by Alice Nine | In My Classroom, Literacy |
Chameleons. Fascinating creatures, changing their color based on surroundings. Words are sorta, kinda, a little bit like that, changing their spelling or pronunciation just a bit based on their sentence surroundings. Here is an example. She didn’t have much hope...
by Alice Nine | In My Classroom, Literacy |
Think to Spell™, a key learning routine of Johnny Can Spell, is a strategy for sounding out words in both reading and writing. In brief, it begins with oral language and moves to written language. The student isolates a word he speaks or hears. Then in an...
by Alice Nine | A9 Journal |
Monday. School is over and the four boys are pulling on their coats, hats, and shoes to walk through our backyards to their house. EM already has her hat, coat, and shoes on. She stands quietly beside me and in her sweet, barely-three voice asks, “Gramma can I...
by Alice Nine | In My Classroom, Literacy |
Stand up. Hands up. Pair up with phonograms. Here’s how we do it. Each student is given a mini-phonogram card. Students stand up, put a hand up, and pair up (Kagan) with another student by putting their hands together. The paired students share with each other...
by Alice Nine | A9 Journal |
Each year as Christmas approaches, I always want to have the kids in my class make their own Nativity. But the ideas I have always are too elaborate and we just don’t have enough time with Christmas play practices. This year, though, I found a really cute,...
by Alice Nine | A9 Journal, For Fun |
For our preschool class, I try to come up with a story craft that is something they can easily hold. They really seem to like those the most. Sometimes it has a handle, sometimes it’s on a craft stick or slips over their hand or fingers. Sometimes it fastens on...
by Alice Nine | A9 Journal |
We were well into the morning session of the first day of professional development. It was a summer Monday, kinda laid back but with an undercurrent of eagerness–the kind of eagerness teachers have at the beginning of a new year. Most of the 30 plus...
by Alice Nine | A9 Journal |
Two weeks ago in Sunday School class, I was told, the kids had tons of fun acting out the Triumphal Entry. They even had a “real” donkey, thanks to Jim and John. (Even though it wasn’t Palm Sunday yet, Jim and John asked to tell the story early on...
by Alice Nine | A9 Journal, In My Classroom, Literacy |
A couple weeks ago I was going through some binders on a top shelf in my office, trying to purge in order to have space and stay current. Anyway, I ran across three black binders filled with my transparencies of the pages of the Grammar Notebook. Years ago, during my...
by Alice Nine | A9 Journal |
March is National Reading Awareness Month. March is also the month when we change our clocks, springing ahead for Daylight Saving Time. I love early morning daylight hours, and every spring I grumble about moving my clock ahead an hour. I hate losing that hour. So...
Connect With Me