The Literacy Garden

While discussing with my young students character traits examples, it became clear that there were many terms that they were not familiar with. They would default to words like nice, mean, or good. Character Traits Definition Bulletin Board So I decided to pair some character traits definitions with characters in our read-aloud stories. After reading and discussing the story, I ask the children to give me two or three character trait words that describe the character…

I LOVE children’s literature!  My schedule always included 20 minutes of reading aloud to my class as they unwind and rehydrate after recess. Year after year read-aloud time was their favorite part of the day. And thanks to Scholastic Book Club and a boat load of points,  I curated a vast classroom library of books for my students to choose from. We used books as mentor texts and for author studies. I wanted to immerse my…

Do phoneme awareness, phonological awareness, and phonics mean the same thing? Can the terms phonemic awareness vs phonological awareness be used interchangeably? Let’s demystify these terms!  Although each word starts with phon, they do not mean the same thing.  The Greek root phon means sound. So phonemic awareness, phonological awareness and phonics are related terms, but not identical. What is Phonological Awareness?  Phonological Awareness is a broad term that involves orally identifying and manipulating sounds. This…

Do you get blank stares when you teach what character traits are? Are their answers limited to words such as “nice” or “mean”?  When I taught second grade, I quickly realized how limited my students’ vocabulary was when it came to describing the character traits of a person. They could easily tell me what the character looked like on the outside, but on the inside? Not so much. The good news is I will explain 5 activities…