Why Be Redundant?

Every year the kids and I create The Tactile Alphabet Book. This is a book created by gluing something touchable to the page and accompanying it with a sentence strip that is framed like this: "___ is for ____." For example, 'Gg is for grass'. We generally complete one page a day.

So, you have to picture it. Each day the kids make their way to my table during our Group Time. We have already reviewed the letter of the day, sang UP to the letter of the day, and acted out the sentence with word cards. We've counted the words in the sentence, looked for letters we know, and practiced the sound that is spelled by the letter. We do this almost every day. This means I cut up almost 20 sentences per day and repeat the process 26 times, not including the cover title.

So last week one of our letters was Qq. It was a big hit, since Dominique, the Class Queen, has a 'q' in her lovely and long name. The kids cut out photocopies of quarters and glued them down to the page, then carefully placed the cut up sentence at the bottom: Q q is for quarters. We discussed how using one quarter would change the word to 'quarter.'

As luck would have it, 5 kids were seated at the table and all 5 happened to finish at the same time. Each day the kids have to read the sentence back to me before setting it on the floor to try. This means I listen to and watch 20 kids read aloud 20 sentences to me each day for 26 pages.

"Okay, Ethan. Read it back to me."
As expected, Ethan dutifully touched once under each word and recited, "Q q is for quarters."

"Alex? Read it back to me."
"Q q is for quarters."

"Carlos?"
"Q q is for quarters."

"Bernie?"
"Q q is for quarters."

"Genevieve?" (No response. Her head is in her hand. She looks put-upon, which is interesting since I am the one engaging in the repetitive behavior.)

"Gena? Genevieve? What does yours say?"
Gena dramatically shrugs her shoulders. Then she responds in her most put-upon of voices,

"The same as theirs!"

;-)Kim