Reading Aloud: “Kick It Up a Notch” By Dawn Little Founder, Links to Literacy Do you read aloud to your children every day, but wonder what you can do to “kick it up a notch?” Reading aloud is a wonderful opportunity to share a few quality minutes with our children snuggling and enjoying a book. But, did you know you can easily transform a read aloud into an instructional moment with very little prep and...
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I’ve just started looking at preschools for my daughter to attend next fall. They all have such structured schedules. Aren’t kids allowed to just play anymore? The concern revealed from your question is justified. There are hundreds of books on the market today that discuss the importance of play in a child’s social, emotional and physical development. As children engage in free play less often and are less active, a wide range of problems...
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If you want your child to write, motivate him with a designated area and his own special tools and materials. Put together a “Writer’s Box” with the items listed below and designate a quiet place with a good solid writing surface somewhere in the house as, “The Writer’s Corner.” Stock the Box and/or Corner with items such as: 1) Markers, crayons, colored pencils and pens (kids love writing in pen probably because they never get...
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I think that it is very important that parents and teachers of reading embrace the idea that the more strategies a beginning reader has, the faster the learning process will be. To quote from the Journal of Educational Research: The most convincing rationale for teaching sight words is that if they are well selected they will, because of their high frequency in printed materials, have high utility at all levels of reading development. Furthermore,...
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My third grade daughter loves school and works hard. She does well once she gets familiar with a task and understands the expectations, but new tasks are difficult for her. At this time in the school year she has now been given a new task. She has to write a report and is very excited because she got to choose her own subject to write about, howler monkeys. But she is having a real problem getting...
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