Teaching the Kinesthetic Learner

I just read a post from a friend who is homeschooling her kids, one of whom is a kinesthetic learner. She asked for ideas on how to help him with reading and writing. A couple of thoughts came to mind...

Sandpaper Letters - These are a Montessori resource designed to help young kids learn the shapes of letters. By tracing the letters with their fingers, they can learn how to form the letter in the correct fashion when they are ready to write. You can create your own or order them online. I suspect you could use them as you would any letter flashcards, playing Memory or Go Fish, putting letters together to spell words, and so forth.

Beads and Cubes - We used beads strung on a short string to work on blending CVC words in my first-grade classroom. Snap cubes work just as well, with students sounding out each letter separately and then snapping the cubes together as they blend the sounds into a word. The colors are visual cues for talking about beginning, middle, and ending sounds.

Word Sorts are great for building sight word vocabulary, talking about parts of speech, and learning spelling rules. You can find books of word sorts or make your own. I usually typed my own, using a piece of paper divided into 16-20 spaces. We sorted for nouns, short vowel sounds, words with "c" followed by "i" or "e," and so on. Usually we used only two types of words in a sort (for a noun sort, we would sort between nouns and verbs; for short vowel sounds, we would use CVC and CVCe words like "hot" and "poke").

Oral Retells are great for building and assessing reading comprehension and vocabulary. Students can retell any story using flannelgraph, simply drawn pictures, or photocopies of the illustrations.

Writing Non-Fiction can be done as a collaborative activity between student(s) and teacher. One year my class researched penguins. Students dictated sentences to me about what they had learned, and together (as a class) we organized the facts into categories and then into a logical sequence to create our own Book About Penguins. They then illustrated the pages and, after so much work with the text, were able to read and re-read the completed class book together.

Sight Word Flash Cards were also a big hit with my first graders, as they tried to read them as fast as they could. I would divide a handful of cards between two students and they would take turns showing the cards and reading them. The person who read all the cards shown to them first would "win." (For this to work, students were ability grouped and given only enough cards to provide a challenge without too much frustration.)

Reading independently can be made more "fun" by using pointer sticks or any creative pointing "tool." (Of course, the best motivator is having books at one's interest level that are not overly difficult to read!)

Educational Wikis - Kindergarten and First Grade

There is a wonderful resource created by teachers for teachers that I have been checking out recently. Chets Creek Elementary School in Jacksonville, FL, is using a wiki to share teaching ideas, assessments, educational links and more. This particular wiki is designed for first grade teachers, specifically those working at Chets Creek, to communicate with each other about what is working in their classrooms and to build continuity within the grade level. Teachers who are not a part of the Chets Creek community are not able to contribute, but can view and download content from the site. At the kindergarten wiki I have downloaded the kindergarten vocabulary "unit of study" (Part One, Part Two) to share with some teacher friends of mine. What a lot of work has gone into this resource! It could easily be adapted to fit other grade levels and is a great template for organizing the teaching of vocabulary.

Kindergarten Writing Resource

Occasionally I get e-mails from the National Writing Project that highlight what's going on concerning writing instruction in the United States. Most recently I followed one of its links to a book review of Teaching Writing in Kindergarten: A Structured Approach to Daily Writing That Helps Every Child Become a Confident, Capable Writer by Randee Bergen (available from Scholastic). Since I am interested in the teaching of writing to young children, I would be interested in knowing if you have used this text as a resource. It sounds like a step-by-step approach with some detailed lesson plans, which would be perfect for a first-year teacher, or perhaps even the veteran who desires to organize her writing "curriculum" in a more logical sequence. You can read the review here.

Poetry Books for Kids

I am always looking for poetry appropriate for kids... that... doesn't... rhyme. With all of their exposure to nursery rhymes and songs, it seems children come to the classroom thinking all poetry must rhyme (which of course is the hardest kind of poetry to write well). So I was delighted recently when I found these two poetry anthologies at my library:

A Writing Kind of Day: Poems for Young Poets, by Ralph Fletcher

A Maze Me: Poems for Girls, by Naomi Shihab Nye

Both volumes contain poems written by adults, but in the voice of a child or preteen. Subjects vary, circling around the experiences of childhood, and are treated honestly with the seriousness of a child. These are not "fluffy" my-brother-picks-his-nose kind of poems; they are heart-felt and resonate with me even as an adult. And they are minefields of metaphors, similes, imagery...all of the things we try to teach kids to do in their work! A few examples:

Memory Loss
by Ralph Fletcher
It's not like losing a wallet,
or even your best friend.

Losing your memory is
losing yourself.

Each sentence Grandma speaks
makes me think of crossing a river.

She steps from word to word
until suddenly

she stops in the middle, disoriented.
Should she go back or keep going?

Mom takes Grandma by the hand
and helps her safely to the other side.


If the Shoe Doesn't Fit
by Naomi Shihab Nye
you take it off
of course you take it off
it doesn't worry you
it isn't your shoe


Supple Cord
by Naomi Shihab Nye
My brother, in his small white bed,
held one end.
I tugged the other
to signal I was still awake.
We could have spoken,
could have sung
to one another,
we were in the same room
for five years,
but the soft cord
with its frayed ends
connected us
in the dark,
gave comfort
even if we had been bickering
all day.
When he fell asleep first
and his end of the cord
dropped to the floor,
I missed him terribly,
though I could hear his even breath
and we had such long and separate lives
ahead.

Reading Interventions: Phonemic Awareness

We often had struggling readers in first grade who came to us with very limited pre-reading skills (concepts of print, phonological awareness, etc.). Our curriculum did not address their needs adequately, so the first grade team worked together with the speech and language therapist to come up with some interventions. This is what it looked like in my classroom:

At the beginning of the year, I grouped students into Guided Reading Groups based on their DIBELS scores and a brief running record (if applicable). I also used the Phonological Awareness Inventory (PAI) developed by my district (based on the Phonemic Awareness Hierarchy of Skills found below). Once I had my groups, I had a pretty good idea of who had the ability to begin guided reading and who needed work on pre-reading skills, specifically phonemic awareness. I used the PAI to determine where to start with the latter students.

Phonemic Awareness Hierarchy of Skills

1. Identifying Words in a Sentence (clap one time for each word in a sentence)
2. Identifying Syllables (clap one time for each syllable)
3. Identifying/recognizing Compound Words
4. Identifying Rhymes
5. Generating Rhymes
6. Blending (I say c-a-t, student can tell me “cat”)
7. Segmenting (I ask what are the sounds in cat, and student can tell me “c-a-t”
8. Phoneme Isolation (What is the first, middle, or end, sound you hear in “cat”)
9. Identifying letter sounds (What sound does this letter make?)

I created tabs for each of the above skills in a 3-ring binder, and then organized activities behind each tab, using ideas from the resources listed below.

Resources:
Auditory Processing Activities. Copyright 1991 by ECL Publications. www.eclpublications.com.

Irresistible Sound-matching sheets and Lessons That Build Phonemic Awareness, by J. Wagstaff. Copyright 2001 by Scholastic.

Phonemic Awareness in Young Children: A Classroom Curriculum, by Marilyn Jager Adams, Barbara R. Foorman, Ingvar Lundberg, and Terri Beeler. Copyright 1998 by Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.

The Phonological Awareness Kit: Primary, by Carolyn Robertson and Wanda Salter. Copyright 1995 by Linguisystems. http://www.linguisystems.com/itemdetail.php?id=28#

Word Identification Strategies: Phonics from a New Perspective, by Barbara J. Fox. Copyright 2000 by Prentice Hall.

Each time I met with a group of students (2-5 in each group), I would spend no more than 10 minutes on 2 or 3 phonemic awareness activities. They were presented as “games” and done at a quick pace. I took brief notes (30 sec) after we finished. If I still had their attention after 10 minutes, we would do some work with a few sight words, work on concepts of print, or write a simple book together. The next day we would review the phonemic awareness activities from the day before, and if each student had mastered the skill, we would move on. If not, we would try other activities related to the same skill.

After nine months of focused work on phonemic awareness, collaboration with para-educators and special education teachers (in addition to regular classroom teaching), we could see much growth in each student! Those students who were especially motivated and had involved parents made even more progress. We saw several students excel in second grade, and a few that exited the special education program after another year of work. This was amazing, considering they were far behind their peers at the beginning of first grade.

Additional Notes:
It was not unusual to spend several months on Blending or Segmenting activities.

We didn't get stuck on the rhyming sections. Rhyming is not the only indicator of reading readiness, so after I introduced it and worked with it, we moved on.

I did not wait until the last step of the hierarchy to introduce phonics. Often, my para-ed would work on letter identification using flashcards and matching or BINGO games. We also worked on sight words throughout the year and created pattern books so the children were “reading” even as they worked on their pre-reading development.

Don't Let the Pigeon Write This Book

I love Mo Willems' writing. He has a number of picture books out that are just fabulous. Not only is he a creative illustrator, but his writing is imbued with his wonderful sense of humor (the dry kind, like mine!). One of his popular books is Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus.

Well, I just stumbled onto his blog tonight and found this inspiring post! It led me to imagine what the pigeon would find if he came to my school... Perhaps the principal's office, the swingset, the donuts in the staff lounge, the piano in the music room, the mailbox in front of the school...

So how's this for a writing activity?

Part One: Read a couple of the pigeon books by Mo Willems. Discuss what the pigeon wants in each book and how he goes about trying to get it. Talk about how Willems ends each story. Point out the talking bubbles or discuss quotation marks as a way to show that someone is talking. Take notes on chart paper for students to reference when they write their stories.

Part Two: Zerox and cut out a copy of the pigeon. Take photos of him sitting in various places in your school (this could be done by the teacher ahead of time or together as a class). Print the photos and distribute one to each student, or to each pair of students. Explain that this picture needs to be included somewhere in their story, either at the beginning, middle, or end. Model using one of the pictures as inspiration for a story: Think out loud as you construct an idea for a story: what does the pigeon want? Show students how you would begin your story (for younger kids, you might want to demonstrate writing the whole story). Then let the writing begin!

Of course, you will want to establish a teaching focus before beginning this lesson. Will you emphasize persuasive writing? Story form? Quotation marks? You also need to have a clear idea of what you want the final product to look like: individual stories? a class book? Think about how your students do their best writing: individually, in pairs, in table groups, or as a whole class? Perhaps you'll want to give out several photos rather than just one to each group.

If I were to do this in a first grade class (first half of the school year), I would take the whole class on a "field trip" around the school and have them give me suggestions on where to photograph the pigeon. We would then return to the classroom and go through the writing process together, crafting the story on sentence strips and putting them in a sequence that made sense. Then I would type up the story with the photographs and bind it as a class book to be enjoyed by everyone. The finished book would go home with each student, and once it had made it through each household, we would put it into our classroom library.

Since writing (and reading) can be so tedious for beginning first graders, this would give students an opportunity to contribute to the writing process and be creative without having to worry about the physical act of writing (we would of course be practicing this skill at other times). Also, once students have written a book together, they are immediately invested in learning how to read it!

Retells in Kindergarten

The use of conversation is so important in students' writing development. Younger students especially benefit from talking about stories and ideas before actually writing them down. And because the physical act of writing is particularly demanding for these students, focused discussions can be considering a form of pre-writing.

We do a lot of retells in first grade as a way to teach sequencing (beginning, middle, end), plot development, and other elements of stories. Recently I found this post describing work in a kindergarten classroom around a retell. The book they read is called The Wolf's Chicken Stew by Keiko Kasza. My favorite part about this lesson is the use of felt characters to orally retell the story. Students can do the oral retell as part of their "choices" during the literacy block. What a wonderful idea! If you click here, you can see a video of one retelling using the felt materials.

As you can see, the teachers took the students through multiple readings and oral retells of the text on to focused mini-lessons and eventually writing down their own retells. The writing samples given show remarkable work for a kindergartener!

Note: If you wish to re-create this series of lessons in your classroom, keep in mind that these kindergarten teachers used their students' interest in this story to prompt the writing and retelling activities. You may have a more appropriate picture book in your classroom that your students gravitate to that would be more suited to these activities!