Early Childhood Education

Father’s Day

Just love the funny video, Dad’s Life! This light-hearted slideshow for primary students contains conversation starters based on the music video clip. Please also see the slideshow below: My Daddy Isn’t Here to address issues with students who won’t be be with their dads on Father’s Day.

 

 

The slideshow below is an unusual take on Father’s Day. Use just selected slides or them all to raise awareness and support those children who may not see their Dad on Father’s Day. It is just a sample of reasons why a child may not be with their father – there are many more. As in all teaching circumstances I’m sure you will determine what is appropriate for the needs of your class. Just a thing I’d like to add … a comment to my website mentioned that some children are not loved – hopefully they are by us! The child represented in the last slide has never known a Dad. At this point I ask the children who loves them eg family, friends etc And I say I love them too. It’s not just about the love of a father.

 

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Posted by Nicola in Slideshows

Literacy Screening Tools

Within the free Flashcard Club there are Phonological Awareness one page “Quick Screeners” listed under the Word, Syllable, Onset/Rime and Phoneme levels as well as phonics flashcards. These are designed for teachers to quickly get an idea of where a child is at if they wish to start using a mastery learning folder to individualise their remediation.

If you are needing more in-depth tools, here are some useful links …

South Australian Spelling Test A pdf copy that provides teachers with an approximate guide to student spelling age.

Waddington Reading Test This is a link to the site to purchase this standardised reading test. Click on “Teaching Resources/Software” and your looking for Reading Spelling Tests 3rd Ed in the list on Page 5 (they don’t make it easy!)

Specific Level Assessment Tasks  pdf from NSW Dept. of Education & Communities which includes Educheck (Neal Phonemic Skills Screening Test), Johnson Basic Vocabulary, Sutherland Phonological Test and Phonological Awareness for Older Students

Phonological Awareness Skills Mapping (PASM)

Phonological Awareness Skills Test pdf from the University of Kansas for general and special education teachers

Year 1 Phonics Screening Check (UK) information and free sample (sign-up required) It consists of reading regular and nonsense phonetic words to determine phonics fluency in the context of whole words.

Burt Reading Test This is a pdf of a simple word recognition reading test that gives a standardised reading age.

Oxford University Press Phonics Check Support with multiple free samples (registration required)

The first three tests are useful for mapping individual or class phonological awareness skills. The tests indicate appropriate “pass” marks and therefore can be used to determine where each child is at. Teachers and parents can use this information to differentiate the learning according to individual and class needs. Some samples of flashcard style activities for different phonological awareness levels are found in the Flashcard Club under Foundation; English.

Mastery learning folders are designed to assist teachers with IEP students who need individualised remediation content. The strategy allows teachers to easily identify appropriate content, organise it in the folder and facilitate their students systematically mastering their individualised content. What teachers and parents are saying …

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Posted by Nicola in Parents, Teachers