These workshops may be extended and combined to suit your time frame, from 60 minutes to full day.  Contact Lori Jamison to customize a program for your professional development needs.

Early Literacy Instruction in Kindergarten

What are the six essential literacy learnings for Kindergarten children? This session will focus on making the most of your instructional time within a play-based philosophy, and developing the foundations of literacy through read-aloud, shared and guided reading and writing workshop.

WRITE from the Start!

Writing Workshop is one of the best tools we have for launching literacy learning – right from Day One!  In this session, we’ll look at developmentally appropriate writing instruction through modeled, shared and interactive writing.  You’ll pick up ideas like bubble-gum writing, sticky dot details and overcoming the hurdle of “I don’t know how to write.”

Beyond “Letter of the Week”

Learning the letters and sounds of the alphabet is critical to literacy development.   This session is full of practical ideas for using students’ names and environmental print to teach, reinforce and practice letter names and sounds, so that students actually remember and use them.

Oral Language Development

At beginning literacy stages, children can only read and write words they already know.  How can we make sure they know lots of words?  Buzz Books, Vocabulary from Pictures and are just some of the techniques we can use to help children increase their oral language skills and build important literacy foundations.

Learning to Read by Reading: Shared and Guided Reading in Kindergarten

Balancing reading instruction in the kindergarten day can be a challenge.  This session will look at the unique roles and structures of shared reading and guided reading – and how we can implement each in a developmentally appropriate program.

Making the Most of the Kindergarten Read-aloud

The interactive read-aloud is one of the most important tools we have for supporting emergent literacy.   One picture book can be used for a series of activities from vocabulary development to reading strategies to written response in Kindergarten.  Join this session for a collection of practical ideas for using picture book read-alouds to meet essential learning goals.