Racing Into Kindergarten

This was a very good article about the importance of picture book read alouds.  There is more to a read aloud than just reading the book. You must make sure the book you choose is appropriate to the developmental age of the child you are reading to.  Reading these picture books at the right level for the children engages them and gains their interest.  This article also tells you to make sure that you have a variety of read alouds so that you may capture every child’s interest. Read Alouds are the most effective way to motivate a child to read and it helps them to broaden their horizon with new vocabulary.

I plan to take alot from this article and put it in effect in my classroom. I will start by researching some of the best picture book read alouds for beginning Kindergarteners and make sure to get multiple interest levels of books.  I want my students begging for more and I am on the right track to make this happen!

Welcome to Team Blankenship’s class blog!  You can check here daily to see what has been going on in our class during the day.  You will find the Kindergarteners thoughts about the days events here.

We look forward to sharing how we grow and what we learn throughout the year!

Today we learned about Picture Book Read Alouds.  I thought I already knew quite a bit about this subject but there is so much more to know.  There are so many cool things that you can do with a picture book.  One of the things that I learned that would really benefit the kids and keep them engaged is Reader’s Theater.  The students are able to be involved in the story. 

There have been many new ideas addressed in this workshop and my mind is spinning with ideas to put into place.

This article was very informative.  It gave many ideas of ways that you could attain books to build your classroom library.  It also told ways to organize this library once you have attained the books for it.  I was very intrigued by the many different ways it gave to establish reading with your students once your library is set up.

It also gives some very good advice that most people don’t think about until after quite an accumulation of books have been made.  That advice is to keep track of the books you have by using some sort of a database so you will know what is there and what you have to pull from for lessons.  This will also make checking books out to your students a bit easier.

I plan on taking these ideas back into my classroom and implementing them immediately. I will begin by cataloging my books to see what I have in my library and what I need more of.  I will then organize my books by genre and authors.  This will make my library system flow easily and allow for the children to check out my books and for me to access them easily.

This is my first post in which I am learning to blog.  This is a great learning experience for me and will be great once I have met this challenge.  I hope to be no longer technically challenged and can help my students feel the same way!

This article talks about how important it is to have read alouds.  Children become engaged, especially when you read in character, and it motivates them to want to be able to do the same.  I also love the way this article says that read alouds should continue even in the older grades.  This helps build students vocabulary and shows them that although they are getting older that the teacher is not just giving an assignment, she truly has a love for reading and wants to continue to share that love with her students.  Very beneficial!

I will bring higher level thinking into my read alouds.  I will use picture books and go into a discussion with them to enhance and broaden their vocabulary.  I will have them add these new words to their personal dictionary and make a vocabulary page in which the students will write the word and draw a picture to show its meaning.  I teach Kindergarten so this is bringing it down to their level.

This article is very informative and makes one stop and realize how much more reading was done for enjoyment back 10 to 20 years ago.  In this new era children have more things to do that are presented in a more engaging way. It is our job now to make reading more engaging to children today.  We need to celebrate their reading and show them that reading is the cool thing to do.  I love the way that this article suggests the many ways for this to be done.  As they say it takes a village to raise a child well it also takes a village to motivate our children into reading once again. 

One way that I will implement this into my classroom will be to bring an older student or guest reader into read to the class at times.  I believe once that they see reading is cool to an older student this will make it that way to them as the students tend to look up to their older peers and view them as their role models.

(Christina Blankenship)

This was a very insightful article, one that I quickly bookmarked to reference often.  Bruce Lansky makes it clear how to use poetry to engage your students and to make them love reading.  I love the way that he gives you ideas to get your students actively involved in this process.  The ideas of the poetry and when it is best to use the specific poems is great and will be very helpful in my attempt to start the new school year by implementing poetry into every school day.

I intend to begin everyday with a poem. I will use echoing the poem to get children involved in the process. I have also started to search my classroom library to ensure that I have a genre of poetry books represented.  I will also have poems laminated and posted throughout my room to be used in my write the room center.

(Christina Blankenship)

The article I read was “Providing Books and Other Print Materials for Classroom and School Libraries”!  This article was very insightful and stated something that I already knew, which is the fact that there should be funding for all classroom, school, and town libraries.  Every library should contain the sufficient number of books for those using that particular library.  Each library should contain books from each of the genres.  It also states the number of books that you should have for each library according to the number of users for that library.  This was very good information to know to keep the library up to par with where it should be.

Excellent article that we should show our legislators the research that has been done and what they should allot us to have for a premium education for our students.

I have already begun to put this article to use in my classroom. It will help me to have a better school year. I have begun by loading the books I have in my class library into a database.  By doing this I will see what books I have and what I need to make sure that I have my genres represented and that the children have access to a good balance of literature.  I have also learned of places that I might look for inexpensive books to add to my library collection. This was an awesome article!

Christina Blankenship

Today’s workshop has my mind spinning. I have so many great ideas and a huge to do list!  This was very insightful and I am so excited about setting up an awesome classroom library that I know some of that excitement will rub off onto my students.