"Last year, a lot of parents in my class were asking about the SECRET STORIES™ and how they could use them at home to support what their child was learning in school. I want to respect the copyright, but I also love that parents want to know!
Do you have suggestions on how to share the stories with parents? I noticed you'd suggested in another post that teachers could make a big book to send home using their older posters, but I don't have the old posters. I only have the smaller, cut-apart set that I use in small group to work with my kids?"
As soon as I received this question, I asked permission to post it on my blog!
So here are some "TO-DO's" for sharing the SECRETS™with your parents...
-DO devote a little time during Open House to let parents know about the SECRETS™ (what they are, how they work, etc...) and provide them with a copy of the"Parent-Share"page from the SS book!
We always held our Open House a couple of weeks after school had gotten underway, so by that time, my parents had already been hearing about the SECRETS™ from their kids, and so they were excited to learn more about them. Some parents, however, wouldn't even know that the SECRET STORIES® were about the letters, and they just wanted to understand what it was that Johnny kept talking about!
Because time at Open House is always limited, and there are always so many other things to cover, the "Parent-Share" page is key! It's a quick and easy way to provide parents with the tools they need to 'dig-deeper' later.
In it is the website information (which has leveled writing samples, video clips, sample SECRETS™, etc...) as well as a link to the SECRET STORIES® YouTube Channel and even information on the Home Version (identical to the class set, with the exclusion of the posters) should they wish to accelerate or remediate at home. Oftentimes, schools will even purchase a few copies (ideally, one per grade level) for parent check-out and sharing in-conference, or to house in a Parent Resource Room.
An additional and more comprehensive tool for sharing information is the downloadable and fully editable SECRET STORIES® PowerPoint, from which you can pull what you need and incorporate it into your own PowerPoint presentation, or even make copies to include in parent handouts. This comprehensive resource also contains live, clickable-links for teachers to dig-deeper! (Please note that due to the large file size, you will initially receive a "Whoops" message on GoogleDocs to let you know that the file is too large to preview. Just click 'YES' and the file will begin to download, although it will take a few minutes, due to the graphics/ file-size.)
-DO mention new SECRETS™ as they are introduced, in your newsletter! Because time at Open House is always limited, and there are always so many other things to cover, the "Parent-Share" page is key! It's a quick and easy way to provide parents with the tools they need to 'dig-deeper' later.
In it is the website information (which has leveled writing samples, video clips, sample SECRETS™, etc...) as well as a link to the SECRET STORIES® YouTube Channel and even information on the Home Version (identical to the class set, with the exclusion of the posters) should they wish to accelerate or remediate at home. Oftentimes, schools will even purchase a few copies (ideally, one per grade level) for parent check-out and sharing in-conference, or to house in a Parent Resource Room.
An additional and more comprehensive tool for sharing information is the downloadable and fully editable SECRET STORIES® PowerPoint, from which you can pull what you need and incorporate it into your own PowerPoint presentation, or even make copies to include in parent handouts. This comprehensive resource also contains live, clickable-links for teachers to dig-deeper! (Please note that due to the large file size, you will initially receive a "Whoops" message on GoogleDocs to let you know that the file is too large to preview. Just click 'YES' and the file will begin to download, although it will take a few minutes, due to the graphics/ file-size.)
It can be as simple as....
"Ask Johnny to tell you the SECRET about au/aw!"
OR
"Ask Johnny if he can tell you some words that contain this SECRET!"
OR
"Over the weekend, see how many words Johnny can spot with the au/aw SECRET!"
Kids who know the SECRETS™ take great pride in owning them, especially since they had to earn the right to hear them! It's a mistake when teachers assume that their students won't be able to share the SECRETS™ they know without an accompanying graphic or story text.
Now that's not to say that there won't be times when clarification might be needed. Like the time one of my kinders went home and told his mother...
"Mrs. Garner told us about this guy who's got a girlfriend AND a wife, and he loves them both so much he says 'ahhhhhhhhh' with both of them... she talks about them every day....she's even got their picture up on the wall!"
Needless to say, that took some explaining.
Even so, what mattered was that the story (and resulting sound) made sense to him!
"Ask Johnny to tell you the SECRET about au/aw!"
OR
"Ask Johnny if he can tell you some words that contain this SECRET!"
OR
"Over the weekend, see how many words Johnny can spot with the au/aw SECRET!"
Kids who know the SECRETS™ take great pride in owning them, especially since they had to earn the right to hear them! It's a mistake when teachers assume that their students won't be able to share the SECRETS™ they know without an accompanying graphic or story text.
Now that's not to say that there won't be times when clarification might be needed. Like the time one of my kinders went home and told his mother...
"Mrs. Garner told us about this guy who's got a girlfriend AND a wife, and he loves them both so much he says 'ahhhhhhhhh' with both of them... she talks about them every day....she's even got their picture up on the wall!"
Needless to say, that took some explaining.
Even so, what mattered was that the story (and resulting sound) made sense to him!
-DO consider purchasing SECRET STORIES® Porta-Pics for students to use both at home AND during independent reading/writing both in and outside of the regular classroom.
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| SECRET STORIES® Porta-Pics |
Porta-Pics are tri-foldable, card-stock placards with all of the SECRET STORIES® graphics, and are designed for 'portable' use both in and outside the classroom. They're available in class sets of 25 for a cost of $65, which comes to $2.60 per student.
And as the SECRET STORIES® are used across the grade levels, one Porta-Pic may be used by multiple siblings at home! They are often purchased by the school or for specific grade levels, although they can also be paid for by the parents, themselves, just like with class book order for Scholastic. At $2.60, per student, the Porta-Pics are simply the best and most cost-effective tool to support student-use of the SECRETS™ at home, or anywhere else outside of the classroom!
When implementation is school-wide, principals will often use the Porta-Pics as an incentive for parents to attend School Literacy Night, Parent Education Evenings, or even Open House, purchasing several packs and providing one Porta-Pic to every parent who attends. Funding for this is usually accessible through School Improvement, as it helps satisfy the objective for fostering greater parent awareness, education and involvement (i.e. building the 'Home-School' connection).
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When implementation is school-wide, principals will often use the Porta-Pics as an incentive for parents to attend School Literacy Night, Parent Education Evenings, or even Open House, purchasing several packs and providing one Porta-Pic to every parent who attends. Funding for this is usually accessible through School Improvement, as it helps satisfy the objective for fostering greater parent awareness, education and involvement (i.e. building the 'Home-School' connection).
-DO send home the SECRET™ sheets (provided in the back of the SS book) as students master them in guided group, and alert parents to look for them to come home on a regular basis!
Each of the SECRET™sheets spotlight a different "secret" sound pattern, providing ideal opportunities for students to share their SECRETS™ when taken home! Similarly, the SECRET STORIES® Guided Readers, with SECRETS™ highlighted throughout the text, prompting learners to share the SECRETS™ they know when reading at home to parents.
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| SECRET STORIES® Guided Readers |
Additionally, the handful of SECRET STORIES®-support items listed on TPT also provide an easy way to familiarize parents with the SECRETS™ and how students use them in the classroom. For example, Spotting SECRETS™ provides reading and writing practice for the most common digraphs, but the best part is that there are thumbnail-sized graphics of the targeted SECRETS™ at the top of each page! This allows those parents who aren't regular visitors or volunteers in your classroom, to see for themselves what the SECRETS™ are, and how they are accessed by students for both reading and writing,
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| Spotting SECRETS™ |
Also available for this purpose are the SECRET STORIES® Alphabet Mini-Mats and SECRETS of the Superhero Vowels™, both which contain digital images of the SECRET™ vowel graphics that may be brought home to share and/or practice.
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| SECRET STORIES® Alphabet Mini-Mats |
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| The SECRETS™ of the Superhero Vowels™ |
I'd mentioned this in a previous post as an idea for those teachers who had purchased the new, color posters (Fun & Funky or Original Color) to replace their older 'black-on-red' ones.
Now for some DON'Ts...
-DON'T make copies of the cut-apart cards in the back of the teacher book!
Not only is it wrong (i.e. against copyright) but at $2.60, the Porta-Pics are cheaper than making all those color copies!
I had to mention this because oftentimes, teachers are provided with adopted, reading series material that we ARE allowed to copy and distribute to our students, as per the licensing agreement on the material when it was purchased. With the SECRET STORIES® however, that's not the case. And this is why the Porta-Pics were created.
Not only is it wrong (i.e. against copyright) but at $2.60, the Porta-Pics are cheaper than making all those color copies!
I had to mention this because oftentimes, teachers are provided with adopted, reading series material that we ARE allowed to copy and distribute to our students, as per the licensing agreement on the material when it was purchased. With the SECRET STORIES® however, that's not the case. And this is why the Porta-Pics were created.
-DON'T make copies of the Porta-Pics (see above :)
-DON'T re-produce, re-type, re-write, or re-word the story text or graphics for in handouts, class newsletters, class websites, Weeblys, Google docs, Prezis, Promethean/Smart Board documents, etc...
The strangest way I've ever seen the SECRETS STORIES® shared was in a PDF file that was uploaded to Google Docs. In it was a series of 100+ images (or however many pages were in the SS book at the time) of a hand, holding up the SECRET STORIES® book, one page at a time... from cover to cover! I can't imagine how long the whole process must have taken, or how she was able to find anyone to sit there and take all those pictures!
PS For those who might not know, you can download FREE Common Core Literacy Posters w/ the SECRET STORIES® graphic-supports for grades PreK-3rd on the SECRET STORIES® website!
(But in her defense, the Porta-Pics hadn't been available at that time ;)
In closing, I would like to invite everyone who will be using the SECRET STORIES® in their classroom this school year, to join my new collaborative Pinterest Page, Sharing SECRETS™!
My goal in creating it was to provide an easy-access, open-forum for teachers sharing the SECRETS™ to upload pictures and video clips of interesting lessons, guided group 'A-ha' moments, student activities and/or writing, and even their own blog posts! Basically anything and everything SECRET STORIES®-related that shows what you do and how you (and your students) do it!
If you would like for me to send you an invite, you can message me on Pinterest, or just leave a comment with your Pinterest user name, below. As I currently have about 40,000 followers, (thanks to all of you!) this new board will open with almost 11,000, so it will be a great place for you to share your "secrets" with other teachers!
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| Sharing SECRETS™ Collaborative Pinterest Page |
Until Next Time,
PS For those who might not know, you can download FREE Common Core Literacy Posters w/ the SECRET STORIES® graphic-supports for grades PreK-3rd on the SECRET STORIES® website!
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| FREE PreK-3rd Common Core Literacy Posters w/ SECRET STORIES® graphic-supports! |
There, you will find links for other other 'made-to-match' sets, including the FREE Common Core Science Posters, also for grades PreK-3rd!
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| FREE Common Core Science Posters for PreK-3rd! |
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