Blog - My Play Based Classroom
Hi there!
I'm Janelle - a play-based early years teacher passionate about creating learning experiences that ignite curiosity, creativity, and academic growth.
On this blog, I share practical tips on meeting curriculum benchmarks through a balance of explicit teaching and play, setting up the ideal learning environment and fostering social-emotional development.
Let’s make play-based teaching work in your your preschool, kindergarten, and first grade classrooms!
Open Ended Questions for Reading Comprehension in Literacy
Open ended questions for reading comprehension help young readers think deeply, infer, and explain ideas. Learn practical examples, tips, and free prompts.
Jumbled Up Sentences - An Easy Way to Help Beginning Writers
Discover how jumbled up sentences can enhance literacy instruction in kindergarten or grade one classrooms. This evidence-based activity boosts sentence structure and enriches writing skills in a fun and productive way!
5 Best CVC Words Activities and Games for Kindergarten
Discover the 5 best CVC words activities in this informative blog post. Learn what CVC words are, why they're essential for early literacy, and the best ways to teach them. These tried and tested activities will make learning CVC words a joy for your students.
Fun Phoneme Blending Activities - Build Phonemic Awareness
Discover my tried and tested phoneme blending activities in this blog post. Build phonemic awareness and find out why learning to blend sounds is such an important phonemic awareness skill.
Fun Activities and Games with Sight Words for Kindergarten
Discover engaging sight word games and activities for your kindergarten students and build reading fluency. Make learning high-frequency words fun with these tried and tested ideas. Get your free sight word resource and create a playful and effective learning environment for your students.
Should We Teach the Kindergarten First 100 Sight Words?
Discover the latest Science of Reading research on teaching the kindergarten first 100 sight words. Enhance your sight word instruction and download my free sight word lists and tools to boost your students' reading fluency and confidence.