7 Ways to Spice up Your Literacy Block!
Here…teach this!
As teachers, we are often handed a curriculum and told to teach it. Nine times out of ten, we are not a part of the decision making process. Meaing, our input on the program or curriculum is not taken into consideration. Alas, they hand it over and say:
Teach this, and good luck!
Do you want to know a secret? Anyone can be handed a program and figure out how to teach it. What makes them stand a part from the rest is how they teach it!
So, how can we take that boring (sorry, not sorry) curriculum and make it engaging for our students?
Today, I am going to share with you my top seven ways to spice up your literacy block and help you stand out among the crowd. These tips will have your students learning and not even know that they are!
Add Flair to Your Literacy Block
Add Movement
Kids love to move! One of my favorite activities is to let them hop the sounds their hear in words. When practicing phonemic awareness, call out a word and ask the students to hop each sound as they segment the word.
Make it Festive
Sometimes just grabbing a few seasonal items from the dollar tree or the target dollar spot is all our students need to be engaged. I can teach a skill or strategy every single day of the year, make minor tweaks, add festive flair, and they think its a brand new activity! This activity is a sight word building activity. Students choose an egg, crack it open, build and write the word!
Add Manipulatives
Sometimes, our students need to fidget..okay they fidget all day. I like adding fun manipulatives to ordinary lessons! These bead slides support phonemic awareness segmentation. Grab a pipe cleaner and some beads and create your own!
Make it Multisensory
I found these sensory letters at Lakeshore and scooped them up! The letters feel like sandpaper and the students trace them as they say the letter name and sound. Using multisensory things like this has proven to help our younger students learn letters and sounds. I found a similar version of these on Amazon.
Encourage Partner Work
Partner work is essential. We learn so much from each other as adults and our students do to. Kids especially are social and they thrive off of group work! Allow your students to work together for just a few minutes a day!
Give Choice
We all want choice. Find a way to allow your students choice during your literacy block. This can be something as simple as: “ Would you like to read a about cars today or a about animals?” “Would you like to go to your center first or complete your seatwork?” Finding a way to build choice into your daily routine, will help when it comes time for a student NOT to have choice.
Create a Play Like Environment
Calling all super readers! Once you finish your reading, we will have 5 minutes of super hero games! Let’s get going! Something as simple as providing play after a difficult reading task can make all the difference!