Googly Eyes and Stretch Tubes Support Early Readers
Kindergarten teachers are experts at finding ways to have fun while learning. Mark Kate Isakson, a kindergarten teacher at the Roosevelt School and member of the MPS Literacy Task Force, did just that with materials provided through a boost grant from the Melrose Education Foundation. Ms. Isakson took a moment at the end of this school year to share the impact of this grant with our community:
"Two of the five big ideas of the Science of Reading are phonemic awareness and phonics. The overall idea for my small group instruction was to boost both phonemic awareness and phonics in a fun and different way. With this grant, I purchased tool kits to help students learn to manipulate phonemes while providing not only a visual representation of the sounds, but also adding a tactile component. The kits I got also helped engage students as they segmented words - with 2, 3 or 4 sounds and supported students as they isolated beginning, middle and ending sounds which leads to blending.
The tool kits offer lots of ways to enhance small group instruction. Here are a few highlights.
Googly Eye Rings - help early readers in tracking words.
Stretch Tubes - to practice segmenting and blending words.
Sound Segmenting Trays/Cards - to develop blending by pushing soft circles to focus on the sounds that they hear at the beginning, middle and end of the word.
Overall, these materials added nicely to my current SOR based small group instruction. Along with my own explicit instruction, these tool kits added more visual, auditory, kinesthetic and tactile ways to make small group instruction fun and different while teaching really great skills. Having these extra tools added some variety to my small group lessons and Kindergarten student sure do love using manipulates when learning. I will continue to use these materials next year from the start of the school year and I think they will be really beneficial especially since I have had time to learn what works best this year.” - Mark Kate Isakson, Roosevelt Kindergarten Teacher