September - November Literacy Events
Carol Vaage's Classroom

Classroom Environment:

My classroom is full of books! I mean literally - like a small town library. My whole teaching approach revolves around literacy and an emergent curriculum. I believe that for literacy to happen, there needs to be a literature rich environment. Children need examples of good literature to see how story works, how authors construct story, for vocabulary development, for vicarious experiences, and to develop imagination. Marie Whelan, my principal, said of me once, "The children just learn to read through osmosis." Well, almost, anyway. 

I read stories every day. I have one teacher selection, and one child-selected story. The children select from the one sloped bookshelf in our gathering place - our story corner. I keep over 100 books arranged face front for the children to easily select. The books are changed periodically and the children hate to see any removed... For my Christmas collection, we had to vote to see which books could be removed so we could clear two shelves for the 70 odd books for the season. I always keep their most favourite books out and available. Another place for them to select books is from the Floor Tubs. I have tubs of collections lining the edge of the carpet as a boundary. Franklin books, Magic School Bus, Robert Munsch books, Clifford series, Berenstain Bears, Arthur and D.W., teeny tiny books, and Search and Find books. Children can come to look at any of these books any time during the day.

We call a book that is being reread an "Old Favourite". At the beginning of the year, the children used to complain, "We heard that one before...", but now they smile and sit back contentedly, saying, "Ah, an old favourite." It's a very clear distinction in attitude towards reading and show me the growth  of developing a love of literature. 

In addition to the two stories (teacher/child) selected, I also have Shared Reading time. I have two tubs of over 100 easy readers that I've sorted into rudimentary levels. Since the beginning of school, I will select 1-5 of these stories on a daily basis. Our routine? First I read the story aloud, next we do several repetitions of "Shared Reading", then the children will read it aloud to me. From that point on, they are Independent Readers to be read on their own, to an adult, or in Paired Reading. 

Occasionally, I will choose a poem or chant to be developed instead of an Independent Reader. The children keep copies of these in their Poetry Binders.

Fiction and non-fiction are both read. By the second week of school, I introduce an non-fiction book explaining that this is different from other books they may have heard. This book will give them information, but it does not read like a story. I explain that it may be hard for them to sit still for this type of book for the first or second time, but after that, they will love them, as all children who are curious about the world do. It is not uncommon for me to read a non-fiction book for 20-25 minutes and children complain when I bookmark it to complete it another day.

One bookshelf is arranged with my favourite authors to make it easy to do Author Studies. Thus far, the children have become familiar with all of Paul Galdone's books - he is the best when it comes to the traditional Folk Tales. The children's favourite was an obscure copy I found called The Greedy Old Man. They asked for that story over and over again. Other authors that children have become familiar with are Jan Brett, Marcus Pfister, Paulette Bourgeois, Norman Bridwell, Robert Munsch, Marc Brown, and Kevin Henkes.

Another shelf I have is alphabetized by Title for the traditional tales and the various versions. We read quite a few versions of Cinderella throughout November and December, and I have a few more waiting to read in January. This collection of books makes it easy for me to select books at a moment's notice to enhance children's learning from an emerging interest.

The remainder are organized by type and topic with both fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and concept books. For instance, I have one section with multicultural tales. I have a huge collection of books for animals, insects, dinosaurs, the sea, plants, body, space, birds, and holidays. In addition I have human interest stories - I call them my "love" stories because they perpetuate the good values of humanity. This collection contains books like Koala Lou by Mem Fox, The Giving Tree  by Shel Silverstein, etc. It was just too difficult for me to remember author names or topics to retrieve them when I needed them, so I created my own section. The most difficult collection is of course, the Big Books. If anyone has a simple way to store and use these, I would love to hear of it!

Other book collections in the room are my Teacher Resources, Parent Resource Books, Anthologies of Stories, Nursery Rhymes and Poetry, and Music books.

Writing:

• Writing materials are always available in the Writing Centre. This area is beside our wonderful window with a comfy bench just below it. There are three sections to this area. One is a drawing table - which may not seem like an "official" writing centre area, but when you consider how drawing is representing, it belongs. This table has a mirror at the children's seated eye level, so they can watch themselves and the class reflection while they work here. I have a basket of fine-line black markers, pastels, and coloured markers available at this table. Children are making great headway at their representational skills.

• The second area is the supply shelf. Here I have four shelves full of wonderful "business" paper - account ledgers, invoice books, sales slips, daytimers, journals, stationery, envelopes, stamps, cards, pads of all sizes. Children will come here to select pieces to incorporate special items into their dramatic play.

• The third area is the table groupings. We work at these tables for all Journal activities or other assigned tasks for large group work, like working on their Independent Reading "Keep Books" or "Take-Home Books" (a collaborative project for all four kindergarten classes in our school).

• Journals. This is always the last section of the writing component to be developed in my classroom. Children need the exploration of materials - the writing implements - see what they can/cannot do; the writing materials - what is good for what writing; and the exploration of expressing themselves in a risk-free environment. Children need to know that they will not be expected to print/write/encode print at adult standards. They need to know that writing is an emergent skill that needs to be practiced and developed over time. They need to know that "handwriting" is different from "writing" which is the expression of ideas.

• Handwriting is a drawing skill requiring good fine motor control. Children entering kindergarten come in such a wide range of experience with writing. Some have had very little interest and thus little skill, others are accomplished. I do not believe that all children should be working "on the same page". I give children the first few months to explore, to become comfortable with the writing process, and with the idea of how to make particular letters. By the end of December, all children are ready to move to the next stage of encoding in print - but at varying levels of skill. I believe children should learn the correct way to form letters, capital letters first because they are easier to print and form, but I do not think it is realistic to expect all children to attend to lines and spaces and uniform production of letters. This is covered in the Grade 1 curriculum. 

Phonemic Awareness:

• Phonemic Awareness tub: This is a resource I collected and created over the past two years and is made up of large clear plastic envelopes with the letters of the alphabet. Inside are samples of the sounds that the letter makes. For example, the letter S has pictures and small items that start with the /s/ sound. The letter C has pictures and items for /s/ and /k/ sounds. Digraphs have their own envelopes as well. I use this resource orally for practise and for game playing.

• Cues within the natural-occurring Literacy within our day. My most frequent words are, "I wonder what this says..." and prompting with some sounds... I use this strategy for books I select, for signs in the environment and on field trips, for posters and charts. I rarely supply the word when asked, but rather, the strategy of looking at the visual clues and the phonemes to try and make sense of the word. Phonemic awareness happens everyday, casually and intentionally.

• Specific sounds are taught and practiced when a topic emerges that is a perfect medium for that sound. For example, /j/ and /p/ were taught during the Halloween season for Jack-o-lanterns and Pumpkins. /s/ was emphasized during the Spider interest.

Oral Language:

My classroom is organized to enhance oral language development. Every center is prepared so that a minimum of 6 children can be engaged simultaneously. I believe that children construct knowledge through social interaction and mediation of ideas. My classroom is noisy most of the time - the exception? Story time!

Children are prompted to make independent choices and to be responsible for those choices. Natural consequences and social mediation occur continually. For the first couple of months, children came to me to help solve their problems, but now, with much coaching, rehearsing, and guidance, they are able to talk things out with each other. My questions are, "Have you talked to that person about this?", "How are you going to solve this problem?", "What might you say to change this?" This oral language development is critical to the foundation of an independent yet coherent community of learners. Learning to express orally ideas, feelings, and situations is fundamental to written expression. Because the children are coming from a variance of experience and backgrounds, this oral language serves to bond and create a common language of mutual understanding. 

Pedagogically, I believe that the oral language needs to be in place before success in decoding and encoding in print can take place. Much like the baby who plays with sounds and phonemes to make sense of oral language, the kindergarten child needs to play with oral language to make sense of the written language. And much like the baby who needs to be surrounded with examples of oral language, the kindergarten child needs to be surrounded with examples of written language - books, stories, messages, meaningful print.

Emergent Curriculum:

Unlike most kindergarten teachers, I do not have a set agenda for the year other than the process goals and prescribed learning outcomes set out by Alberta Learning. The topics that we will study remain a mystery until they emerge from each classroom community. I have seen time and again the amazing learning that occurs when children have the opportunity to dive deeply into a topic instead of skimming lightly through many topics. I wish I could say that I knew what our major topic was for this year... But we have had a few smaller topics that we have perused thus far.

The children initially began to be interested in "Bugs" with the wasps flying around at school start-up, but did not fully engage in the topic until just about the time that the ground started to freeze and the bugs disappeared. The Spider topic became a focus during the Halloween period and our student teacher, Johanna, developed delightful literacy and hands-on experiences for them. She culminated the topic by helping to purchase a pink-toed tarantula that the children lovingly named, Pearl.

Another strong topic of interest was "Pumpkins". We carved pumpkins, drew, painted, stuffed, measured, planted, rotted and modeled pumpkins. The children chose to make a Pumpkin House - big enough for 8 children to sit in. Further down, I detailed our current Pumpkin Project - the "Pumpkin Documentary". I think I can lay claim to being the only kindergarten in the world doing pumpkins in December. We decorated the Pumpkin House to make it the Winter House, and the pumpkins all wore Santa hats sitting in the snow (well, fabric stuffing tucked around the pumpkin base). We ran out of time to finish the documentary before Christmas, so we need to wrap it up the first thing in January.

Other miscellaneous, short-term topics include leaves, germs/body/health, bats, and music.