Fostering the Five Domains of Human Development and a Freebie!

Teaching is a performance skill. Like a dancer who practices muscle movements daily until his body can perform intricate dance routines with ease, an actor who studies unconscious body movements until she can recreate them on the stage, or a writer who knows all of the elements of a well written tale so well that she can construct a page turning novel, teachers learn and practice the elements of lesson design, behavior management and modification, and lesson delivery, until these become second nature.

LiteracyKathy CraneDecember 4, 2018Common Core, Free Games, ReadingComment

Biographical Book Buddies

One of my favorite ways to engage my students with print is to send home "Book Buddies". Each Book Buddy bag contains a book, a journal, and a matching buddy. The children keep this bag for a night and (with their parents help) they write down the adventures they had with the buddy and then share their adventures with the other students the next day.

Book BuddiesKathy CraneSeptember 7, 2018Book Buddies, Reading, Literacy

Teaching Kindergartners to Rhyme

For those children that enjoy the 1000 plus hours of lap-time recommended to ensure kindergarten readiness by the National Institute for Children’s Health and Development, the skill of rhyming is usually learned unconsciously and effortlessly. However, for those students who enter kindergarten without that skill under their belt, learning how to rhyme can be a laborious task, indeed!

Kathy CraneOctober 9, 2017Common Core, Reading, RhymingComment

Building The Working Memory

Most reading and math problems that occur in learners can be traced to one thing, the underdevelopment of a working memory. A working memory is the ability to hold information in ones head long enough to use that information.

LiteracyKathy CraneJanuary 16, 2017Intervention, Reading, Phonemic Awareness