Incy Wincy Spider

'Learn 4 School' with Incy Wincy

One of the FUN 'Learn 4 School' themes this term has been 'INCY WINCY SPIDER'.

We have a great time exploring nursery rhymes at 'Learn 4 School'.  So much great learning is achieved through a nursery rhyme.

A very important part of our learning program is the development of 'Phonemic Awareness'.

PHONEMIC AWARENESS is essential for reading competence.  The student needs to be able hear the individual sounds or 'phonemes' that words are made up of.  They also need to manipulate these sounds and hear rhyme and syllables.  They need to manipulate the sounds in words, for example: /mat/ into /pat/.  The children need to break apart the sounds in words and hear that words are made up of different phonemes.

We use our Nursery Rhyme as the basis for this program.

As a class we sing/read the nursery rhyme with actions to ensure that the students know the structure of this rhyme.


We then break the nursery rhyme into it's verses, and present this using both the corresponding graphic from our resource and the written words.

While reinforcing the rhyme with this resource, we give great attention to hearing the rhyme sound in each of these verses.

At the completion of using the graphic and words resource, we discuss the sequence of the rhyme with the students.  We offer the graphic only cards to the students in dis-ordered array to re-order the rhyme.

This resource also comes with the verses in written text only, we don't use this with the students in the 'Learn 4 School' class, but this is a great extension for students who are working at the higher level.

While we teach the nursery rhyme, we are reinforcing rhyme and sequence.  We are also able to reinforce the students skill to manipulate the consonant at the beginning of the rhyming word.  We use the rhyme flashcards to practice hearing rime family words.

Students love learning through nursery rhymes.  They are a fantastic phonemic awareness teaching tool as they are usually an already known literature source.

When we have completed all of the nursery rhymes in our Nursery Rhyme set - Incy Wincy Spider, Hickory Dickory Dock, Humpty Dumpty, Hey Diddle Diddle and Little Miss Muffet, we then increase the students phonemic awareness skills by playing the nursery rhyme games.

Rhyme Grid Bingo

This is an easy matching game where students can practice their turn taking skills as well as their rhyme matching.

Find the Rhyme Bingo

The students have to have higher rhyming skills for this game, as they have to decide if the card they are using is a match to the rhyme on their baseboard.

Memory Match

This game requires the students to independently find the words that match using the 'memory match' format.

All of these colourful hands-on learning resources are available fully prepared: http://www.edspecially4u.com.au/shop/abc-4-me/phonemic-awareness/


This structured and sequential program is just one of the fun ways that we explore this well loved nursery rhyme.  The children love our craft and hands on learning activities that include fine motor skills and number skills of position, counting with one to one correspondence, and numeral recognition.  The 'Learn 4 School' program develops the foundation skills necessary to establish

the LOVE of LEARNING

       Donna

Read with Me!

As everyone who knows me well, knows; I am like most teachers you will meet that have a firm belief in reading with your child.  Research supports that we should read to our children from 'before they are born'.
Reading teaches so many important things, that it is often hard to compile a list without leaving some out.  So, I will endeavour  to list my TOP 10 reasons that reading aloud is important for our children:

1. FOR ENJOYMENT - children love to hear a story, and the message that you send when you are reading is one of love and happiness. 

2. BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE to assist children to better understand the world around them for example: reading about a teddy bear, coupled with a graphic of a teddy bear assists your child to see their own teddy bear in relation to the world.  This is a simplistic analogy for little children, but it is the start of developing your child's background knowledge or deeper understanding.

3. LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT the more language children are exposed to, the better their understanding and grasp of language will be.  Children learn language through modelling and reading is a great activity to develop language and vocabulary  (note this differs from speech development)

4. SPEECH DEVELOPMENT this is also developed by hearing speech patterns of others.  Reading speech offers a different pattern to spoken speech (usually a narrative in the younger years).  Speech articulation is also taught through the modelling of speech sounds and patterns.

5. PHONEMIC AWARENESS the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds of language.  This is learnt through reading experiences, especially through rhyme and rhythm.  (Developing good phonemic awareness skills in children is a real passion of mine and you will encounter this topic several times in my upcoming blogs!)

6. REPETITION children learn best when they hear something more than one time.  Sharing a book together allows you the opportunity to re-read favourite books over and over and over and over SIGH, usually to the exhaustion of the reader, but this is extremely important for the child who is listening and learning from that story and language

7. SEQUENCES  Children need to be able to sequence.  We follow sequences and routines in all of our everyday life and structured learning.  Hearing a story and being able to place the storyline into a sequence teaches our children the ability to understanding the routines that we have to follow, as well as making those important brain connections.

8.ATTENTION SPAN AND LISTENING Children who are able to sit and listen to a story will always achieve to a higher extent in structured education.  Increasing the length of the book and your child's motivation to listen to the story will assist them when they start their formal education - they have already developed the ability to attend to an activity!


9.  Reading aloud exposes your child to different TEXT TYPES AND WRITING GENRES.  This enables your child to speak in 'reading language' as well as having a story and print knowledge that they will draw upon throughout their life long learning

10. For the LOVE of Learning:
Choose a special time each day to cuddle up with your child.  Your child will love the cuddles, and love the one on one time that this busy world often does not provide us with.  Together you will share funny, sad, exciting, adventurous and interesting stories that will cement your child's love of literature, love of reading and love of learning

OK, now I felt that I needed to narrow this to the top 10.  There are more bullet points that I could add to this, however, I believe these are the most important.  Please feel free to share with me any of these or other skills that you believe are the most important reasons for reading aloud to a child.  As parents, it is often SOOOO hard to find those precious moments to read with your child, however, it is equally important as it is difficult.  Try to set aside time each day to READ READ READ,

For the LOVE of LEARNING

Donna

For the Love of Learning

For the Love of Learning; 

we love teaching and learning experiences

Assisting our students to love learning is an absolute privilege

      ED Specially 4U are School Readiness and Literacy Tutoring Specialists based in Sydney, Australia

What do we offer:

After seven years delivering fantastic learning programs, we are very proud of variety that we offer. 

Our ongoing program is designed to assist the child as they grow:

Learn 4 School—3-4 years

Ready 4 School: 4-6 years

K-2: Literacy program

Individual Literacy Tutoring programs

Learning with Confidence

Our learning motto is clear through all aspects of teaching that we offer:

Confidence in learning for our students and their parents. 
Students ‘learn with confidence’ to ensure confidence at School

ED Specially 4U programs develop CONFIDENT students.

Our School Readiness Classes offer:

· Phonic instruction,· Phonemic Awareness (the sounds of language),· Number concepts that develop a deeper understanding of numbers,· Craft,· Comprehension,· Sight Words,· Songs,· Games

K-2 programs offer:

· Phonic instruction,· Phonemic Awareness (the sounds of language),· Craft,· Fine Motor Activities,· Writing in text types,· Grammar & Sentence Structure,· Comprehension,· Sight Words, 

What makes ED Specially 4U unique?

There are many reasons why our program feedback is so positive.

· Our program is unique in it’s original format.  We believe in teaching through concrete learning     experiences, not rote learning or learning from booklets.  We use multi-sensory resources which teach by colour, shape and graphic.  Our resources are mostly hand made—and children feel motivated by the appearance and texture of the resources. 

· Our program is FUN.  We use songs, games and craft to strengthen our teaching—children do not know they are learning, they just love coming to ED Specially 4U.

· Our teachers are FABULOUS.  Teachers are chosen and trained based on the ED Specially 4U philosophy.  We genuinely enjoy being with the children that we teach, and we have fun teaching the programs.  We are so lucky to have a staff of such professional, happy and kind people.  Our students share this admiration for the ED Specially 4U teachers, and we  receive constant feedback about each of the teachers personally, who have touched the hearts of so many students.

· We have a philosophy of personalised teaching.  We keep class sizes small so that we can get to know the students well.  We are able to discuss our students progress, as well as making recommendations to get further professional assessments if necessary.  We work closely with the parents of our students, so that they are confident in understanding their child’s academic abilities.

· The program is written by primary school teachers who are trained in explicit language and literacy teaching strategies and techniques.  The program is written based on teaching experience with children of all ability levels and ages.

We look forward to meeting you - whether it is with your child at one of our classes, as a friend on our blog, instagram, facebook or pinterest pages, or even as a teacher using one of our resources in your classroom- we look forward to sharing 'For the Love of Learning'