Looking at Literacy
What BAISD teachers need to know today (Jan. 2019)
A New Year! New Books?
What is your favorite children's picture book? Do you have a 2018 favorite that didn't make the list? I'd love to hear about it!
The winners are pictured below.
2018 Fiction Picture Book Nerdy Award Winners
2018 Nonfiction Picture Book Nerdy Award Winners
Between the Lines How Ernie Barnes Went From the Football Field to the Art Gallery | Counting on Katherine How Katherine Johnson Saved Apollo 13 | Cute as an Axolotl Discovering the World’s Most Adorable Creatures |
Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop The Sanitation Strike of 1968 | No Small Potatoes Junius G. Groves and His Kingdom in Kansas | Otis and Will Discover the Deep The Record-Setting Dive of the Bathysphere |
Pipsqueaks, Slowpokes, and Stinkers Celebrating Animal Underdogs | Pride The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag | She Persisted Around the World 13 Women Who Changed History |
The Brilliant Deep Rebuilding the World’s Coral Reefs | The Flying Girl How Aida de Acosta Learned to Soar | Thirty Minutes Over Oregon A Japanese Pilot’s World War II Story |
Water Land Land and Water Forms Around the World | We Are Grateful Otsaliheliga | What Do You Do With a Voice Like That? The Story of Extraordinary Congresswoman Barbara Jordan |
Essential Instructional Practice #4: Activities that Build Phonological Awareness
As a quick review, phonological awareness is the umbrella term that encompasses many underlying components. These include, from the most basic to most complex, rhyming, syllabication, onset-rime, and phonemes. While this essential instructional practice includes all phonological awareness skills, it is important to note that most of our time should be spent on phonemic awareness skills as they are the skills necessary for reading. This practice should be present in all K-1 classrooms, and as needed in grades 2 and 3.
Essential 4 Video Samples

It is also important to remember that phonological awareness activities can all be done independently of text. It is an auditory practice. Some recommended activities from this essential include:
- the creation of variations of rhyming books or books with alliteration (see video 1)
- sound sorts of pictures, objects, and words (see video 2)
- Elkonin boxes/sound boxes and other tools for segmenting sounds (see video 3)
- blending activities (see video 4)
- daily writing opportunities where they have to listen to the sounds of the words to estimate their spellings (see video 5)
In the videos below, you will see examples of these practices in use in Michigan classrooms with real teachers.
Remember to find out more, or enroll in the free modules to dig deeper into the essentials alone, with colleagues, or ideally facilitated by a coach/trainer, visit the website linked below:
http://literacyessentials.org