Back to School Readiness—For Kindergarteners (and Educators!)

I recently posted on the NFtSP Facey Face page that I thought it was bit premature to see Back to School advertisements in July. To my horror, many people responded that their report back to work days were in early August. Yikes!



Perhaps because our district tortured the children into Bikram-hot learning through late June, we don’t report back for another few weeks. Mind you, August is often spent having my own internal "I’m-ready-I’m-so-not-ready-to-go-back" ping-pong battle in my mind. August is typically educator purgatory in that you are finally relaxed but there’s this nagging feeling it’s all coming to an end soon (insert collective tiny violin playing from people with jobs that only allow two weeks a year of vacay). I don’t need to tell educators that when you are instrumental in shaping the young minds of the future, you need the summer to recharge for that kind of societal pressure. I see your tiny violin, traditional workers, and I raise you a symphony of miniature violins that you aren't responsible for whether or not future generations can get along with each other and be educated, well-rounded lifetime learners.



Anyhoo…I digress. The real point of today's post is back-to-school readiness. Today, I was taking one of my daily walks with my lazy dogs and I ran into a neighbor who is sending her little one to Kindergarten this year. She was asking for advice about the transition, wondering if he was “ready.” So, I thought I’d whip up a little list for parents of activities and routines they can build into their schedules in August to prepare. If anyone else has suggestions for Kindergarten parents sending their little ones for the first time, feel free to add them in the comments section.



Tips for Transition to Kindergarten



1) Get into a “Kindergarten Routine” in the month leading up to Kindergarten entry. This means establishing a morning routine, an evening routine, and a bedtime routine.



2) Assess your morning routine: How similar is your current routine from the Kindergarten program your child will be entering? Are you already in a Pre-K program that is 5 days a week, from 8:00-2:30? Is your child entering a morning Kindergarten program and you have been going to afternoon Preschool? The more similar your routine is now, the easier the transition. If your child is unaccustomed to getting up and being ready by 8am, and their new Kindergarten starts at 8, start practicing being ready by that time now.



3) Evening routine: Even in Kindergarten, your child will begin to have homework if they are in a traditional program.* It is important to begin establishing a “Homework Time” in your evening routine, separate from the “bath-book-bed” routine. Since they will have homework the rest of their school careers, explore when works for your family (e.g. After dinner, before bath? After school before dinner?). During that time, you can play a game that involves sharing or turn-taking, or if you really want to, buy a Preschool workbook and do one page together. The game may be better than the worksheets though, because it reinforces social skills of losing gracefully, not cheating, taking turns, etc. They will get plenty of worksheets in their school careers.



4) Bedtime routine: Have a consistent bedtime, and think about how your child will probably not be having naps in a traditional Kindergarten. If you haven’t already, wean them off naps in the summer time (I know, it’s not fun, but it will help in the long run).



5) Self-Help Skills: There is no potty training in Kindergarten. Wiping is important. No one will wipe your child’s tush in Kindergarten. Also, teach your child how to zip, button, and tie/Velcro (added bonus, improving fine motor skills). Teach “practical life skills” like pouring, opening food containers and drink boxes, etc.



6) Anticipatory Guidance for you and your child: About a month before entry, read getting ready for Kindergarten books (e.g. Mrs. Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten, Kindergarten Rocks!, The Night before Kindergarten). Also, know that your child may “fall apart” at home for the first 2-3 months of Kindergarten, and this is typical, especially for kids unaccustomed to long days of instruction. They hold it together all day and then when they come home, they lose it. Acknowledge that you see how hard they are working to be a student all day.



7) Reinforce Reading Readiness: If your child went to a play-based preschool and didn’t get much exposure to pre-reading skills, don’t worry. Reading is supposed to be taught in early elementary. It’s harder to teach social skills and behavioral control skills to a kid who is reading than it is to teach reading to a kid with lagging social skills and behavioral control. Remember, kids have to be able to listen to the teacher and control impulses in order to profit from instruction!



You can reinforce reading skills at home by developing print awareness, playing simple phonetic awareness games, and practicing reading comprehension skills during story time:



• Point out environmental print (e.g. stop signs, names of businesses, menus)

• Point out that print occurs on different surfaces (paper, computer screens, billboards, books, iPads) and make a distinction between pictures and print.

• When you read, put your finger on each word you are reading, so they can make a connection that print corresponds to speech.

• Read nursery rhymes, sing songs, and clap along with the rhythm.

• Play games with words that sound alike as you experience them in everyday life (e.g. We’re passing Mike’s Bikes, that’s a funny name because they sound alike!)

• Demonstrate how sounds blend together in familiar words (e.g. Let’s sign your name on Grandma’s card, T-o-m --- Tom)

• Play a game where the goal is to find objects with names that begin with a certain initial sound. This is a great game for walks or car rides.

• Play clapping games and clap with each distinct sounds (e.g. “C-a-t is a three clap word; so is fam-i-ly”)

• Practice attention to stories by reading short stories, high interest books, and reading the same favorites over and over

• Connect stories and titles by predicting the story from the title. Ask your child to make predictions about stories and follow simple plots by asking questions while reading (“What’s going to happen now?”)

• Allow children to retell stories



One final note about readiness: As a school psychologist, I often console “criers” on the first day of Kindergarten. It’s about equal whether I am consoling a parent or a Kindergartner! Your child will take your cues too. If you are emotional and crying as they enter the class, they will tend to be emotional and turn into little barnacles you have to pry off your leg. Model calmness and a positive attitude! Also, don’t be surprised if they are fine the first day and then after a few days or weeks, they start to have difficulties. If I could interpret their tears on days 3 or 4, they would probably be, “OMG, I have to keep coming back every day???” They will get used to it. If the transition difficulties are ongoing, consult with your child’s teacher or the school psychologist.



Oh, and its worth noting for all you educators and school psychologists going back to work this month (or very soon!) that you may want to start weaning yourself off of naps and getting back in a regular schedule too! Here are some tips for educators making that transition back to work from the archives. Of these tips, I find B2S shopping to be the most therapeutic. ;)



*Kindergarten seems to be the new 1st grade, so it may be more academics than you anticipate. I think this is why there are kids rolling around on the rug during whole group lessons and kids start resisting pencil-paper work—they’re not always developmentally ready for it. The main skills I would hope they learn in Kinder are all social-emotional (e.g. following rules, playing well with others, working independently with supervision). But that’s a soap box speech for another time.

I’ve Got My Eye on You, Oral Language Skills.

In my free time, I have been writing curriculum designed to teach beginning special education teachers what they need to know about teaching students with special needs. I am on page 600 and have 4 more sessions to write. I mean, there is a LOT that teachers need to know. I don’t know how you people do it. And I have been trying to condense it all into 16 sessions. Good times.

Recently, I finished the session on oral language and through the process, realized that oral language seems to be the slightly ignored stepchild of the English Language Arts domain. I mean, when you think of language arts, you think of reading and writing, right? But what about oral language? It is so important! It is often neglected in psychoeduational assessments as well, unless it is wrapped up in general language processing.

Oral language is not just speaking. It is a large set of skills that encompasses listening comprehension, understanding and producing complex language, vocabulary and word knowledge, grammatical knowledge, phonological skills, and so much more. Allow me to illustrate how oral language skills are necessary for comprehension by confessing something embarrassing.

I am the worst at deciphering song lyrics. My best friend, Kendra, however, should be on that game show “Don’t Forget the Lyrics.” She was always my first choice in picking teams for Songburst. And when I can’t figure out what a song is saying, I call her.

Some embarrassing examples:

1) I was singing along with Kendra to the song “One” by U2, and belted out, “Love is a tent pole, love’s a higher love!” and she said, “Um, don’t you mean that love is a temple, love’s a higher law?” Ah yes, that makes more sense.

2) I was car singing (as I do) to Sean Kingson’s new song, “Replay” and I actually sang:

Shawty’s like a melody in my head,
That I can’t keep out
Got me singing like, la la la la every day,
Like an eyeball stuck on my plate, my plate.

Scrrrreeeeech (record scratches). Wait, what? That doesn’t make sense. But that’s exactly what it sounded like to me. I knew it could not be right (because of oral language skills, of course), but no matter how many times I heard it, I still heard eyeball stuck on my plate, my plate. Good thing my radio station plays this song like la la la la every day, because I finally got it…it’s like my iPod stuck on replay, replay.” Much more romantic than my eyeball lyric.*

Wait, what was my point? Ah yes, oral language. If one has a strong vocabulary and strong grammatical and semantic knowledge (how words go together and make meaning) then you are better able to understand what you read and produce written words. Let’s take another example. If you have ever studied a foreign language, you know that having limited vocabulary can significantly impair your ability to understand what you read. If you read “Tengo que practicar Espanol. Voy a charlar con mi amiga todos los dias” and you did not know the phrase “Tengo que” or the words “charlar” and “todos,” you would read, “Something to practice Spanish. I’m going to something with my friend something the days.” Say what?

Not having solid oral language skills can also impair writing. I always sound a little bit like Tonto when I write in Spanish, and/or super limited in my knowledge, because I avoid words I don’t know. Which sentence is better?

The student is exhibiting some symptoms associated with depression.

Or

The student is being sad.

The latter sentence is about what I could produce in Spanish, with my limited vocabulary and oral language skills. I love nuance, and it just doesn’t work well without strong oral language skills. The same is true for our students who come with limited “academic” vocabulary or limited English.

So how can we promote oral language in the classroom and at home to give students the building blocks for reading and writing? I’m glad you asked. Here are a few strategies that span the grades; Some can be modified to be easier or harder, depending on what you teach. Some are from the New Teacher Project, some are classics, and I hope you can offer some more as well!

A Few Strategies for Building Oral Language Skills

1) Show and Tell. A classic for elementary students! Students bring an item from home that they want to talk about and there is a precious question and answer session that ensues.

2) Daily Oral Language (D.O.L.) Traditionally, this is an activity where each day, there is a prompt written on the board for students, such as a sentence written with incorrect grammar for students to correct individually. I prefer to have the students create grammatically correct sentences in small groups (like their tables or with a partner). For example, you could give the words “Since” “Robert” and “party” and have the students come up with a grammatically correct sentence and discuss as a whole group. Another example is to pre-teach a vocabulary word that you will use that day or in the next lesson. Show the vocabulary word and have students talk about its meaning together in a small group and have them draw a group picture representing that word. Share out with the large group. You can have kids draw the vocabulary word on a post-it and then stick it on the board next to the word.

3) Dramatic Vocabulary. This one is from my good friend, Beth, who taught 9th grade English. I think middle school kids could do it too. It’s kind of like vocabulary charades. The students get in a circle and the teacher has a set of cards with that week’s vocabulary words on them (the students can make these cards in groups before the activity for added learning). The teacher pulls a card and gives it to one student, who must act out the vocabulary word for the other students to guess. After it is correctly guessed, the students say, spell, and write the definition of the word together on the board.

4) Word Wall. Also a classic! I think it is used mostly in elementary and middle school, but I can see its value in secondary classrooms with added elements, such as grouping by prefix, suffix, roots, etc. Basically, it is a wall of words that are frequently used in the classroom that are posted for easy reference. Teachers, feel free to comment on how you elaborate on the classic Word Wall.

5) Debates and “Take A Stand” activities. You can start out by providing a prompt for a related lesson, such as “Every student should wear uniforms to school” for a lesson on persuasive writing. Place a line of masking tape in your classroom that ranges from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” with “not sure” in the middle. Have students “take a stand” on where they fall on the continuum. Then, group the students to form teams for a debate on the issue (“not sure” kids can be equally divided or be their own group). From there, you can provide reading materials for the students to support their argument, or begin a research project for students to find their own material for a debate.

6) Listening Activities. For the little ones, I like the classic game “telephone” where the kids get in a circle and the teacher whispers a sentence to the first kid, and they have to whisper the sentence to the next kid. The goal is to have the sentence be in tact at the end. It never is. Hilarity ensues. For older students, teaching listening skills can be in the form of teaching good note-taking skills during lecture. Give the class a list of key phrases that they want to listen for in a lecture such as, “This is important..”, “One of the main things…” “The first thing you have to do is…, etc”, “You will need to know…” To begin, you could ring a little bell or something when you use the key phrase, then transfer that job to a student.

7) Fancy Tech Stuff I must admit, there are many many tech applications that frighten me with their newfangledness. However, I really think that we should be harnessing the students' natural interest in tech and social media. Maybe kids across the country could Sykpe-talk to each other about an issue/project/modern day pen pal thingy, build a personal word or spelling dictionary in their iPhones/iTouches, find an App for site words (there's an app for that!), making a classroom Podcast, etc.

8) Consult with your Speech Language Pathologist. These people know oral language and will have good suggestions for students. My SLP friend says that "written language (reading/ writing) is overlaid on oral language skills so it is very rare for a student with poor oral skills to read or write with a level of proficiency - yet we rarely focus on increasing oral skills when difficulties are noticed with written language." Amen sister. Go consult with these people. They are fabulous.

9) You tell me! I want you to practice your oral language skills too. Meanwhile, I will work on my lyrical analysis skills. ☺

*In general, I avoid the word “eyeball”. I think it sounds gross. Perhaps I have PTSD from when I had to dissect a sheep eyeball in order to study visual perception in school. Bleh.

"Strategery"

Many of my posts are about the glamorous side of being a school psych, the fun n’ games dealing with bureaucracy monsters*, and the general tomfoolery of working in public education. I thought it was high time I offered up something actually useful for those of you in the trenches along with me, who sit in intervention meetings and everyone turns to you for the good suggestion.

For those who read for the cute stories and/or have a morbid curiosity about 10 year olds who pack heat in their backpacks (true story), we’ll see you next post!

For the hard core intervention peeps who believe in having a huge arsenal of weapons of mass instruction,** I give you:

Strategies for Students with Reading Comprehension Problems

Here’s a little side lesson about roots and suffixes before we begin.

Dys = abnormal or difficult

Lexia = word

So "Dys-lexia" is a reading disability that affects students at the word-level of reading. These are the kids who struggled with phonics in elementary, can’t decode multi-syllabic words easily in middle school, and laugh in high school when you ask, “do you ever read for fun?” because it is so laborious to try and decode every single word you come across. Their reading fluency is impaired and they lose the meaning. I tell my yoots: reading is like riding a bicycle—if you go too slow, you fall off. These students "fall off" in terms of comprehension because they are spending all their mental energy on decoding the individual words.

But there are other kinds of reading disabilities. There are the kids who can decode, but haven’t a clue what they just read. It is not unlike when you “read” a whole page in a book and then realize you didn’t really read it. The eyes were moving across the page, and the words were being "read," but there wasn’t any comprehension. These kids are typically really smart and they can articulate thoughts in class, but have a surprisingly low level of understanding what they read, given their intellect.

These kids (and all kids, really) benefit from a number of strategies for reading comprehension. Some of the strategies I pulled together from watching great teachers, some are "classics", and a few are from the New Teacher Project. Enjoy!

Rapid Reviewing
• Rapid reviewing improves both reading comprehension and memory
• After reading a section of text, students write down everything they can remember without looking back at the text.
• If they can’t remember at least 80% of the key points, they have read too much material before reviewing.
• They then reread the material and repeat the process until the key points can be recalled

Metacognitive Journals
• Students analyze their own thought processes in a journal, in which a page is divided into two columns separately titled: “What I learned,” and “How I came to learn it.” They record their thinking during and/or after reading
• The format can be modified with other prompts as well, such as “Passage/Text,” “What I think it means” and “Thoughts/Questions/Connections I had to the text”

The Insert Process/Marking the text
• Readers remain active while using symbols to represent their thoughts as they read, such as, “!” when you agree with the author, “?” for questions and “*” for new learning. Students can use sticky notes (Post-it notes) if they are unable to mark in the text.
• These markings should be revisited for further reflection/clarification after reading.
• A chart of possible symbols can be downloaded at http://www.readwritethink.org/lesson_images/lesson230/insert.pdf.

Questioning the Text/Author
• As readers notice the breakdown of meaning, they come up with questions to ask the author about the book for clarification and understanding.
• The questions are intended to help the reader better understand any confusing areas, and assists the reader in targeting appropriate strategies to repair meaning.

Graphic Organizers
• Graphic organizers are visual representations that show how key concepts are related and/or organized. They are important because they help readers visualize connections between ideas within the text and organize the new information.
• The visual representation and organization of information helps students build their text base and make sense of the text.
• Examples include problem/solution, statement/ support, sequence, cause/effect, compare/contrast, and argument.

KWL
In this strategy, students use a graphic organizer to establish:
• K- what they already know about the topic;
• W- what they want to know or learn about the topic;
• L- what they have learned after reading.

There are two popular modifications of the KWL teaching strategy:
• KWWL- what I know, what I want to know, where can I find the information, what I have learned
• KWLH- what I know, what I want to know, what I have learned, how I learned it

SQ3R
This strategy is an acronym for the five steps that comprise the strategy:
• S-Survey - students survey the reading material to develop an idea of its contents.
• Q-Question - students formulate questions about the text. These questions become their purpose for reading.
• R-Read - students read the text to answer the questions they formulated.
• R-Recite - students either jot notes about the text or discuss with a partner.
• R-Review - students review what they have learned by discussing their process with a partner and reviewing their notes. Finally, they answer their questions

Connection Chart
• This strategy calls for students to keep a running record of connections made as they read. Students are given a chart with three columns labeled for each of the different types of connection (text-to-self, text-to-world, text-to-text). As students read, they record their connections on sticky notes and place them in the appropriate column.

Using Social Networking for Character Analysis
• Students create a mock “Facebook” or “Myspace” page for a character in a book, a historical figure, or a current political figure.
• Students “characters” can interact, depending on if they would have been “friends” or not.
• This technique allows students to put themselves in the shoes of the characters and understand the underlying motivations, behaviors, etc.


*e.g. I called HR nine times yesterday to find out a simple thing. Nine times. No answer. Really? No voicemail there either? I guess they like the “While You Were Out” 1980s pink notes as much as my schools do. Which would be fine if they answered the phone to take a message. I’m gonna have to drive to the ‘hood tomorrow to ask a question, I just know it.

**Trenches and weapon metaphors in an education post? I guess it's my feeble attempt to make this post relevant to Veteran’s Day.