Another day, another training

I've just finished up another training....Orton-Gillingham (Comprehensive version). This one was a continuation of a training that I went to last Fall. It was the first workshop I attended for my job and one that I enjoyed.

Here's a description via their website:

A hands-on, personalized session that provides a complete understanding of IMSE’s enhanced Orton-Gillingham method and the tools necessary to apply it in the classroom. After participating in this training, teachers will be able to assess, evaluate and teach children how to read, write, and spell proficiently.Participants will learn: Phonemic awareness Multi-sensory strategies for reading, writing and spelling Syllabication patterns for encoding / decoding Reciprocal Teaching for reading comprehension Multi-sensory techniques for sight words Student assessment techniques

My description is that it focuses a huge amount of time on how to teach phonemic awareness to students in a systematic method that just happens to allow for entertainment too. Each lesson builds off of the last by starting with a review of the previous sounds (via flashcards, drawing letters in sand, and practice encoding/decoding simple words). You introduce the new sound via the flashcard, add a literary tie (could be a poem, nursery rhyme, or a book), practice with sand, practice in words, and add into the card deck. It seems like a great program for both Regular & Special Education teachers (and you can probably find a way to combine it with Letterland).

I like knowing the strategies that the program uses, but I don't envision doing the whole program with my students. I will probably stick to using a few of the techniques, such as drawing letters in sand while making the sound, for troublesome areas in sound-letter correspondence.

In other news, I finally finished the Language goals for Kindergarten.  It took several days to make this one. There are just so many things you can target with this group of components. It's a little overwhelming, but it will be a great way to explain our role to teachers and parents. I haven't started on the ones for 1st-5th. I imagine I will be hard pressed to get them done before school starts back up since it is requiring much more thought. I've also got several meetings next week as teachers have to report (not to mention a room to setup). However, I do hope to have all of them done by the end of the month. The end result will be worth all of the effort.