Hi Lety,
Gosh! I read your post the other night and was thinking about it later...there is so much I want to tell you! Is this your first teaching assignment? Or just a new grade level? Well...here goes...
Several other bilingual teachers and myself found that our kids really enjoyed “Cancionero”—Level A has songs for almost every letter that emphasis the letter sounds and are also cute and fun. I ordered the English equivalent, ( ), thinking that their songs might be fun for my ESL lessons, but most of those songs were cheesier than I could stand. I used the Elephant song when we had “E—el elephant” and the teddy bear song was the same as “O—El Osito” but that was about it.
http://www.hampton-brown.com/onlinecatalog/spanlit.asp
Joyful Learning in Kindergarten by Bobbi Fisher; Heinemann was also a really good book all around for first year Kindergarten teachers. Her classes were all English, maybe some ESL, but there are a lot of good foundations for K procedures, centers, whole language approach. (But keep in mind that Bobbi Fisher is to Kindergarten what Martha Stewart is to home making, so don’t let all those high ideals depress you either! You can’t do it ALL—especially your first year! So cut yourself a LOT of slack and give yourself credit for what you DO manage to do well the first year! This is just the beginning, it takes YEARS to achieve that kind of mastery! The important thing is you love the kids, and value their cultures and differences and are AIMING to do what is best for them and become a better teacher.)
I also learned a lot from my Cognitively Guided Instruction training and more from Growing Mathematical Ideas in Kindergarten by Linda Schulman Dacey and Rebekah Eston.
However, a few of the best things I discovered were my own stumbling into things that worked. I decided to set up an “Esta” and “No Esta” chart that each day the children would place their name card and their absent friends in the proper side. Also, if they needed to go to the bathroom, nurse, office, etc. I had a pocket on the wall that held the appropriate pass. They would then slip their name card in the pocket as they took out the pass. Then, at a glance, I could see who was where—like if there was a fire drill or something, you don’t have to remember instantly who you just said could go to the bathroom, etc. (This sounds stupid, but when you have five children trying to ask you something at the same time, you will understand.)
(I also did this with my third graders, but in their case they didn’t have to ask permission. The name card was notice enough. I told them I trusted their judgement, but if they “abused the privilege, they would lose it.” It wasn’t an issue.)
In K, I held their cards up every morning in circle time for the child to practice recognizing his/her name. At first I said their name, but then I did it silently for them to read. After a while, the other kids learned to read everyone elses’ names, and they learned more about letter-sound relationships by their names than ANY of the songs, poems, activities we did about letters!
I just finished reading Teaching Reading and Writing in Spanish in the Bilingual Classroom and would highly recommend it. Looking back, I am not sure that Y Freeman and D Freeman would approve of our alphabet emphasis, but I did a lot of learning within context and “constructing meaning.” They do recommend Pan y Canela, the little books that are the next levels after K.
To answer your question though, “Building Words” is part of the Four Block approach, and is not appropriate for Kindergarten. I did read Building Blocks and found many of the activities successful—particularly the predictable charts that each child contributes a line. The cutting apart, reordering and illustrating their own sentence was great for the “Concepts of Print” that K is required to master, (At least in California and Arizona—but many others I imagine.)
But Making Words is a really great activity for 1st grade and beyond. My ESL third graders loved it! They all could be successful at the smaller words and liked to try the others. And everyone wants to figure out “the mystery word” that used all the letters given. “Formando Palabras” is by Carson-Dellosa, by the way. I haven’t found anything else in Spanish for 4 Blocks.
I did find “Palabras y Vocabulario” which seems cool, (Imogene Fort) I have to study it more closely.
And to any older grade teachers listening in, “Differentiating Instruction in the Regular Classroom” was really helpful too—for ANY class, because each class has so many different needs and strengths. It explains developing “Essential Questions” which tie together your whole year—better than themes—to provide cohesion.
There is so much more, especially if this is your first year. I will be starting only my fifth year, but I have known some great teachers and read every book I could lay my hands on that looked worthwhile or was recommended...so I'm not as ignorant as I could be! I could "talk" more with you...I guess I will risk posting my email--it isn't my real email, but I can connect more with you and answer any questions I can--or ask my friend who knows even more!
Take care!
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