7 Scaffolds for Teaching Emerging Readers...1-1 Correspondence

I didn't want to wait too long to share this Print Concepts strategy with you because it's one I've been using for {many.many years...too many to say} that works GREAT at the beginning of the year when students are beginning to learn concepts of print, book handling skills and the life-long reading behaviors of 1-1 correspondence, tracking words from left to right, top to bottom and learning that spaces separate words. Now that we all have our literacy rotation routines and procedures in place, we're all ready to begin guided reading.
In the picture above, I really took seven different pictures of the actual sentence strips I use to make them all fit onto one slide. In reality, I introduce one strip per day to teach students 1-1 correspondence. You will start out with non-text, non-print objects to get kids moving, tapping, identifying and matching from left to right, in time and in order. Each day you will vary what it is they tap and identify per "landing spot." This has what has worked for me, but feel free to change it up if you don't have toys or colored dots (you could certainly draw your own colored dots, too). The best part about this strategy is that actually doing it doesn't require a penny. If you don't have sentence strips, cut long pieces of paper. Ok, use the following:
Day 1 - toys or real objects (not too big) Day 2 - colored dots (or draw them yourself) Day 3 - symbols (familiar ones) Day 4 - numbers (in or out of order) Day 5 - letters (spaced a bit apart) Day 6 - more letters (spaced closer together) Day 7 - whole words...a sentence (with sight words you're working on)
At Day 1, you are really reinforcing that their finger tap must match the toy, on the strip with their voice, not pointing or identifying verbally too soon or too late, but right ON the object, or the "landing spot," right under the object or word. Proceed through the days in the same manner and by day 7, students will have it down! This strategy works like a charm...every time.
I have created additional practice sheets if you would to use them for practice, home celebration sheets (you know the kind, the "Look Mom and Dad, what I can do! kind) or for assessments. Good luck and let me know how it goes! You are certainly welcome to make your own or pick mine up, they're already done! Here's one or you can check out the preview here.