Longs Creek Elementary School first grade teacher Trang Watt has been teaching at North East ISD for close to 20 years. But just like her students, she’s constantly learning new things.
“The way our District has set it out. I really enjoy going to Reading Academies once a month. I love meeting teachers from other campuses. Always learning something new.”
Reading Academies is a state-mandated program that gives teachers the opportunities to learn new ways to help students learn to read. So, every month dozens of teachers meet to learn and offer best practices that are helping create life-long learners (and readers) in their classrooms.
In Watt’s classroom, students visit various stations. One has them working on their vocabulary by describing pictures and having their friend guess the picture. At another station students can choose books to read, giving them a chance to make their own decisions about what they like to read. But there’s one station that seems to really excite the students; it’s called Heart Magic. Students use little heart tokens to better understand phonics and help them commit sight words to memory.
“Some of the stations I have set out have come directly from ideas from other colleagues I met in Reading Academies. It really pushes comprehension with my kids. They are very excited. They get excited about me going to Reading Academies because they know I am going to come back with some new game or activity. They enjoy wanting to learn to read. It’s clicking right away with some of them, ‘what I am reading, I can use in my writing.’”
Making reading and learning fun #theNEISDway
Thanks to a teacher like Trang Watt, you were able read this story.
And thanks to Reading Academies at NEISD, more students are getting excited about reading.
Watch the video below to learn more about Reading Academies.
