Watch, Read and Learn with Scholastic's Bookflix

Scholastic BookFlix is a new online literacy resource that pairs classic video storybooks from Weston Woods with related nonfiction eBooks from Scholastic to build a love of reading and learning. The engaging way to link fact and fiction, BookFlix reinforces early reading skills and introduces children to a world of knowledge and exploration.  CAERS students log-in here.

Library Provides Free Books for Children
 
The Public Library in Tampa is sponsoring the Imagination Library for Children, which provides a free book per month per registered child. The program, initiated by Hillsborough’s Board of County Commissioners, is designed to mail a new, age-appropriate hard-cover book each month to every child registered from birth to age five – just as they prepare to enter kindergarten. “Look Out Kindergarten, Here I Come” is the final book each child will receive.

Imagination Library History
Dolly Parton began Imagination Library in her home state of Tennessee because she believed that income should not be a restriction for children to have books in their home. The popular initiative has since spread to hundreds of communities. The Dollywood Foundation funds administration costs for the program.
Local Partners - Hillsborough County’s Imagination Library program is a joint initiative by the:
·        Children’s Board of Hillsborough County
·        Healthy Start Coalition of Hillsborough County
·        Hillsborough County Department of Children’s Services
·        Hillsborough County Head Start/Early Head Start
·        Hillsborough County Public Schools
·        Hillsborough County, Public Library Cooperative
·        United States Postal Services-Tampa
·        United Way of Tampa Bay .
For details and to register a child, go to: http://www.uwtb.org/imaginationlibrary/    

Phonemic Awareness Instruction
Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in spoken words. Before children learn to read print, they need to become aware of how the sounds in words work. They must understand that words are made up of speech sounds, or phonemes.

Phonemes are the smallest parts of sound in a spoken word that make a difference in the word's meaning. For example, changing the first phoneme in the word hat from /h/ to /p/ changes the word from hat to pat, and so changes the meaning. (A letter between slash marks shows the phoneme, or sound, that the letter represents, and not the name of the letter. For example, the letter h represents the sound /h/.)

Children can show us that they have phonemic awareness in several ways, including: recognizing which words in a set of words begin with the same sound ("Bell, bike, and boy all have /b/ at the beginning."); isolating and saying the first or last sound in a word ("The beginning sound of dog is /d/." "The ending sound of sit is /t/.");combining, or blending the separate sounds in a word to say the word ("/m/, /a/, /p/-- map."); breaking, or segmenting a word into its separate sounds ("up--/u/, /p/."). Children who have phonemic awareness skills are likely to have an easier time learning to read and spell than children who have few or none of these skills.

Children can show us that they have phonological awareness in several ways, including: identifying and making oral rhymes; "The pig has a (wig)." "Pat the (cat)." "The sun is (fun)." identifying and working with syllables in spoken words; "I can clap the parts in my name: An-drew." identifying and working with onsets and rimes in spoken syllables or one-syllable words; "The first part of sip is s-." "The last part of win is -in." identifying and working with individual phonemes in spoken words. "The first sound in sun is /s/."