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Ms. Mara's Classroom Edit display name

  • Ogden Elementary School
  • Chicago, IL
  • Half of students from low‑income households Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more

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I selected materials that go beyond worksheets and rote memorization. Students don’t learn to read from simply listening to stories or staring at books. Instead, students learn through multiple modalities of learning, including kinesthetic, auditory, and visual learning. Keeping this in mind, I selected egg shakers for sounding out syllable “beats” (auditory); flashcards with visuals that illustrate orthographic mapping (visual); and a plethora of manipulatives such as magnets, magnetic letters, and snap-n-learn letters (kinesthetic). Unlike last year, students will learn in person and the majority of these materials are washable and sanitizable. Do you remember learning to read? I know I don’t! Picture a lesson where a student hears a word, says it, sounds it out with an egg shaker, pops out the sounds with the bubble fidget, arranges the word with magnet letters, and blends them. Or, imagine students building words with Spelligator, or connecting letters with the Magnatiles and dry erase markers. Beyond orthographic mapping, students will learn to differentiate CVC words with the magnets and practice blends and digraphs with flashcards. Students will recognize that sounds are represented by letters, such as identifying the lower and uppercase correspondence in letters with the snap-n-learn alligator tools. I will use the dry erase mats to print out sound boxes so students can re-use them, segmenting words with dry erase markers, play-dough, or magnet chips and blending them together. Recently, I’ve delved into the plethora of research that supports orthographic mapping from educators like Heidi Martin and researchers like Dr. Kilpatrick; materials such as the magnets and mats will support students in practicing orthographic mapping, which is a fancy word for connecting the sounds in language to their written form.

About my class

I selected materials that go beyond worksheets and rote memorization. Students don’t learn to read from simply listening to stories or staring at books. Instead, students learn through multiple modalities of learning, including kinesthetic, auditory, and visual learning. Keeping this in mind, I selected egg shakers for sounding out syllable “beats” (auditory); flashcards with visuals that illustrate orthographic mapping (visual); and a plethora of manipulatives such as magnets, magnetic letters, and snap-n-learn letters (kinesthetic). Unlike last year, students will learn in person and the majority of these materials are washable and sanitizable. Do you remember learning to read? I know I don’t! Picture a lesson where a student hears a word, says it, sounds it out with an egg shaker, pops out the sounds with the bubble fidget, arranges the word with magnet letters, and blends them. Or, imagine students building words with Spelligator, or connecting letters with the Magnatiles and dry erase markers. Beyond orthographic mapping, students will learn to differentiate CVC words with the magnets and practice blends and digraphs with flashcards. Students will recognize that sounds are represented by letters, such as identifying the lower and uppercase correspondence in letters with the snap-n-learn alligator tools. I will use the dry erase mats to print out sound boxes so students can re-use them, segmenting words with dry erase markers, play-dough, or magnet chips and blending them together. Recently, I’ve delved into the plethora of research that supports orthographic mapping from educators like Heidi Martin and researchers like Dr. Kilpatrick; materials such as the magnets and mats will support students in practicing orthographic mapping, which is a fancy word for connecting the sounds in language to their written form.

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About my class

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