Information Overload

As our professional days at school begin and we get closer and closer to the first day of school, I am flooding every available brain cell with as much as I can.  As a Professional Learning Community, we are reading two books as a school: Guiding Readers and Writers by Fountas and Pinnell and Strategies that Work by Harvey and Goudvis.  While the Fountas & Pinnell book is geared towards grades 3-5 teachers, it's helpful for the entire faculty to be in the loop.

The school division is adopting a new math series that I need to read up on, along with the existing series for Social Studies and Science.

I also began rereading my copy of Literacy Work Stations: Making Stations that Work! by Debbie Diller.  As I read, I remembered how long it takes to model and practice to perfection the appropriate behavior and learning that should be taking place at each work station.  Debbie Diller references another book (maybe Fountas and Pinnell) where they say that the first six weeks of literacy work stations in the kindergarten classroom should be practicing, modeling, and teacher observation.  While it seems like a really long time,  I know that investing the time to model and practice to perfection is well worth it!

 I plan on blogging about the classroom progress for our literacy work stations as my new friends and I learn together.  One of the centers that I include (and that Debbie Diller mentions in her book) is the ABC/Word Language Study work station.  This work station can include flash cards, alphabet games, plastic letters, Scrabble tiles and more!  I got some really great alphabet stickers from the Target Dollar Spot and decided to try sticking them to some stones that I had (these may or may not have been in a fish tank at one time).  I'm so excited to show my friends and build words together with these "letter stones."

What unique things have you placed in your ABC/Word Language Study work station?  I'm always looking for new ideas!