This week, I’ve written about the Importance of a Good Foundation and introduced you to Literacy Beginnings — A Prekindergarten Handbook, a resource I truly believe will become a new standard resource for early literacy. After Wednesday’s post outlining the wealth of information in this great book, you might be surprised to know there’s even MORE!
At the end of the main text of the book, you find the appendices. I’ll confess, I often feel like the appendices of a book are somewhat like the appendix of the human body. There’s probably a reason for it, and it probably does some good, but we can get along just fine without it. NOT the case with this book!
I feel like the appendices of Literacy Beginnings essentially constitutes a bonus reference book. The first section offers more than 74 basic rhymes and songs. Many are likely familiar to you, but it’s great to have the reminder of those old classics as well as an introduction to some new ones. (It also comes in handy when you need to settle a trivial argument about whether it’s “London Bridges” or “London Bridge is” falling down.) Plus, each rhyme comes with a suggested activity for extending the experience.
The next section organizes great read alouds for preschoolers by theme. So whether you’re working on a food unit or want to do an author study of Lois Ehlert, you’ll find a list of high quality books to share with your little ones.
Inquiry projects are also introduced with general guidelines as well as several activities, songs, and books to go with about a dozen common study themes. In addition to being a great resource for lesson planning, it helps to illustrate the method of instruction Fountas and Pinnell discuss in the book.
Likewise, literacy and language activities that were described in the book are found in the appendices, written as individual lesson plans with great detail. So if you’re not quite clear about how to conduct a shared reading or you’re running out of ideas for alphabet exploration, you’ll find that along with 33 other lessons in the appendices as well.
For all those asking if there are any great books to recommend for preschoolers, Fountas and Pinnell have collected 18 pages worth of quality reads organized by topic. I can’t think of very many other people I’d rather get a book list from, and here it is, ready to go with your next study unit.
If you can believe it, there’s still more to be found in this bonus section. Developmental charts, letter formation helps, book making activities that are ready to print, assessment sheets, materials lists, and of course a glossary for all the educational jargon. If by some rare chance you need even more information, there are even a few more pages of recommended resources.
There’s so much information and ready-to-use resource materials, it truly feels like Fountas and Pinnell are giving away another free book along with the amazing primary resource they’ve created. There’s such a wealth of information here as individual parts, but they also come together so well to clearly illustrate the principles laid out in the book, and give anyone who teaches young children a wealth of tools to work with.
I would love for you to have this resource for yourself.
Heinemann, the book’s publisher, has agreed to give a free copy of this book to one of the readers of Not Just Cute. Here’s how you can enter to win:
Comment here to let us know you want this book. Gain additional entries by tweeting the link to this post or sharing it on Facebook. Be sure to come back here and leave a comment for each to let us know you have additional entries. Comments will be accepted until Tuesday, July 19th, 11:59 pm after which a winner will be randomly selected. **This giveaway is now closed.**
(If you can’t wait for the giveaway and have to have this book now, you can find it at Amazon by clicking this link: Literacy Beginnings: A Prekindergarten Handbook.)
Good luck!
Top photo by ThomasLife.
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