Born to Read Trainers

Janet Lyons facilitated the first Peaceable Stories workshop ever to take place in Windham on May 21 and 28. The group was very small – just 9 people – and all but one participant was center-based. Two did not have English as a first language, and struggled to understand some of the books and concepts. One participant came from a background in juvenile justice, and said she went into early childhood as a second career because she thinks it’s a good way to reduce the need for people in her first career!

Janet began the first session by passing around a copy of the Family Circus cartoon that went out with the Trainer Reflection Retreat report in March, and followed that with a quick exercise about finding and testing your comfort zone. She had participants pair up and stand toe to toe for as long as it took for each to explain where her name came from and what it meant to her. Later, Janet pointed out that we didn’t include the word “fable” in the subtitle of It’s Mine in the vocabulary list in the Activity & Resource Guide. I’d love to get some feedback on whether or not it’s worth adding! Janet suggested defining it for children to help them learn about literary genres.

Janet devoted a full 15 minutes of her first session to a walk-through of the Activity & Resource Guide. She was careful to point out all the various features, including the ECLG connection and the space to write notes. She highlighted the points on page 14 about pre-reading books and giving kids words to use before asking them to “use their words.” In looking at the pages on It’s Mine, she pulled out the CD to show that the song was on there, and had a copy of Frog and Toad Are Friends as an example of a related title. She also walked through the resources section, pointing out that local librarians are the best resource for more books.

Right before the end of the first session, Janet gave an assignment to share one book and try one activity before the next session. Participants came back the next week with some wonderful projects. One had decorated a Kleenex box to look like a cookie jar, and had all the children made paper cookies with an idea for sharing to deposit in the box. (They also used the cookies for counting and letter recognition.) Another had planned an art show to display children’s drawings of what they think peace is, inspired by If Peace Is….

Two more Peaceable Stories trainings are wrapping up this week, so keep an eye on the blog for more reports.