Email: kirsten_hubbard@myfsd.org (copy and paste my email address into the recipient box of your email)

RtI support is being added through teacher lessons.  If you need help at home with a particular literacy skill, please email me.

Aside from simply building their skills and knowledge of using technological devices, 21st century learners need to build and refine their skills of:

1. Communication: sharing thoughts, questions, ideas, and solutions 
2. Collaboration: working together to reach a goal -- putting talent, expertise, and smarts to work
3. Critical Thinking: looking at problems in a new way, linking learning across subjects & disciplines
4. Creativity: trying new approaches to get things done equals innovation & invention

These are life skills for now, looking ahead to college, and beyond that to careers.  As parents, think about how you use these four major skills in your daily lives. 

Students can work on building these skills both on and away from devices.  Here are some ideas:

• Communication: talking with family members at home, emailing friends and family, writing notes, keeping a journal, etc.
• Collaboration: working together on family projects at home like yard work, cleaning the garage, devising a plan for celebrating important things like birthdays, in a different way to adhere to social distancing guidelines, etc.
• Critical Thinking: making puzzles, playing games with your family, analyzing a problem and devising a plan to solve it, or thinking about a situation or anything from many perspectives or sides and think about the strengths and weaknesses at work in that situation, and thinking about a situation or problem in light of the parts and how they fit together to make up the whole thing, etc.  Thinking Maps, like those used in the classroom are very helpful tools to organize thinking.  Thinking_Map_Chart.jpg
• Creativity: practice thinking out of the box, use your intuitive mind and imagination to create new ways of doing things, then try to bring those ideas into your rational mind and create steps and parts that can make your new idea into a reality, etc.

Parents,

These are some fun literacy activities a colleague and I put together for our families to do with their children at home.  As much as possible, they focus on literacy activities that can be done as a family and away from technology.  Feel free to enjoy any of them throughout the year!

Grab your favorite book from home or an online source (see Literacy Links) and read. . .

• to your family at home with you, or
• to a friend,
• family member, or
• classmate. . .
• through a device using technology like FaceTime, Zoom, Google Meets, FlipGrid, etc.

Or, if you are taking a break and watching a little TV, mute the volume and practice reading subtitles.

Students can practice their writing skills at home by . . .

• writing the family's grocery list each week
• using sidewalk chalk to. . .
  • write encouraging notes to neighbors,
  • practice writing sight words or vocabulary words 
• daily writing in a journal about daily experiences
• writing about what they learned and practiced each day
• writing a story with a solid beginning, middle, a big thing that happens, and an end
• writing emails to teachers, classmates, friends, and family 

At home students can practice their speaking skills by . . . 

• orally summarizing for parents or teachers some new learning or experience
• orally responding to reading questions by giving an answer, citing evidence for the answer from text, and then explaining how that evidence supports the answer (RACE strategy)
• memorize and recite poetry for someone at home or record it and send to someone else
• creating a book club either with family in your home or over a distance and online with friends or others, and discussing what you are enjoying about the book, questions you may have, as well as possible predictions
• answering parents and other family members with more than just, "Yeah."  Explain what you are thinking and feeling using descriptive, sensory details. 

Across the board, listening comprehension is a skill that needs strengthening in most students.  Taken from the website: skillsyouneed.com, here is a model for practicing effective listening:

HURIER Model of Listening
The acronym HURIER is sometimes used in academic texts to summarize a model of effective listening skills. This model was developed by Judi Brownell of Cornell University.

H – Hearing

‘Hearing’ is used here in a very broad sense.  Not only does it refer to the physical act of hearing, but also to picking up on non-verbal and other signals; tone of voice, body language and facial expressions, for example.

U – Understanding

Once the message has been ‘heard’, the next step is to understand. This means tying together all the element of ‘hearing’ to create a coherent understanding of what was communicated. Factors like language and accent may affect your understanding.

R – Remembering

Remembering requires focus. An effective listener needs to be able to remember the message they are receiving in its entirety.

I – Interpreting

Interpretation of the message builds on, and enhances, understanding.  Interpretation means considering factors such as the context in which the message was sent. Importantly, here the listener also needs to be aware of, and avoid, any preconceptions or biases that they may hold that may affect how the message is interpreted.

E – Evaluating

Evaluating requires that the listener keeps an open mind on the messages they are receiving and doesn’t jump to conclusions about what is being said.  Evaluate all the information and only then start to formulate a response.

R – Responding

Finally, your response should be well-measured and demonstrate that you have understood what was communicated.  It may be necessary to use techniques such as clarification and reflection as part of the response.