Literacy Planning

LITERACY PLANNING
TOPP KIDS provides an opportunity for educators to work with children in a different way than during the school day. This more relaxed, playful, and nurturing atmosphere allows educators to emphasize the social aspect of literacy. Perhaps most significantly, our afterschool programs give children a rare chance to read. Most children read only a few minutes a day, and they have little opportunity to read in the classroom. Literacy is a product of having read a lot. A child’s ability to do that depends on the time you invest in them. We have many literacy focused areas around each program.

It is important that our educators provide children with a fun opportunity every day to encourage literacy. The ENRICHMENT portion of our day is dedicated to both literacy and family involvement in the programs. At this time the Arts & Expression Portfolio will plan a small activity encouraging literacy. Here are some examples of types of ideas/ activities:

• Book of the week
• Read a New Book Month
• Poems writing
• Story writing with Story Starters
• Story Cubes Competition- best story
• Spelling Bee
• Book Club
• Story Art
• Script Writing
• Movie Making
• Computer literacy- Coding
• Math based Literacy
• Instruction Writing
• My Story
• Anti-Bulling Posters
• The Comic Book Project
• Social Literacy- expressing emotions and standing up for your self
• Personal literacy- getting to know me better etc.

All literacy planning should be done using the STREAM Based Planning sheet.

Early literacy can be improved by comics, or graphic books. Graphic books can broaden children’s reading skills and build a bridge to a wider variety of reading. Children of various ethnicities read the same comics. Perhaps this is because the text in comics relates to what all children think about and the action interests all children. The graphics in these books relate directly to the text. The children can picture the words that they are reading in their minds, and this is a helpful literacy tool. – See more at: http://www.promisethechildren.org/blog/comic-books-can-help-early-readers/#sthash.8RbFDpyE.dpuf

TOPP KIDS LITERACY CENTRE
At every TOPP KIDS program there is a specifically designed Literacy Centre. The Literacy Centre is designed to be accessible for all children and generally lives on Reading/ Games Cart area. Inside are many resources for children and Educators to promote literacy for example:

• Pens
• Pencils
• Paper
• Erasers
• Story starters (multiple ages)
• Poem starters
• Story cubes
• Sentence builders, comic books

LITERACY AND DEVELOPMENT
Child development is a process every child goes through. This process involves learning and mastering skills. Children learn these skills, called developmental milestones, during predictable time periods. Literacy can play a huge part in 4 of the 5 Major Developments:

1. Cognitive Development: This is the child’s ability to learn and solve problems. For example, this includes a five-year-old learning how to do simple math problems, spelling or reading.
2. Social and Emotional Development: This is the child’s ability to interact with others, including helping themselves and self-control. Examples of this type of development would include: a five-year-old boy knowing how to take turns in games at school or recognizing emotions through written language or words.
3. Speech and Language Development: This is the child’s ability to both understand and use language. For example, this includes a 5- year-old learning to say “feet” instead of “foots” or 7-year-old using and learning more complex words and sentence structures (this is generally when swearing becomes fun).
4. Fine Motor Skill Development: This is the child’s ability to use small muscles, specifically their hands and fingers, to pick up small objects, hold a pencil, turn pages in a book, or use a marker to draw.

MAKING BOOKS PROMINENT AND A BIG DEAL!

This doesn’t take a lot of work! If you are not actively STAGING new titles every week, what is going to get your children excited to read more? Wayne Gretzkey said, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”, so put those books out there!

3 great ways to get children’s attention to new books would be by making a small poster of the cover or a small poster highlighting the author posted on your Reading Area/ Cart or creating a BOOK MENU (like a restaurant menu where you would see all the food items listed, create a list of all the books in your program).

Always remember to ROTATE your books too! If its always the same old titles, children will get bored quick, so keep some backups and rotate at least once a month. Eventually the kids will get excited for New Book Day!

HAVE A STORY DAY….
Reading stories, writing stories, sharing stories!