Literacy Learning for Infants, Toddlers, & Preschoolers

This book is an excellent, reader-friendly resource for kindergarten teachers and Early Childhood Educators. While infant and toddler development takes place before the Ontario curriculum kicks in, the authors are American. Their recommendations for preschoolers generally align with the age of our Year 1 kindergarten students. Much of the research and advice in the book…

Teaching Beginning Writers

In this book, the authors share background information on how writing develops, and a research base for three key elements: handwriting, spelling and composition. The following chapters provide practical classroom advice for teaching all three, including several chapters dedicated to genre-specific writing instruction: book reviews (opinion), narratives and description, and how those progress from K-2….

Explicit Vocabulary Instruction

Even as students enter kindergarten, there are huge differences in their individual vocabularies. If we are to narrow the achievement gap that students from different economic levels exhibit in the upper grades, we must provide systematic, robust explicit vocabulary instruction in the primary grades. One of the best sources of vocabulary words is the books…

Concept Sorts

Concept sorts introduce students to the vocabulary or ideas of a new topic or text. Students are presented a list of terms or concepts and have to determine how they are related by placing them into  different categories. When used before reading, concept sorts provide an opportunity for you see what your students already know about a given…

Vocabulary Word Maps

A word map is a graphic organizer that supports connections among vocabulary and ideas. This resource from TextProject provides Word Maps for core vocabulary – the most important words in written English. Three types of words maps are available for the core vocabulary: synonyms, morphology, and multiple meaning of words.

Student Phonics Activities

A team of researchers and teachers at FCRR collected ideas and created activities for students at stations or centres. These phonics activities are designed for students to practice, demonstrate, and extend their learning of what has already been taught, sometimes with teacher assistance and sometimes independently. Students can complete the activities in small groups, pairs,…