ISM Spotlight–Reading Sticks

This year I am the luckiest teacher in the world. I get to teach at the best school ever – International School of Morocco, with some of the best, most creative, teachers ever. Each time I walk into someone else’s classroom, I get inspired and we just seem to spiral great teaching ideas off of each other. It’s a wonderful place to teach, and since we are all collaborating, it’s a wonderful place for our kids to learn – a teacher’s dream, right? I have tried and tried to convince the other teachers to create blogs of their own to spotlight and share some of their amazing ideas, but everyone is super busy. Instead, they have each agreed to let me spotlight some of their ideas right here on Raki’s Rad Resources. So, each Friday night, I will be posting an ISM Spotlight.

This week, we are spotlighting Olivia Gunning, our Kindergarten teacher. Mrs. Gunning teaches the 4 and 5 year olds at ISM, and she pumps out cute ideas faster than anyone I’ve ever seen.  In addition to teaching, and being a mother, Mrs. Gunning is also a travel writer (check out her articles here).  This week, we’re going to look at some of her reading ideas.

Reading Sticks

Mrs. Gunning created reading sticks to help her students combine the one to one correspondence and the need to read a sentence together.

She let the kids decorate small squares of construction paper.  Then, she glue the squares to the top of coffee stirrers (swizzle sticks).  The students use their sticks to help them read their books.  The squares underline just a little more than one word, giving that needed link between one to one correspondence and sentence fluency.

 

Book Making

The first book Mrs. Gunning’s students read with their reading sticks were their own homemade Arabian Nights concertina books.

The students started by listening to a read aloud of the Arabian Nights story.  Next, they colored and ordered pictures and sentences that re-told the story.

 Mrs. Gunning had already folded their long strips of paper so that they knew were to glue.  Finally, they folded a flap at the top so that their books could stay together if they were standing or be gun if they were open.

Come back next Friday to find out what the other ISM teachers are up to.