By: Mary Ann Lawler
How do you teach new staff about early literacy quickly? Get hands-on as soon as possible. Here’s a way to do that using the CLEL Bell winners’ Activity Sheets, found on the CLEL Bells website.
I recently co-led a 45-minute workshop at an early childhood educators’ conference focused on teaching the early literacy practices. We wanted to make a connection for these preschool teachers and childcare providers between what they do regularly when playing with kids and how it supports early literacy.
As we introduced the 5 Early Literacy Practices to them, we used books and simple toys to point out some examples of the concepts.
Next we passed out CLEL Bell Award winning books, matched with their activity sheet and asked them to discuss the book and the activities. This got them talking about what they were learning, connecting to examples and thinking about what activities they could do with their classes and how these books could expand what they are currently doing.
This was a simple outline that worked really well, and everyone left with resources to use to keep the learning and conversations going with their peers.
Interested in recreating this in your community or with your staff? Let me break it down.
Prepping for your training session:
- Read the 5 Early Literacy Practices on CLEL.org
- A helpful learning rhyme: “Talk, Sing, Read-Write-Play – makes a reader every day!”
- Look at the CLEL Bell Awards to find winners for each early literacy practice. These will be great to show examples about the practice from the book.
- Each CLEL Bell Award winning title has an Activity Sheet that gives a short book summary and then lists extension activities that expand early literacy beyond the featured early literacy theme of the book.
- For more examples, look at the CLEL Bell shortlist titles. They don’t have activity sheets, but they will expand your examples related to the early literacy practice.
Training Session Outline:
- Introduce the 5 Early Literacy Practices – READ, WRITE, TALK, SING, PLAY.
- As you talk about an early literacy practice (example: TALK), point out features and moments in the TALK winner that support or model the TALK practice.
- For example:
- Speech bubbles with different colors show readers who is speaking.
- A story shows a child and caregiver having a conversation, taking turns back and forth to ask questions, with lots of vocabulary and supporting the child’s curiosity.
- For example:
- Pick an example activity from the book’s Activity Sheet with something physical that you can show to make the connection to everyday play and early literacy practices.
Here’s a similar idea with less prep – have a staff discussion using a CLEL Bell winner and its activity sheet:
- Get a copy of a CLEL Bell winner
- Print out the Activity Sheet for the book
- Read the book together as a team and talk about how that book connects to the Early Literacy practice category. (For example, Scroll by Hui Li won in the WRITE early literacy practice in 2024. Why is it a good WRITE book?)
- Next, look at the winner’s Activity Sheet and explore the activity ideas. Each activity idea extends the book, so they will feature other early literacy practices. What early literacy practices show up in the activity and how does it support early literacy?
- Consider meeting several times – each time focused on a different early literacy practice.
The benefit of Activity Sheets for each CLEL Bell Award winner is to put early literacy into action, and they can help new staff understand how early literacy is a natural part of every day for children.
Thank you to Broomfield Early Childhood Council for providing a great “brain-builder” conference and my co-worker, Nadia Martinez, for sharing her expertise with me for this training experience.
