Additional Nellie Edge Workshops
Build Family Connections that Multiply Your Teaching Effectiveness: Begin with Spring Registration!
with Nellie Edge
A small hands-on “Best Practices” Workshop (Limited to 35)
3 PDUs or 6 WA Clock Hours available
Create a supportive "Parents as Partners" program with easy-to-implement strategies that will make a powerful difference in each child’s language and literacy development, social skills and love of learning.
In just one day, you will learn how to:
Motivate kindergarten families at spring registration to build literacy skills over the summer: ABC Phonics, name writing, singing, talking, reading, and playing with nursery rhymes.
Build a powerful Parents as Partners program that multiplies your teaching effectiveness ALL YEAR LONG! Meet new ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act) guidelines with meaningful family involvement.
Create a simple, delightful open house with a welcoming Scavenger Hunt; then have the best literacy night ever!
Share authentic and meaningful ways for families to help grow kindergarten writers and illustrators. Teach the developmental levels of writing and drawing.
Help families understand the value of play: outdoor play, purposeful literacy play, block building, and making things.
Engage families in student-led parent conferences; empower children to take ownership of their learning process.
Learn how to get more parent volunteers into the classroom and how to use their skills more effectively. Create a “giving tree” for classroom needs and wishes.
Establish family reading traditions including home-to-school Book Clubs and Book Buddy Bags.
Support Parents as Partners in helping edit and publish kindergartners’ books this spring. Your students and families will LOVE these books! This is one of the best things we do!
Learn to sing and sign for your end-of-year family celebration: What a Wonderful World, The Pledge of Allegiance, and Goodnight Irene.
“We have a covenant with families that says we jointly share responsibility for teaching your child.”
—Ernest Boyer
National Board Certified teachers and Salem-Keizer kindergarten teachers: email info@nellieedge.com for scholarship details.
Workshop includes the resources you need to build your Parents as Partners in Kindergarten in Success program: resource book, power guide manual, parent letters, spring registration packet, scavenger hunt set, gift folder, and sign language resources, and more. (More than a $99 value!)
Scholarships available:
National Board Certified teachers and Salem-Keizer kindergarten teachers: email info@nellieedge.com for scholarship details.
Additional Information
Your Colleagues Evaluate Nellie Edge Professional Development
Loved it! Love the applicable learning! It speaks to my teaching heart. –Elizabeth Hoover, 1st grade
See evaluations from 2017 Phonics for Fluency
Thank you for reminding us of what authentic learning is all about. –Becky Bull, kindergarten teacher
See evaluations from the 2017 Writing Institute
I love how all of the information is current and relevant to today’s students and the standards...
See evaluations from the Portland Seminar
Best I've been to in 35 years!
See evaluations from the Boston Seminar
You put the fun back into teaching and learning.
Share this Kindergarten Writing information with a colleague!
About Nellie Edge
For more than three decades, Nellie Edge has been teaching and inspiring kindergarten teachers around the globe. Her proven literacy strategies are grounded in evidence-based research. Teachers everywhere have seen higher student achievement and joyful, engaged learners when they’ve followed her proven practices and used her extensive resources.
Read more about Nellie Edge.
Phonics for Fluency: Phonics for Fun!
Learn 7 Best Practices for ABC Phonics Mastery
Presented by Nellie Edge and Diane Bonica
(appropriate for preK-1, special education, reading teachers)
Experience an Optimal Teaching and Learning Model:
1. Phonemic awareness: memorable and playful ways to develop English language fluency.
- 10 must-learn songs and rhymes to develop phonemic awareness.
- Learn how to save instructional time and district money with authentic, embedded assessment that informs instruction.
- Learn how to use the Helper of the Day strategy to bridge meaningful sounds to print with the entire class engaged.
- Make friends with Mother Goose rhymes: Why we still memorize, recite, and perform nursery rhymes.
- Make the English language come alive!
Rhymers are readers – Marie Clay
2. Multisensory ABC and phonics immersion: What does mastery look like?
- Discover the easiest, most delightful way to teach ABC phonics skills.
- Learn to use assessment-driven instruction to accelerate literacy.
- Discover how fingerspelling provides memory hooks for diverse learners.
- Involve Parents as Partners and multiply your teaching effectiveness
- Teach for 3 levels of ABC Phonics Mastery: Build the reading brain!
3. Vowels, vowels, oh, beautiful vowels
- Use songs and games to build memory connections with vowels:
• Learn our slow Vowel Bat song.
• We can sing and write CVC words. - Use anchor charts to help the brain remember word families.
4. Simultaneously develop CVC words, handwriting, oral language and writing
fluency
- Use games, dances, art, and creative dramatics to reinforce phonics skills.
- Use white boards for authentic encoding: Writing teaches reading and keeps the brain engaged!
- Teach responsible class management. Children will use white boards, clean them, pass them back, and store them quickly and quietly:
Highly knowledgeable and skillful kindergarten teachers can resolve the reading problems of at-risk students as well as expert tutorial programs; yet most of our schools do not have a plan to provide the classroom instruction that these kindergartners require.
Regie Routman, Read, Write, Lead, ASCD, 2014.
5. Build stamina for Writing Workshop: Teach children to encode sounds to
print
- Children learn there are two kinds of words: words they are expected to know “by heart” and words they learn to stretch out and write the sounds for.
- Understand the research base from Dr. Richard Gentry, Dr. Richard Allington, and Regie Routman. Explore action-research from real kindergartens.
Recent research has demonstrated that virtually every child who begins kindergarten could be reading on grade level by the end of first grade. Few schools accomplish this because few schools provide the expert and intensive writing lessons needed.
Richard Allington, Teaching Edge, presented at International Reading Association
6. Enjoy memorable phonics lessons children will NOT soon forget
- Silent “e” Man
- The King of “ing”
- The “Wow!” salute and much more…
- Be prepared to laugh and sing and remember why you love teaching!
7. What does an authentic kindergarten Response-to-Intervention (RTI) program look like?
- Learn why all schools need a systematic, intentional, and coordinated approach to reading intervention beginning early in kindergarten.
- Apply ABC phonics best practices gleaned from respected RTI models.
Accomplished kindergarten teachers intuitively and systematically weave phonics skills into everything they teach and have absolute instruction clarity about how they are building mastery of letters and sounds and fluency with CVC words! They use choice words to help children work hard, persevere, and develop a growth mindset.
Diane Bonica is one of Oregon’s most celebrated kindergarten teachers and presenters. In her co-authored manual, Joyful and Rigorous Kindergarten Experiences: Celebrate the Imagination and Challenge All Learners, she documented how joyful learning and rigorous literacy standards go hand-in-hand. Still a legend in the Tigard school community, Diane is retired from full-time teaching and is currently mentoring new teachers. She is passionate about authentic phonics practices that nurture creativity and honor childhood.
For more than three decades, Nellie Edge has been teaching and inspiring kindergarten teachers. Her proven literacy strategies are grounded in evidence-based research. Teachers everywhere have seen higher student achievement and joyful, engaged learners when they’ve followed her proven practices and used her extensive literacy publications, resources, website, and online seminars. A recipient of the IRA Reading Excellence through the Arts award, Nellie Edge is a proponent of using music, American Sign Language, and all of the arts to enhance early literacy skills.
This Is What We Know for Sure:
- We are all teachers of English language development throughout the day
- Some children need much more intentional instruction than we used to think was necessary…We must provide it in the most time-efficient, cost-efficient—and joyful—manner!
- All children deserve an optimum teaching and learning instructional model.
- We dramatically accelerate learning when instruction is meaningful, multisensory, intentional, assessment-driven, differentiated, authentic, and joyful.
- Writing-to-read strategies save instructional time and district money by taking advantage of how the young child’s brain learns best.
Prerequisite: Participants must be passionate about teaching and be motivated to learn new strategies. Our promise: You will experience active, emotionally engaging, art-rich phonics instruction that grows kindergarten readers and writers.
Additional Information
Do you want to optimize this workshop to be most valuable to you?
The training found on Nellie Edge Online Seminars #1 (ABC phonics immersion), #2 (handwriting), and #3 (word work and fingerspelling) is the foundation for this live workshop. When you are already familiar with this multisensory approach attend, you will reap the greatest benefit!
Learn more below or visit Nellie Edge Online Seminars.
1. Positive Discipline in Kindergarten: Children Can Choose to Refocus and Change Their Behavior!
Good behavior can and must be taught: This is absolutely the hardest part of teaching to get right!
With Julia Barto and Nellie Edge
Give unconditional positive regard… Believe they will behave… Teach children to work hard and to be kind!
- Caring is the key to conscious, positive discipline: “Kids don’t care how much you know…unless they know how much you care.” –Madeline Hunter
- Consider: What are your philosophical assumptions about discipline?
- How we greet children first thing in the morning and send them out the door at the day’s end builds community.
- Eliminate multiple warnings and repeated requests: Ask once and get the behavior you want.
- Meet puppets that teach class management!
- Raise your behavior expectations!
- Transform everyday discipline issues into teaching moments.
- Use American Sign Language (ASL) to calmly and quietly refocus behavior.
- Learn English/Spanish greeting and farewell songs and rituals that build community, teach kindness and literacy skills.
- Teach with passion: Manage with compassion!
About Julia Barto
Julia Barto is a Title 1 kindergarten teacher in Beaverton, Oregon
She believes although we cannot change the factors that cause students to come to us with misbehavior, we can address it and seek to change it. We can help change willful misbehavior through care, consistency, and the systematic teaching of rules, routines, and expectations. Julia teaches you how to intervene early in the cycle of misbehavior to protect your instructional time and energy. She understands teaching is the hardest job in America, and educators are not benefiting from more theoretical professional development.
This training will motivate, renew, inspire, and re-energize educators to continue working hard for their students, and provide them the satisfaction of seeing a nurturing, disciplined, high-achieving classroom.
2. Excellence in Kindergarten Literacy: High Expectations and Proven Strategies that Honor Childhood!
A practical “in kindergarten” workshop with Katie Nelson and Nellie Edge
Katie Nelson’s playful and engaging approach to literacy reflects her deep, knowledge of children, her love of music and language, and her understanding of how research supports a meaning-centered and systematic approach to literacy. With great wisdom and delight, Katie and Nellie will share how to organize the environment and implementA Comprehensive Literacy Model.
In just one day you’ll learn how to:
- Incorporate “Best Practices”: Name Tickets, Poetry “I Can Read” Folders, Kid Writing, “The Daily 4”, and Literacy Play Centers
- Use powerful ABC and Phonics Immersion Strategies with Sign Language: Sing, Sign and Read!
- Set up independent writing and word work centers that differentiate learning.
- Engage children in memorizing, reciting, and performing songs, poems, and rhymes. Parents love to see their children perform.
- Creatively engage children with “Just Right: I Can Read” books to build reading motivation, independence, and stamina.
- Infuse literature, poetry, music, drama, and American Sign Language throughout the curriculum.
- Multiply your teaching effectiveness with an organized, supportive “Parents as Partners” Program!
- Use positive discipline and “choice” to develop the “habits of mind” for success in school–and success in life. Understand why “emotional literacy” matters.
- Use playful, poetic transition activities to take advantage of every teaching moment.
3. Art-Science-Literacy and the Kindergarten Child
A Saturday Kindergarten Workshop
Presented by Laura Flocker with Nellie Edge facilitating
Laura Flocker, a master kindergarten teacher with a background in Reading Recovery® will share her incredible insights into developing a community of kindergartners who see and express themselves as artists and writers from the first days of school. Learn how to organize the art/literacy classroom, discover practical art techniques and the best of art resource materials. Be inspired by Laura’s classroom, which is alive with animals, growing things, science experiments, puppet plays, curious minds and real-life learning experiences.
In just one day you’ll learn how to:
- How to introduce basic art materials to maximize instruction and minimize mess
- A year-long guide for teaching and integrating art across the curriculum
- Teaching children to see like an artist: skills that transfer to science, math, literacy and life
- Guided art techniques that develop confidence, drawing ability and visual literacy skills
- Exercises to develop ABC and writing fluency
- Deep science explorations from nocturnal animals to birds
- A practical look at how the educational arts enhance the Common Core
Our Uniquely Qualified Presenter, Laura Flocker
Laura Flocker has pursued the artistry of teaching excellence for twenty-nine years. For the past thirteen years, her passion for beginning literacy has focused her energy on kindergarten. She delights in weaving science and art instruction into the curriculum because those subjects allow her to teach students to think, wonder, create, experiment, and play.
Laura Flocker’s experience as an English teacher, her graduate degree in educational administration, and her ongoing professional development as a Reading Recovery® teacher are evident in her keen insight into student learning. Laura’s deep connection to nature, her love of animals, and her passion for the arts infuses everything she teaches. She puts children in charge of their own literate lives as she teaches them about thinking, making choices, and expressing their unique ideas through the arts. Laura’s award-winning website reflects her commitment to both high levels of academic achievement and joy experienced by the children fortunate enough to spend a year with Laura.
- See Laura Flocker's Kindergarten website
- Kindergarten Scientists Record Their Work in Notebooks (PDF)
- Drawing Instruction Supports Handwriting Skills in Kindergarten (PDF)
- Download images from Laura Flocker’s Art-Rich Kindergarten (PDF)
4. Writing to Read in Kindergarten: Growing Engaged and Purposeful Writers Through the Lens of the Common Core State Standards
Presented by award-winning kindergarten teacher Julie Lay, NBCT
Discover why the “Kid Writing” approach is such a powerful way to systematically develop phonics skills through journal writing. Use music, art, sign language, and dance for brain-friendly learning across the curriculum.
- Begin the year with “Kid Writing” and book making
- Use powerful ABC and phonics immersion strategies
- Teach high-frequency “heart words”—their way
- Make interactive word walls
- Teach handwriting effectively
- Use ongoing authentic assessment
Julie Lay
5. Begin the Year with “Best Practices” in Joyful Accelerated Kindergarten and Early Literacy
Presented by Nellie Edge
Content from this manual will be available as a series of Nellie Edge Online Seminars.
What are the most brain-friendly and engaging literacy strategies we can use to create a joyful and challenging kindergarten? Explore exemplary literacy instruction with Nellie Edge as she inspires you to build the oral language and literacy foundations—honoring research—and honoring childhood.
In just one joyful day, you will:
- Learn powerful multi sensory ABC and phonics immersion and high-frequency “heart word” strategies—see amazing results.
- Build reading stamina and independence with quality literature and “Just Right: I Can Read” Books.
- Engage "Parents as Partners": Simple and practical ways to dramatically multiply your teaching effectiveness.
- Develop differentiated literacy work centers that support and challenge all learners.
- Begin and end the day with joyful learning rituals and celebrations—make every moment count.
6. The Magic of Signing Songs: Enhancing All Children's Language, Literacy, Engagement, and Joy! (includes instructional DVD of all songs)
Presented by Nellie Edge and Diane Larson
Take advantage of how the brain learns best! Discover the powerful multi sensory tool of fingerspelling and signing songs to accelerate literacy skills for ALL children! Delight the hearts of parents and administrators with memorable children’s performances, motivated readers, and higher test scores! Explore joyful accelerated literacy strategies that you can immediately use in your classroom. No previous Sign Language experience needed.
In just one day you will experience:
- The easiest and most joyful way to teach ABC and Phonics skills
- How signing songs greatly influences oral language fluency and
reading motivation - Best practices for teaching high-frequency “heart words”
- Delightful songs that teach vocabulary and develop self-regulation
- Using Sign Language for class management and to keep children engaged and
focused - Creating memorable children’s performances that parents love
7. Favorite New Books and How To Use Them for Literacy and Delight in Kindergarten!
Presented by author and storyteller, Nellie Edge
Get acquainted with some of the books we believe all children deserve to have as friends. These are the books that bring a smile and often a chorus of “Read it again!” They are the books that build a love of reading, the books worthy of “grand conversations” with children. These books also bring a contented sigh and remind us again that “literature is life, and life is literature” as we celebrate our love of sharing wonderful books with children.
In just one joyful day, you will:
- Get to Know Kindergarten Teachers’ Choice: Best Book of 2011, 2012 and 2013 and other Favorite “Must Have” Books for the Kindergarten Library (Your new resource book contains many annotated lists!)
- Explore quality information books for science explorations
- Engage Children Imaginatively in Real Books: Use “Grand Conversations,” drama, movement, and mime to build comprehension skills and vocabulary
- Build a Reading-at-Home Program to Support Young Readers and create a Book Buddies Program of shared memories between home and school
- Make your Storybook Reading a Magical Time: Learn simple, practical, playful tips from master kindergarten storytellers (Several guest kindergarten storytellers will join us.)
1. Joyful and Rigorous Kindergarten Experiences: Celebrate the Imagination and Challenge All Learners
A Saturday Kindergarten Workshop
Presented by Diane Bonica with Nellie Edge
Welcome to a Kindergarten That Meets
High Common Core State Standards…
Discover a treasure trove of meaningful and creative curriculum ideas in Diane Bonica’s exemplary, child-centered kindergarten. You will be welcomed into “The Chicka-Boom Classroom” complete with a menagerie of giraffes, and a high level of science, math and literacy engagement. Discover how to truly honor childhood and challenge children to think deeply and love learning. See high Common Core Standards in practice!
This all-day, “in-kindergarten” workshop features:
- Build Respectful and Supportive Parent Connections that will Enhance Every Part of the Kindergarten Experience
- Welcome Children and Their Families into a Joyful Language-Rich Classroom
- Support Parents as Partners in Providing Name Writing Practice and ABC and Phonics Immersion Strategies
- Learn How to Get More Parent Volunteers into the Classroom and How to Use Their Skills More Effectively
- Establish a Nightly Reading-At-Home Program
- Create Memorable Parent Performances and School Celebrations that Children and Families Delight in
- Learn Proven Strategies for Successful Kindergarten Registration, Family Literacy Evening, and Literacy and Art Gifts that Families Love
“We have a covenant that says we jointly share responsibility for teaching your child.”
—Ernest Boyer
2. Literacy through Literature, Dance, and Song: Developing Skills Within a Love of Language
A Saturday Kindergarten Workshop
Presented by Kathie Bridges with Nellie Edge facilitating
How do we develop a classroom of kindergartners who not only learn to read and write—but choose to read and write? How do we honor the need for socio-dramatic play—and the need for a rigorous literacy focus in a half-day kindergarten? Kathie Bridges' comprehensive and engaging approach to literacy reflects her deep knowledge of children, her love of language, and a systematic, differentiated approach to literacy. With great skill, wisdom, and delight, Kathie demonstrates how to raise the literacy standards and still keep kindergarten a "child's garden."
Includes
- With Happy Hearts We Dance and Sing
- Bringing Folk Tales and Literature Alive
- Enhancing Small Muscle Development and Handwriting Skills
- How to Develop Responsible Learners from Day One
- Memorable Parent Performances
- "Parents as Partners" in Maximizing Literacy
3. Joyful Learning in a Child's Garden: Celebrating Language and Accelerating Literacy
A Saturday Kindergarten Workshop
Presented by Becky Leber and Nellie Edge
How do we raise the literacy standards and still keep kindergarten a "child's garden?" How do we honor the need for socio-dramatic play — and the need for rigorous literacy skills instruction with "at-risk" and English language learners in an all-day kindergarten? Becky Leber's balanced and engaging approach to literacy reflects her deep, deep knowledge of children, her love of language, and her understanding of how to support kinders with a meaning-centered, systematic approach to literacy. With great wisdom, patience, and delight, Becky works with the children who need her most.
Includes:
- Joyful Accelerated Literacy: Multi sensory ABC and Phonics Immersion
- How to Set Up Literacy Centers for Differentiated Word Work
- Dramatizing and Reading Mother Goose Rhymes
- Building Reading Stamina with "Just Right" Books
- How to Engage Children in Memorizing, Reciting, and Performing Songs, Poems and Rhymes
- Writing Across an Arts-Rich Curriculum
4. Kindergarten: A Celebration of the Arts With Happy Hearts We Dance and Sing
Presented by Joanie Cutler and Nellie Edge
How do we celebrate the arts, honor childhood, and connect young children with the natural world outside the classroom? How do we nurture a love of learning in children and their families? Come and meet Joanie Cutler, who has been a mentor teacher to many of us. With her love of music, poetry, art and literature she has created a beautiful kindergarten model that is infused with the arts; nurturing creativity and literacy. When Froebel described kindergarten as a "child's garden," we believe he had a teacher like Joanie Cutler — with her gentle wisdom and uniquely creative teaching — in mind. The beautiful, full-color handbook is only available to workshop participants.
Workshop includes:
- With Happy Hearts we Dance and Sing
- Exploring the Rhymes and Images of Mother Goose
- How to Incorporate Literature and Myths into a Study of the Stars and the Cycles of Nature
- Creating a Kindergarten of Bird Watchers, Star Gazers, Plant Explorers, Rock Collectors and Insect Lovers
- Using Art, Music, Drama and Sign Language to Enhance Literacy
- Involving Parents in the Kindergarten Experience
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