Teton Literacy Center - Blog

Using Summer to Build the 5 C's

7/24/2017

Karen Pittman became famous in the education world in the 1990's. She asserted that problems are not only inevitable, but also a necessary part of the growing process.

In line with her philosophy on youth development outcomes, Pittman created the "5 C's" model. This model can help us understand how to help our students thrive. Even if our students are dealing with various issues or challenges, the following measures of "progress" can be used in a variety of settings:

Is the student developing....

Confidence - a general sense of self-worth and the belief in one's own ability to succeed
Character - the ability to take responsibility for one's actions, feel independent and self-sufficient, and stay true to one's own set of principles and values
Connection - a sense of belonging and safety in one's community
Competence - the ability to be effective in school, in the real world, and in the workplace
Contribution - taking on a leadership role in different situations, working to make a difference in the lives of others, and thinking about the bigger picture

Another important "C" not originally listed in Pittman's model is also worth noting:

Caring - a commitment to social justice, empathy, and sympathy towards others

So what does this all have to do with summer? Hosting summer camp programming really matters! Research has shown that summer camps typically result in significant growth in these developmental areas.

As stated by the American Camp Association (ACA), "Between 2001 and 2004 the American Camp Association conducted national research with over 5000 families from 80 ACA-Accredited camps to determine the outcomes of the camp experience as expressed by parents and children...The findings from this national study indicated that camp is a unique educational institution and a positive force in youth development."

Interested in learning more? Check out this fact sheet.

Math Counts! Summer Fun + Math Literacy = Awesome

7/10/2017

With all the (well-deserved) focus on summer reading during out of school months, it’s easy to let math skills and number sense melt away like a popsicle in the hot July sun. However, we believe that math and literacy go hand in hand. Here are some fun activities to get the math gears turning in your child’s brain this summer.

1. Chalk Number Line Race: A strong foundation in number sense is especially important for younger students. This activity lets them move their muscles while gaining an understanding of number order, addition and subtraction. How to Play: Make a number line with chalk from 0-20. For older students, step it up to increments of 5, 10, etc. All students start with their feet on 0 to start. Make several “play” cards that students will draw in order to play. For example: “Add 5” or “Subtract 3.” Students take turns drawing play cards and jumping to the number that their card indicates. The first to the end of the number line wins!

2. Plant (and measure) a Garden: What better way to get outside, get a little messy and practice math than to plant a garden? Students will use key math skills like measuring the spaces between seeds and volume of water needed, counting the seeds themselves, and dividing number of seeds per row. You can even graph the seedling height as they grow!

3. Shape Scavenger Hunt: Besides being important precursors to spacial reasoning and geometry, shapes are all around us in nature! Send your child on a scavenger hunt for ovals, triangles, diamonds, and more in the backyard or wherever you may be. Here is a downloadable version to get you started.

4. Start Saving: Not only does budgeting money towards a goal instill responsibility, but it’s also a great opportunity to practice counting and place value. Decide together what you’ll save for and designate a big container where spare change/saved money can go. As you get closer to your goal, subtract your saved amount from your goal amount to figure out how much more you need. Then celebrate when you reach your goal!

5. Map it: Going on a road trip this summer? Get your child involved in helping to plan the route on a map and tracking your progress as you drive. Not only will this keep kids engaged in the back seat and reinforce directional and measurement skills,but it will also encourage them to read road signs, map legends, etc. Literacy in action!

Thanks to the Math Geek Mama and Think Through Learning blogs for generating some of these ideas.

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Scavenger Hunts in Summer

7/7/2017

Get Outside! Sight Words in Summertime

6/5/2017

Learning "sight words" or "popcorn words" doesn't have to be a drag! We have compiled a list of fun ideas to boost your child's sight word knowledge, all while enjoying some fun in the sun!

Need a list of sight words? Click here for a list of high-frequency words by grade.

Now, to the fun part! Let the games begin!

1. Sight Word Soccer:

Supplies Needed:

Index cards with sight words written on them
Tape
Cones, cans, buckets, or another similar object
Soccer ball
Goal or area marked as a goal

How to Play:

Tape one index card to each cone.
Ask your child to say the words as they dribble around the cones. Ask your child to circle back and re-try the word if they can’t say it.
Allow your child to shoot for a goal at the end.

Other Ways to Play:

Option 1: Call out a word and ask your child to kick the soccer ball towards the correct cone to knock it over.
Option 2: Call out a word and ask your child to dribble over to it.

2. Jungle Gym Sentences:

Supplies Needed:

Index cards with words written on them that make a complete sentence when put together
Tape
Playground

How to Play:

Tape index cards to different places around the playground.
Challenge your child/children to find all of the index cards.
Once all cards have been found, work together to put the words in an order that makes sense.
Read the sentence out loud together. This is even more fun if you make the message something related to a run reward! Example: “You did a great job climbing all around, so we will be getting ice cream as a reward!”

3. Sight Word Basketball:

Supplies Needed:

Basketball
Sidewalk Chalk

How to Play:

Write different sight words on the pavement.
Call out a word and ask your child to dribble to the correct spot.

Other Ways to Play:

Play a math version by writing equations on the pavement, like “2 + 4” or “6 x 6”, and then call out the answers. Ask your child to dribble to the equation that matches the answer you called out.
Play a phonemic awareness version by writing different phonemes on the pavement, like “m” and “ou”. Call out the sound and ask your child to dribble to the matching letter or blend.

4. Sight Word Sprint:

Supplies Needed:

Index cards
Markers

How to Play:

Write sight words on index cards, leaving one letter off. For instance: "__at" or "sa__d." Your child might fill in the blank space in the first example with "c" making the words "cat". Your child should fill in the letter "i" in the second example, making the word "said", but other options like sand do exist as well.
Scatter the cards around your lawn or living room.
Ask your child to run around and fill in the missing letters. Some words may have more than one correct answer.
Make this more fun and challenging by making it a race with a sibling, peer, or parent!

5. Sight Word Swim:

Supplies Needed:

Pool or pond access
Any type of ball that floats

How to Play:

Throw a ball into the pool. If two children are playing, see who can get the ball first.
To score a point, the child who gets the ball first must read it out loud. If they don’t read it correctly, the other child may have a turn.

Other Ways to Play:

Write on diving sticks instead of floating balls if your child feels comfortable diving to the bottom of the pool. Ask your child to dive to get the stick.
Once your child resurfaces, ask them to say the word written on the stick out loud. Make this even more fun by timing how long it takes to retrieve and say the words on all of the diving sticks, and then attempting to beat your own record!

6. Water Gun Game:

Supplies Needed:

Squirt guns or a hose
Sidewalk chalk

How to Play:

Write sight words on the pavement with sidewalk chalk.
Call out a word and ask your child to squirt or hose down the correct word.
To make this more fun, squirt your child if they squirt the wrong word, or let them squirt you if you do!

7. Water Balloon Battle:

Supplies Needed:

Water Balloons
Containers or Buckets
Sharpie

How to Play:

Divide your family or your children’s friends into two teams. Divide the water balloons equally between the two teams.
Designate an area to play on your lawn or around a field.
The object of the game is to hit the other team with as many water balloons as possible. The first team to get rid of all of their balloons is the winner.
To throw a balloon, the person throwing must shout the sight word and then aim it at a member of the opposing team.
If the balloon doesn’t pop, the person who threw it must retrieve it and try again.
If a person throws a balloon without saying the sight word, they may be hosed down, squirted, or forced to run a lap around the field. (You choose the “punishment”)

8. Water Painting:

Supplies Needed:

Sidewalk Chalk
Water
Paint brushes

How to Play:

Write sight words in sidewalk chalk on the pavement.
Encourage your child to “paint away” the words with water by tracing the letters with their brush.

9. Sight Word Hopscotch

Supplies Needed:

Sidewalk Chalk
Stone

How to Play:

Draw a hopscotch with chalk with words written inside the boxes.
Ask your child to toss a stone into one of the hopscotch boxes. Ask your child to read the word and hop to the box.

10. Sight Word Bowling

Supplies Needed:

Bowling pins, cans, bottles, or something else that can be knocked down
Index cards with sight words written on them
Tape
Ball

How to Play:

Tape your index cards to your pins.
Set up your pins on any flat surface, inside or outside.
Take turns bowling down the pins, following regular bowling rules.
Once a pin or set of pins is knocked over, remove them. To get the point for each pin, the player must say the sight word taped onto the pin out loud.
The winner is the person who gets the highest score after 10 rounds, or however many rounds you establish.

Summer Suggestions for Fun, Family Activities!

5/23/2017

In the last blog post, we offered suggestions for activities that encourage learning during the summer months. This type of family time is crucial to avoid ‘summer slide.’ We also encourage you to consider hands-on play and learning that promotes math and science thinking. The ideas below are all easy to try near home, are quick to pull together, and are fun ways to encourage creativity.

Ramps: Cut the sides off cardboard boxes and show your child how to set up ramps. Children will get excited to drive cars or roll balls down the ramps in order to test how far and fast they’ll go. Turn it into an informal science experiment by experimenting with steepness and different rolling objects. It's also fun to set up a race or obstacle course. Once they’ve played with the basic ramps, offer more varied materials like paper towel rolls and baking sheets to make your ramps more complicated.

Get Outside: Help your child explore the natural world. It’s amazing how exciting it can be simply to explore the woods and lawns on the side of the bike path: building with sticks, hiding behind trees, looking for ducks in creeks and turning over rocks. As a parent, I always expect to go farther, forgetting that just one small area can be exciting! Talk with your child about what you hear, see, and smell. Write it down in a nature journal for a literacy bonus!

Obstacle Courses: Set up an obstacle course for your kids. Show them how to run through it, and make it a fun, positive race. Can they go faster the second and third time? Then encourage them to make an obstacle course for you and a younger sibling. Even little kids can enjoy obstacle courses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9OoJ-Zg4QY

Create a Tiny World: Whether in the woods, on the pavement, or in your house (try using tape inside!), it's fun to help your children set up a tiny world. A giant inspiring example of this can be found here: http://babbledabbledo.com/giant-small-world/

She uses paint, but we often keep it more simple with chalk or tape. You can also try it out in the woods with sticks, rocks, and grass.

Preventing the Infamous "Summer Slide"

5/15/2017

Summer is the perfect time to learn together as a family. With the end of school right around the corner, it is important to start thinking about how your children will stay engaged this summer.

The best way to prevent “summer slide,” or losing knowledge gained over the school year during the summer, is to engage in learning activities every day. Some simple activities to try…

Cook a new recipe each week as a family. Choose recipes from faraway places or passed down by generations. Have your child read the recipe, write it down to share, convert measurements and experiment with flavors. This is a fun way to build vocabulary, numerical fluency and read in an authentic way all summer long.
Read a nonfiction book together as a family every week. Challenge your children to learn more about the topic by researching it at the library and presenting their findings to friends or family. Choose nonfiction books based on your children’s interests to keep motivation high.
Read a classic fiction book as a family over the summer. I still remember my father reading crazy science fiction stories to us from the 1940s. I used to read my little brother the Harry Potter series. I also recommend the Jurassic Park series, Lord of the Rings, or any classic children’s novels. TLC and the library have books you can borrow all summer long!
Volunteer. Summer is a great time to volunteer together as a family. Clean up your street, pick up recycling, or even read aloud to kids hanging out at the local park.
Explore. Summer is such a wonderful time to explore together as a family. Go to museums, on hikes, over to a friend’s house, or look for bugs in your own backyard. Exploring what is around you, writing journal entries about it, discussing it as a family or reading books that connect to the topic, are all ways to engage the brain. Need ideas on what to do? Talk to our staff!

--Ms. Kristin

Boosting Vocabulary: At Home & Tutor Tips

4/24/2017

Vocabulary refers to the words we understand and use to communicate effectively. Vocabulary is a very important part of the reading process, as it contributes largely to our comprehension of a given text. We cannot understand a text without knowing what most of the words mean.

What parents can do to help at home:

Engage your child in conversations every day. If possible, include new and interesting words in your conversation.
Read to your child each day. Whenever a book contains a new or interesting word, pause and define the word for your child.
Help build word knowledge by classifying and grouping objects or pictures while naming them.
Help build your child's understanding of language by playing verbal games and telling jokes and stories.
Encourage your child to read on his or her own. The more children read, the more words they encounter and learn.

What our tutors can do:

First, provide a simple, kid-friendly definition for any new word. For instance, you might say, “Enormous means that something is really, really big.”
Second, provide a simple, kid-friendly example that makes sense within their daily life. “Remember that really big watermelon we got at the grocery store? That was an enormous watermelon!”
Third, encourage your student to develop their own example. “What enormous things can you think of? Can you think of something really big that you saw today? That's right! The bulldozer near the park was enormous! Those tires were huge.”

Learning starts at home: promote wonder!

4/17/2017

Have you ever wondered why peaches are fuzzy? How heavy the sun is? What happens when you mix all different colors of paint together? Chances are, if you’re a parent, you’ve fielded a few questions like this from your son or daughter. At Teton Literacy, we believe that parents are a child’s first and most important teacher. Parent engagement and support is essential in order for children to reach their academic potential and be successful in school and their community. Learning is more successful when it is connected to and supported at home with family.
Luckily, you don’t have to know the answer to any of the above questions to help your child become a better student. All you have to do is indulge their sense of wonder and help them ask more questions. Learning how to investigate a question of interest and work to find the answer is one of the most important skills your child can learn on their path to lifelong academic success. Your support could be as simple as saying: “Look at that beautiful flower! I wonder why it has so many leaves. Let’s find out!”
After you identify a question, head to the library together or look on some trusted websites to find the answer! If you’re in need of a jumping off point, here’s a website we like: www.wonderopolis.org
Beyond this, here are some more ways you can create a home environment that is supportive of your child’s academics:

Read together every day! If your child sees you reading, she’s more likely to aspire to become a reader just like you.
Tell stories. Not only is this fun to do as a family, it strengthens oral language skills (essential for reading success) and promotes a strong sense of identity.
Cook together, build together, DO something together. The literacy skills involved in following a recipe or reading instructions to build a swingset are numerous. Everyday activities are a great jumping off point for diving into the inquiry process. Make ordinary tasks an opportunity to learn!

Spring Break: At-Home Ideas

3/20/2017

Looking for ways to keep your child active over spring break?
Check out these suggestions!

Sight Word Slap (K-12): Put up written sight words (on slips of paper or post-its) onto a wall or table. Two players/teams will compete, while one person will call out a word they’ve chosen from the wall. The first person to slap the sight word (with an object like a fly-swatter or home-made light saber) wins a point. You may either remove the word or otherwise mark it as you go with a circle, line, etc. Play until you have swatted all of the words. The person or team with the most points is the winner!

Note: This game may be modified in other ways as well. For instance, the caller may call out a definition; the players must find the word that fits that definition. The caller may call out a sound; the players must find the word that includes that sound.

Super Smash (K-2): Use an action figure, small toy, or doll to play this game. Make little "word tents" by folding small papers in half and then standing them up. Every time a word is said correctly, the toy “smashes” the word tent flat onto the table. To make this more challenging, "smash" only words that rhyme with one another. Alternatively, have one person call out the word, while the other person smashes the correct "word tent".

Dig & Sort (K-2): Pick a material your child can dig in. We suggest items such as sand, dirt, rice, pasta, beans, etc.

Hide different words that have a targeted sound in them. Have cups labeled with each targeted sound. See if your child can find and then place the words in the correct cup. For example, asking your child to put the word “set” in the cup that has the short vowel “e” on it, and not in the cup with long “e” on it. You may also simply ask your child to make piles of words that share a similar blend. For instance, ask your child to sort "th", "sh" and "ch" words into three piles as they dig and discover words like "ship", "think", and "chip".

Secret Messages (1-8): Write messages back and forth to one another. Make sure nobody else can see—it’s your secret journal! You may also make this more complex by writing in "code"--pictures, numbers, words, or more!

Alternatively, use coded messages or pictograms to host your own "treasure hunt" around the house! This is especially fun if you pretend to be spies, pirates, or world explorers.

Snow Ball Fight (K-12): Crumple up sight words into balls. Have a “snow ball” fight! Before you can launch a new ball, you must open up the ball, read the word, and re-crumple it. See how fast you can get at doing this!

For older students, use complex vocabulary words or more difficult sight words. Count how many "hits" you get and see who wins!

Beach Ball (K-8): Write comprehension questions on a beach ball and toss it back and forth. Answer the question under your right hand based on the article, chapter, or story you just read together. If playing with young students, you may want to select a picture or word to represent your question. For instance, drawing a stick figure would represent a question about the "characters", while a picture of a house would symbolize a question about the "setting".

Tracing Letters (K-5): Person one thinks of a message to give to person two. Person one then chooses an appropriate area of person two’s body that person two cannot easily see. The upper back works best, especially if the message has more than one word in it. Be sure to decide together what the ‘space bar’ will be. Letter by letter, person one writes their message on person two’s skin. Person two cannot guess until either the full word or the full message is complete.

Create a reward chart for reading at least 20 minutes every day. Work up to a fun prize! You may use stickers, draw stars, or select another way of keeping track of progress. Click below for templates to use with your child.

Simplistic Template
Color Template --Shorter Challenge
Color Template --Longer Challenge

Be sure to sign up your child for summer programming as well! Click here for information.

STEAM-Powered Literacy

3/13/2017

STEAM is the study of science, technology, engineering, art and math.   The topic has received significant attention in school districts across the country. At Teton Literacy Center we strive to integrate many STEAM topics into our curriculum. Join us Thursday March 16th for out S.T.E.A.M Family Literacy Night. TLC will provide engaging and academic activities for the whole family. Students will use their literacy skills as they explore each of the STEAM topics.

   While literacy is not included in the STEAM acronym, it is still a fundamental building block of science education. Scientific literacy implies that students can pose and evaluate arguments based on evidence.   Literacy skills can be implemented throughout this process in a variety of ways. For example, students seeking to learn about their favorite animal need to be able to decipher and pull main ideas from nonfiction text. This technique of “reading for information” becomes more important as students enter middle and high school, but it is still being practiced at the elementary school level. Reading for information is an important skill which will benefit students throughout their lives as they become informed and literate citizens. A scientifically literate person is one who can identify scientific issues locally and globally and use source information in order to form an opinion and successfully communicate it. With the sometimes overwhelming amount of information available to us, it is extremely important to be able to objectively explore and understand material in this way.

   Another important literacy aspect of STEAM is the ability to communicate information. Students must be able to write about and verbalize information that they are studying. Scientists must be able to make their arguments clear in order for them to have an impact. To build this skill, we foster communication and confidence through project based learning. This gives students an opportunity to design and test their ideas in a small classroom setting where their voice can be heard.   Students who may typically be reluctant to verbalize their opinions and ideas can take a leadership role in their small group. Through the practice of public speaking and nonfiction writing skills we can set students up for future success.

   STEAM is currently a popular topic in education, which is due to the fact that it is directly tied to future workforce requirements. By introducing students to STEAM, parents and teachers can create a fun and engaging way to not only make literacy meaningful but to provide students with the skills to succeed in school and beyond.