For me, learning to read and write wasn't something I learned from one of those big flimsy workbooks they hand out in kindergarten. I always had trouble losing those, or I never finished them because I found them boring or tedious. I would definitely say my preschool teacher and my third grade teacher had the biggest impact on how I read and write today. Instead of doing activities on paper or constantly sounding out words in class, they chose abstract approaches that were fun and didn't feel like learning at all. In Chapter 3 of Classrooms That Work, the book stresses to provide a variety of things to write with or on. In my preschool class, I remember one day a teacher brought in shaving cream, which I had thought was whipped cream at the time- I quickly discovered it WASN'T after eating some. She put us at a table, each child getting his or her own section and squirted two mounds of shaving cream in front of each student. Then she told us to smear the shaving cream across the table- what preschooler wouldn't want to make a mess? At first she let us draw animals and flowers and whatever we wanted. Then she asked us to think of stories for these characters and try to write one word from our story. To this day, this is still one of my favorite learning activities I've ever participated in.

My third grade teacher was sly when it came to reading, and I think she managed to read to us three times a day every day for the entire year. That did NOT count us coming in first thing in the morning, reading whatever poem was on the board, copying the poem down, and drawing a picture. I loved this activity. My teacher was wonderful about always giving positive feedback about my drawings, and how creative they were, and how they related to the poem. She also managed to take out a section of the day in which she read us a book (usually Wayside School books since our class was obsessed with every single book of that series). Instead of making us sit and listen, she allowed us to quietly draw whatever came to our minds while we listened. I truly believe third grade was the year I became truly obsessed with reading and I learned so much about making connections between imagery and reading.





Sources:
http://www.pinterest.com/staceymichelle6/books/
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/be/66/d2/be66d215e71a0228785391a28c04dec3.jpg
Cunnigham, Patricia M. Classrooms That Work: They Can All Read and Write.