Cusumano/Sound Systems Response

As the daughter of a retired Kindergarten teacher, I was lucky to have a home environment furnished with big books (that often came with songs on cassette tapes), phonetic flash cards, and other educational resources. Of course, at the time, I had no idea how lucky I was to have all of my mom's teaching resources she used for her Kindergarten class at my disposal. It wasn't until I read the chapters in Sound Systems did I realize the purpose of those big books. Of course they weren't designed so that the pictures could be bigger but they had a more educational purpose- to include the entire class in on a shared reading experience. I loved how the textbook reinforced the important of rereading literary materails. It makes perfect sense that the kids would be able to learn more if the teacher kept using familiar materials. During my teaching experience in the music classroom, I would always revisit some familiar songs but I would address different concepts each time. It's the same with reading! I loved seeing the connection between teaching music and teaching phonics. The other day I was substituting in a Kindergarten class and I did shared reading with the kids. I decided to pull out of my favorite books from elementary school- "Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom." Immediately as I began reading the book to the class, I was not the only one reading. The entire class was practically singing along as I turned each page. I thought it was wonderful how they had practically memorized the book. Since the kids knew the book so well, I could stop and ask them questions about what they saw on the page (in the illustrations) and how that related to the text. Just how Cusumano described how important it is to have a "word repertoire," these Kindergarten kids had memorized a set of words from a book. It was wonderful seeing the connections the kids made because these connections from Chicka Chicka Boom Boom will help them in their lessons on phonics.