Should my Child attend School Readiness Classes?

 

Should my Child attend School Readiness?

Written by Donna Botfield on July 7, 2015. Posted in About Us, Parent Tips, School Readiness

 

Probably one of my most asked questions before I enrol a new student is ‘Does my child need to attend School Readiness?’ Of course I fully believe that our School Readiness program is an essential start to school, and yes I am biased but let me tell you why.

My child attends preschool/long day care

Whenever I discuss school readiness with parents I make it extremely clear that children should attend preschool and day care before they start school.  In this setting, children learn the very important social and emotional skills that are required for the rest of their lives.  Children learn how to interact with same aged peers.  Preschool/long day care is an essential start to schooling in Australia.  A one hour a week School Readiness Class does not prepare your child socially and emotionally for BIG school; however preschool/long day care settings do not always prepare students for the academic learning required at school.  

What benefits do School Readiness Classes provide?

The reason that I established School Readiness Classes 8 years ago was due to my own children.  As a primary school teacher, I understood that school will provide your children with the structured learning skills, and all of the curriculum that your child will require.  Unfortunately the demands of the curriculum in schools now requires that children go to school ‘ready to learn’.  From the moment your child starts BIG school they will be required to learn many new facts and rules.  For the child who is not adequately prepared, school requires a lot of a young mind.  I tried to not be a ‘teacher mummy’ to my children.  I did recognise that I was able to offer my children a start to school that was not available to a ‘non-teacher mummy’. I am a strong believer in the strength of the teachers and schools in NSW and was confident that my children would learn quickly.  I soon realised that with good preparation, children confidently start school and start learning the day they enter primary school.  

What does the ED Specially 4U School Readiness Program offer:

• Structured learning in one session per week to prepare children in a gentle and confidence building atmosphere
• Classes that start from the age of 2 to allow students to be very familiar with a structured learning environment
• Classes and teachers that follow a structured program in the same way a primary school program is taught
• An environment where letters, numbers, fine motor/writing skills are developed so that the child can start school confidently knowing these beginning skills
• Another setting (outside the play environment) in which students recognise the importance of following instructions
• Confidence to follow instructions of  a teacher
• Confidence to work within a small group and achieve new skills
• Confidence to try new skills
• Confidence to learn

  Another benefit of joining our program is the importance we play on early detection if your child has any learning concerns.  We regularly are able to advise parents that a student may need a speech therapy or occupational therapy assessment if there are any issues that may be preventing their development in these areas.

 

With honesty I can say that our students and teachers alike, love our programs.  Happy children enjoy the structured learning program and the success they are achieving.  My personal favourite teaching moment is when I first say to one of our students ‘I didn’t know you could read!’  Our students quickly learn the letters and sight words required to sound out simple sentences, and they are thrilled to hear that this skill enables them to read!!

 

  Please visit our parent testimonial page (found on our website under the ‘about us’ tab) and facebook pages to read how other parents value our program.  Each year I send out a questionnaire in which parents are allowed to comment anonymously.  I relish constructive feedback as I passionately believe in what we do, and I want it to be the very best program I can offer.  I have honestly never received a negative comment in the 8 years we have been offering this program.  In fact, the questionnaires often come back months later when the students have started BIG school, and parents are glowing about the easy adjustment to school their children were able to make following the guidance of our program.

For the Love of Learning

Donna

 

www.edspecially4u.com.au

www.edspecially4u.com.au

Our Unique Teaching Program Learning Letters and Beginning Sounds

How do we have such success in teaching children their letters and sounds?

At ED Specially 4U we are very proud of the success we achieve in teaching our students their letters.  Why is our program so successful?

At ED Specially 4U we offer our student's instruction following current 'BEST PRACTICE' teaching methods.

We use a multi-sensory approach to teach important concepts that allows learning to be appropriate for all students and their individual needs.

PHONICS

As we have detailed in our blog on 19th October, 2014 - Reading and Phonics - the ED Specially 4U way

http://edspecially4u.blogspot.com.au/2014/10/reading-and-phonics-ed-specially-4u-way.html
we teach letters and their sounds explicitly.  This blog describes how we introduce the letters using the Letter Star resource, as well as individual readers, hands-on learning activities including fun ways of achieving letter formation and craft activities.  Learning through these explicit and hands-on activities achieves great success for our students.

Once we have taught the letters and their sounds explicitly, we then use the ED Specially 4U Initial Sound games to reinforce and challenge these skills for our students.
WE MAKE LEARNING FUN

THE MOST IMPORTANT REASON THAT WE ARE UNIQUE 

The importance of continuing the learning with our custom made resources, allows our students to reinforce the sounds with the same unique ED Specially 4U graphic and colour system.  The graphic and colour system means that children have additional ways to remember the letters and their sounds - which makes learning easier at this early stage.  These graphics and colours can later be removed and other 'standard' resources can be used to reinforce the letters and their sounds. 

ED BINGO 

 

 

 Letters are reinforced using the graphics taught in the LETTER STAR resource.  This resource contains 3 FUN games in 1.  Match lower case letters to the same letter on the bingo card, match graphics that start with the lower case letter on the bingo card, or match the upper case letter to the bingo card lower case letter

ED's OLD MAID

 Following the normal rules for Old Maid, you need to match pairs - letter to graphic card, look out for the ED cards to make it even more fun

Letter BINGO

 Match the starting sound with each graphic on the bingo card to be the winner

Letter MATCH IT

 A matching game with a twist.  Fill up the 3 squares beside each letter with graphic cards that start with that letter sound

MEMORY MATCH IN SMALL GROUPS OR WHOLE CLASS GROUPS

 Memory match is always so much fun.  These cards come with coloured backgrounds to reinforce the learning, or white backgrounds to ensure that the student has learnt the sound

Sorting Sounds

 Sort the graphics to match the sound mats

Letter Jump

 Letter jump is so versatile that it is used regularly in our program.  Students jump on the letter, and state it's name, sound and/or a word that starts with that sound.  Combining movement also ensures deeper understanding of the task

All resources are available at www.edspecially4u.com.au

Resources are also available in PDF

 

Letter Sounds are taught as are all activities at ED Specially 4U - 

For the Love of Learning

Donna

 

Reading and Phonics - the ED Specially 4U way

Introduction to Reading and Phonics: The ED Specially 4U way

Over the past 7 years the ED Specially 4U literacy programs have taught hundreds of children how to  read or started them on their road to literacy.  We are immensely proud of the unique program that has been developed based on over 20 years of classroom instruction.

What is phonics?  Quite simply it is letters and their sounds.

We developed our program using resources that are bright, colourful and motivating.  Our students love learning their letters with refreshing and 'hands on' learning resources.

LETTER STARS

This is our first step to phonics instruction.  Stars are the shape that we use within our program to signify that the sound is a 'beginning' sound of a word.  So from the first, we introduce sounds on these stars as we teach them in relation to real words that start with that sound. 
For example: /a/ is for apple.

Each different letter is given a colour, and this colour remains constant throughout all of our resources to assist in optimum learning.

Each letter has a group of words in which the targetted sound is the beginning of the word.  Coupled with the words is a graphic which can be represented in either line drawing or photograph dependent on the learning styles/ability of the student.  Each letter has 5 graphic cards to correspond with the letter star (with letter x as the only exception, with 3 graphic cards)

Letter Stars

Letters are introduced and letter name and sound is taught at the same time.  This activity becomes a lot of fun when it is presented with our Phonics 4U CD

PHONICS 4 U

This CD reinforces the letter name, sound and the names of each graphic which start with this sound, through repetition that the students quickly learn.

To further practice and reinforce the letter and it's sound we introduce each letter with an ED Specially 4U READER in both A4 and B4 sizes (which allows for classroom use).  Each student holds a B4 reader and completes tasks while looking at the letter which is printed in both Upper and Lower case as well as each of the graphics and their printed word.

B4 Beginning Letter Reader

A4 Beginning Letter Reader

As can be seen in this picture our students enjoy interacting with the reader.  This is a great opportunity to model and practice correct letter writing formation.  Our students also enjoy finding the targeted sound for the week at the beginning of the word - sometimes the words have the sound more than once and as an extension our students find the letter in different places in the word (ie. beginning and ending - 'w' for window).  This activity also allows discussion of what is a letter and what is a word - often something that our students are thinking about for the first time.

Our letters are reinforced with several different resources:

A4 wall display

Wall displays and charts are a fantastic tool to reinforce the letters, their sounds and the words that start with that sound.

a-z Letter Cards

Letter cards are extremely useful and we use these in both the coloured and non-coloured backgrounds.  The coloured backgrounds are used only in the beginning of instruction for those students who require extra support in identifying the letters.  Usually we practice with the non-coloured letter cards when we are starting to blend the sounds together to form words.

For students who have difficulty identifying the letters and recalling their sounds we use the
'3 & 6 Grid matching' activity.  This resource provides support to match the letters only for those who can, or to increase their skill to selecting the correct letter when requested by the teacher, until they are confident to name the letter and it's sound.  This resource is tailor made for our students who require extra learning support.

3 and 6 Grid Matching

Once we introduce the letters we then continue to reinforce them throughout our program as we learn new letters.  We try to do this consistently through games and hands-on learning opportunities to ensure that we are offering a multi-sensory learning approach.

Sometimes we reinforce the letter and sound learning by making playdough letters, writing in sand or shading sandpaper letters.  This can be achieved by using the laminated letter cards as a guide or the children can do this with just the letter as a model.

Each week we enjoy making a craft activity using the beginning sound we have targetted for the week.

/a/ is for ant

Students also practice their letter writing on our customised and personalised writing worksheets

Games are used weekly to reinforce the previous week's learning, and letters are constantly reviewed and reinforced this way. 

Look out for the ED Specially 4U beginning sound games blog to learn more about the games offered in our program.

Learning phonics at ED Specially 4U is a fun and motivating experience

For the Love of Learning

Donna

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