Books and Videos

First Grade In Photographs

Full-color photographs selected by seasoned first-grade teacher Judy Lynch showcase dozens and dozens of creative, practical ideas, each accompanied by Judy's insightful comments. From arranging furniture and creating storage space to designing teaching areas and making schedules, Judy guides teachers through the creation of a successful classroom environment. She also describes classroom-tested procedures and routines for shared, guided, and independent reading, writer's workshop, literacy centers, word work, and more. The fresh ideas, helpful tips, and beautiful photographs will inform and inspire—all year long! For use with Grade 1.

First Grade Writing Workshop

Master teacher Judy Lynch shares her tried-and-true lessons and routines for setting up a writing workshop in first grade—and keeping it running smoothly all year long. From preparing materials and setting the tone to teaching mini-lessons on procedures and craft to conferring and assessing, this complete resource has everything you need to introduce the writing process to first graders and help them develop into proficient writers. Full of model lessons, student samples, ready-to-go reproducibles, photographs, and more! For use with Grade 1.

Word Learning, Word Making, Word Sorting

In this companion to the best-selling Easy Lessons for Teaching Word Families, Judy Lynch shares her most successful word work lessons, perfect for guided reading, shared reading, interactive writing, and whole-group instruction. Super-fun activities like "Word Hop" jumpstart word-learning, and the interactivity continues with dynamic lessons on initial and final letters, suffixes, chunks, and clusters. This packed resource includes targeted lessons, word lists, sorting mats, guided and independent practice ideas, and more! For use with Grades K-2.

Easy Lessons for Teaching Word Families: Hands-on Lessons That Build Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Spelling, Reading, and Writing Skills

Help students make the link between phonemic awareness (hearing sounds in words) and phonics (the visual details of print) with these 55, systematic lessons. Using big and small letter cards, word boxes, and nursery rhymes—all designed as ready-to-go reproducibles—children manipulate their own letters to make words having high-frequency word patterns. Students then sort these for common word patterns and write more words using the sounds they have just practiced. Perfect for small-group practice, the lessons are arranged by vowel patterns to help teachers pick and choose what their students need. For use with Grades K-2.

Making Word Walls Work

Use Word Walls effectively and efficiently to build students' reading and writing skills. Weekly lessons and routines show how to introduce and review words all year long. Ready-to-reproduce, color-coded word cards specifically chosen for each grade make preparing a perfect Word Wall a snap.

Using Interactive Writing to Strengthen Your Students' Phonemic Awareness and Phonics Skills, K-1

*Includes a comprehensive video training resource guide

Viewers will observe a highly effective strategy for teaching elements of basic literacy within a context of meaningful print. Interactive writing blends the strengths of language experience, shared writing and direct instruction to develop foundational literacy skills.

Viewers learn how to:

• plan interactive writing lessons to promote optimum engagement, authenticity, and learning
• focus attention on critical literacy skills...phonemic awareness, phonics, and concepts of print
• maintain a correct model while encouraging student participation and promoting student learning
• keep all students in the group actively and constructively involved all the time
• promote the positive transfer of target skills into students' independent writing and reading

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Using the "Making Words Strategy" to Strengthen Your Students' Phonemic Awareness and Phonics Skills, Grades K-2

*Includes a comprehensive video training resource guide

This outstanding program demonstrates how to use the "Making Words" strategy to improve students' reading and writing skills. Actual lesson segments provide modeling and practical tips for reinforcing letter-sound relationships and increasing student awareness of letter patterns within words.

Viewers learn how to:

• successfully prepare and lead "Making Words" lessons
• effectively cue and coach students who are experiencing difficulty
• maximize student learning and positive transfer into independent reading and writing by focusing on letter and sound patterns
• incorporate new approaches to word formation, sorting, reading, and writing in each lesson
• keep students actively and enthusiastically involved in all phases of the lesson
• implement "Scrambled Words," an innovative strategy appropriate for emergent readers and writers

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Using Onsets and Rimes and Manipulation of Text to Strengthen Your Students' Phonemic Awareness and Phonics Skills, Grades 1-2

*Includes a comprehensive video training resource guide

Text manipulation and a focus on common rimes (word families) strengthen students' phonics skills -- reinforcing letter-sound relationships and vowel-consonant patterns -- and enhance students' phonemic awareness. Viewers discover how this set of proven teaching strategies enables learners to independently approach new words in their reading and writing with a higher degree of decoding and spelling accuracy.

Viewers learn how to:

• effectively use matching, scrambling, and substituting activities with print to strengthen students' phonics skills
• boost students' independence in reading and spelling by reinforcing rimes as key phonetic patterns
• prompt students in ways that encourage concentration and self-correction
• create a special word wall based on rime patterns...a classroom literacy reference students will really use
• put cutting-edge brain research to work in classroom reading and writing programs

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Word Work Strategies That Strengthen Students' Reading Development, Grades K-2 Video

Viewers learn how to:

• help students internalize key word solving strategies
• base classroom word work instruction on a well researched word learning continuum
• match word work lessons to students' literacy needs, from the emergent to the near-fluent level
• use word sorts to enhance students' thinking about word elements
• establish a core of sight words to boost students' reading fluency and comprehension
• coach young readers in ways that encourage and extend their ability to self-monitor and self-correct
• engage students in active word learning through small group, whole class and individual literacy activities
• strengthen students' reading independence

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