1. May Wind is Busy: Connecting Poetry, Children…and Nature

May Wind is Busy May wind is busy Brushing the robin’s tail. Combing the willow tree, And whispering to my ear — That summer is near. Kazue Mizumura

• Children’s connections with nature can often be captured in short, memorable poems such as the one above.
• Hearing and memorizing poetry makes any meaningful class study richer in imagery and language.  We want descriptive, poetic language to become a part of the child’s speaking and writing vocabulary. 
• The more young children memorize, the larger their capacity for memorizing becomes.

May poems and curriculum connections:

Poetry and Songs for Mother’s Day (Download individual pages for your “I Can Read” Poetry Notebook.)

Mother’s Day Curriculum Connections:

Mrs. Pohlmeyer
Little Giraffes

Enjoy this great new book by Kevin Henkes!

Connections with Nature: Our Studies of Birds and Rocks

May (just like every month of the year) provides opportunities to awaken children’s love of nature. Children are inherently fascinated with the natural world outside the classroom, and this often creates compelling reasons to draw, write, and read.  One of the most important goals is for our children to initiate their own scientific explorations over the summer—to learn more about birds, collect rocks, and observe changes of nature. 

Curriculum Connections: Birds
Our Study of Birds with Joanie Cutler

Curriculum Connections: Rocks
We love this Kinder Rockhound Unit with Jennifer Felty

See also:
Our Study of Rocks with Joanie Cutler
My Rock Collection Book, a form for observation and “Kid Writing”

2. Teaching With Intention: With Happy Hearts We Dance and Sing

I am continually delighted when I watch master kindergarten teachers integrate powerful vocabulary into the life of their classroom. 

What a delightful time we had with kindergarten teacher Kathie Bridges at our Saturday kindergarten workshop on April 16! Kathie shared her meaning-centered teaching philosophy and demonstrated and discussed how her philosophy looks “in action”—from positive discipline to daily singing and dancing.

“I believe that music MUST be included in the classroom every day. Singing and dancing are an integral part of our daily class time. It’s fun to see how comfortable children become as young singers and dancers when they are exposed to music daily. It is especially wonderful to watch those who were reluctant to participate in the beginning of the year grow more comfortable as the year progresses. Music is an extremely important and effective component of a multisensory and balanced early literacy program,” she says.

“Hardly a day goes by that we don’t dance together,” explained Kathie, and the reasons for this are good ones:

• Children who playfully sing and dance together build speech communication skills in a most delightful way.
• Dance motions that include crossing the midline develop the healthy neurological integration needed for reading and writing success.
• Dancing requires keeping a steady beat, which supports reading fluency and rhythm.
• Movement energizes the brain, creating the optimum (brain-friendly) conditions for making new leaning connections.
• Movement and dance builds physical fitness, good health, confidence, and happy learning memories!

  See Video clips: With Happy Hearts We Dance and Sing. At the end of the dance, Kathie Bridges talks about her intentional use of cross-lateral movements and the literacy benefits gained when children dance and sing every day.

See Tips on Teaching Children to Dance and My Teaching Philosophy by Kathie Bridges

Also enjoy excerpts from a valuable new book Teaching With Intention: Defining Beliefs, Aligning Practice, Taking Action by Debbie Miller (Stenhouse, 2009).

3. Art, Literacy, and The Kindergarten Child - May 30

Art, Literacy and The Kindergarten Child: A Saturday Kindergarten Workshop

Presented by Laura Flocker with Nellie Edge facilitating

9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Candalaria School, 935 Hansen Ave S., Salem, Oregon 97302

Laura Flocker, master kindergarten teacher with a background in Reading Recovery®, will share her incredible insights into developing a community of kindergartners who see and express themselves as artists and writers from the first days of school. Learn how to organize the art/literacy classroom, discover practical art techniques and the best of art resource materials. Be inspired by Laura’s classroom, which is alive with animals, growing things, science experiments, puppet plays, curious minds, and real-life learning experiences.

Includes:

• How to introduce basic art materials to maximize instruction and minimize mess
• A year-long guide for teaching and integrating art across the curriculum
• Teaching children to see like an artist: skills that transfer to science, math, literacy, and life
• Guided art techniques that develop confidence, drawing ability, and visual literacy skills
• Exercises to develop ABC and writing fluency
• Beautiful full-color art/literacy manual

Professional Development Credits Available
Limited to eighteen participants

See Laura Flocker's Kindergarten website
Download images from Laura Flocker’s Art-Rich Kindergarten (PDF)

Register directly with Janis Wurgler at Wurgler_Janis@salkeiz.k12.or.us

This seminar is sponsored by the Salem-Keizer School District for our kindergarten cadre members. If you would like to see this workshop offered again in August or September for all of our early literacy colleagues, please email info@nellieedge.com

4. End-of-the-Year Rituals Bring Closure

Over the years, my kindergarten colleagues and I have shared many vignettes of memorable classroom rituals, traditions, and celebrations. For us, school has always been a “celebrative place.” We delight in making each child’s learning experience more memorable and meaningful through thoughtful attention to classroom rituals, traditions, and celebrations. These symbolic acts help us build a thriving community of learners. Children come to school with diverse background experiences. It is the stories we tell, the songs we sing, and the traditions we build that bind the children together emotionally and intellectually, creating an optimal climate for learning, both social and academic.

When the children step into your unique community of learning and you become their teacher, mentor, and friend, remember that you’re also in charge of celebrations! Bring the pieces of the year together and end on a joyful, harmonious note so the child’s memories of your year together will be satisfying. You probably have vivid memories of year-end celebrations from your own early years in school to reflect on, and you want to provide your students with those types of memories of their own.

At the end of the year, your children will need to express the joy of being a part of something bigger than themselves, but they also will experience the sadness and loss of separation. These feelings need to be given symbolic order for the teacher and the children so that the year feels complete and the future seems exciting.

As you plan now for end-of-the-year activities, I encourage you to keep them simple but meaningful! Many of the most meaningful rituals and traditions will evolve naturally as the children are working and learning together. Other symbolic gestures will involve more thought, parent help, and planning.

I often remember the wise adage, “There are no great things—only small things done with great love.”  Perhaps that is the emotional key to “good first teaching” and to creating “just-right” year-end celebrations.

May you reach for the stars with the lives of the children that you touch! And may you do it simply…with great love.

Kindergarten Fly-Away Celebration:

Kindergartners in Eugene, Oregon are busy hand-painting wings this month for their end-of-the-year Kindergarten Fly-Away Celebration.  Parent volunteers trace and cut out a set of wings from railroad board for each child.  One of the teachers explains, “After the children paint their wings with bright colors and designs (and sometimes feathers and glitter), we attach two elastic straps to hold these on their arms.  On our last day of school, families are invited for an informal picnic lunch and Popsicle event, which concludes with the children donning their wings and ‘flying away’ from kindergarten. Children love the effect of flying in their wings down the sloping hills and meadow areas at the edge of the school woods!” 

Families watch and applaud at the bottom of the hill as their joyful child comes floating up and down again and again.  What a lovely, symbolic way to bring closure to a joyful kindergarten year.

Appropriate music for “The Fly-Away”:

• “I Believe I Can Fly” (chorus) by R. Kelly, Lyrics from the soundtrack for the movie Space Jam
• “See Me Beautiful” by Red Grammer       
• “What A Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong

For other end-of-the-year celebration ideas, see:

Photo Essay: The Kinder Stars’ Year-End Celebration with Celeste Starr
Kathie Bridges Video clip End-of-Year Rap

5. Closing the Achievement Gap Over the Summer

Powerful kindergarten literacy gains can easily be lost over the summer, especially by our emerging readers and writers who are still building foundation skills.  Wise kindergarten teachers have developed strategies to support family fun and literacy learning over the summer:

• Give Each Family a Copy of Summer Homework?  Summer Fun!
•  Encourage families to keep the love of learning alive and to value unstructured childhood play.
• Encourage your children and their families to reconnect with nature over the summer.
• See www.greenhour.org and www.richardlouv.com.
• See the eloquent NKA letter, “Connecting Children to Nature” by Anna Rainville.
• See Summer Learning Fun: Playing in Your Own Backyard.
• Share information with families about your local public library summer reading programs.  Connect students with local librarians who love books!
• Teachers ask each child to carefully print two self-addressed envelopes so he or she can write to the child.  In return, the child is given two addressed envelopes or postcards so he can write to his teacher. Children love to send and receive mail, so this will encourage them to continue their passion for drawing and Kid Writing all summer long.
• Teachers send home a blank drawing/writing book to use as a Science Journal or Summer Happenings Book.
• Encourage the child to verbalize their summer learning goals during the final student-led parent conference and the last week of school…“This summer, I want to learn about…”
• Send home a summer reading journal for each child. Explain that they can draw a picture of their favorite part of each new picture book and write the name of the book, author, and one sentence about it.  “I like the…”
• Give each child a favorite paperback book from their teacher. “Happy summer reading…” 
• Remind families to reread, recite, and sing together from their child’s “I Can Read” Notebook pages of poems, songs, rhymes, and chants.  Children will continue to gain reading fluency with these short, familiar works of language.

We believe that our role in building strong, joyful family learning connections may be one of the most important contributions we make toward creating healthy schools and healthy communities. 

6. Salem Cadre Meeting - May 11

The last Salem Kindergarten Cadre meeting of the school year will be on May 11 in mentor kindergarten teacher Katie Nelson’s joyful classroom at Salem Heights Elementary.  Our topic is “Ten Best Practices in Joyful Accelerated Kindergarten Literacy: Proven Strategies that Produce Exceptional Gains,” presented by Nellie Edge with classroom examples from Katie Nelson.  This is one of the workshops featured at the National “I Teach Kindergarten” Conference on July 15, 2009. You will enjoy seeing “Charlie the Turtle” the newest addition to Katie’s classroom, who is receiving adoring letters from his kindergarten friends. 

You are welcome to come at four p.m. to enjoy exploring this delightful writing-to-read kindergarten.  Nellie’s fast-paced presentation begins promptly at four-thirty. Kathie’s program clearly demonstrates joyful learning with high literacy standards. 

If you have already attended our all-day seminar, “Ten Best Practices in Joyful Accelerated Literacy: Proven Strategies that Produce Exceptional Gains,” you will see these strategies detailed in the literacy manual Celebrate Language and Accelerate Literacy: High Expectations • Joyful Learning • Proven Strategies.

For those of you who have not experienced this seminar, consider downloading the thirty-page e-Book “Ten Best Practices in Joyful Accelerated Literacy” as your handout.

See seminar details for the all-day seminar scheduled for August 2, 2009 in Portland, Oregon.

One, two, or three units of professional development credits are available for Salem Cadre teachers as you choose to pursue meaningful follow-up projects that will make your kindergarten the best it can be. You have all spent many hours dialoging, reflecting, and implementing new literacy strategies—so you deserve the credits.  We will be happy to share practicum project ideas with you.

Remember: Our Salem Kindergarten Cadre members are invited to attend all of our summer seminars at a savings of $70! ($129 instead of $199.00) while space is available for prepaid registrations.  Salem kindergarten teachers who have already attended our summer seminars once are welcome to attend a second time as our guest. (You pay only the cost of the updated handbooks, and/or DVDs). However, you still need to register as soon as possible to ensure a “guest” space.

Wishing you Happy Year-End Celebrations,

Nellie Edge