed us the words written on her board. We told her which letters were different.

Nov 6 - Phonemic Awareness
Using three boxes drawn on cards (called Elkonin boxes), we counted the number of different sounds in a word. For example, the word "bug" has three sounds: /b/ /u/ and /g/. We didn't talk about letters, but about sounds. (The word "teach" has three sounds. Try it.) Our job was to slide a marker onto a box as we stretched out a word and said a sound. We learned to notice that words are made up of separate sounds.

October 7
Mrs. Brooks helped us write in our journals and introduced the words "was" and "it."

September 30
Mrs. Brooks helped the children write in their journals and introduced the ending "ing." She pointed out that Mrs. King has "ing" in her name!

September 23
Mrs. Brooks helped us write in our journals and introduced the words "is" and "and." Brandon pointed out he has the word "and" in the middle of his name!

September 16
Mrs. Brooks helped us write in our journals this week. She introduced the words "I" and "a."

September 9
Mrs. Brooks read a book called Chrysanthemum to the whole group. It is a story about names. Then we talked about our names and wrote in our journals.

August 26
Dear Kindergartners of 2002-2003,
I can't wait to meet you! Mrs. Whitehead and I love to come to Reading Round-Up three times every week. Our group has a blue table with new matching blue chairs! We will play with letters, words, sentences, and stories this year. We will have fun learning together! I know I will need help with remembering to set my Round-Up Timer and learning all your names. So please come ready to help me.
Mrs. Brooks, Reading Teacher

Mrs. Brooks' Round-Up Group 2000 - 2001
Mrs. Brooks' Round-Up Group 2001 - 2002


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