In the Classroom: The Starfish

The Starfish Room recently received an easel and a dry erase board (squeal!), so now the Starfish’s meeting time conversations are more exciting than ever.

 

“That’s a lot of letters,” one Starfish remarked as her teacher wrote down what her friend had just said.

 

As we talked, we noticed that Colby, our newest Starfish and Calvin, Lucas’ new baby brother, both start with the letter ‘C’. Next we realized that the word instruction is similar to construction, and that the word justice and Jana’s older brother’s name, Justin, begin with the same five letters—this is heady stuff!

 

Being able to see how to put letters together to form words, see word structure, and merge that knowledge with words that are already in a child’s vocabulary sets the foundation for solid literacy skills. One Starfish friend recently proved this for us.

 

Upon arriving in the morning, she identified which Starfish were already in class, pointed to the nametags of each friend on our ‘Question of the Day’ board, and said their names. Her dad was amazed!

 

We have been investigating supermarkets, so Starfish used their writing skills to make signs for the different departments in the market, as well as the pricing labels for the shelves. Eventually, seeing how milk is spelled will help the Starfish to pronounce similar words such as bilk, ilk and silk, as their vocabularies grow!

 

As teachers, we aspire to foster a joy for language, words, and their meanings in the Starfish Room. With our new literacy tools we’re well on our way!