Fundations Training in Cape Cod

Back in May, when I was told I'd be moving from teaching fourth grade to first, my principal told me, "We'll need to get you Fundations training."  A colleague pushed me to find one right away so that I'd feel more prepared.  So I found two available, about equidistant from me, and chose Cape Cod.  Being nearly 100 miles away, my husband and I decided to make a mini-vacation out of it.  We would arrive at the hotel on Monday, I'd finish training at 3 on Tuesday, and after checking out Wednesday we could explore just a little more.  So I'll sprinkle vacation photos throughout this post since I wasn't allowed to take them during the workshop, haha. 

JFK Museum

I was really looking forward to this training, because I thought it would give me some confidence.  The other teachers at school (other than my grade level partner) had only received a short overview that did not impress.  My grade level partner said her training (one day at a conference) was fantastic.  So I was eager.

Five star Gelatto!

In the end, as far as trainings go, I thought it was average.





Our presenter talked a lot about why Fundations is important.  You know, the evolution of phonics instruction, the research, and so on.  Preaching to the choir.  That was at least an hour.  Then the parts I was most interested in, such as developing a lesson, she was so rushed that she told us, "Here are the answers; copy them from the board."  Hmmm.

She told us that there are 3 activities for a total of a half hour of Fundations per day, which makes sense.  We use Journeys in addition to Fundations, so that will bulk up our reading block.  

For our Wampanoag unit!

The strength of this lesson was to get a sense of the materials involved.  I had seen them during my visits to kindergarten in May, as well as these past 2 weeks as I set up my new room.  I had seen the posters and "trick word cards."  I saw the large alphabet cards with the pictures and kindergarteners doing their drill.  She walked us through the handwriting.  I had seen the kindergarteners use the letter tile boards in May, but she explained how each row intentionally ends with certain letters, like f and l because in one syllable words they are doubled (bonus letters).  And how the blends that only appear at the start of the word go on the left side of the board, while those that only appear at the end of a word go on the right side of the board (with the others in the middle) to reinforce position.  I thought that was interesting!

Found a tiny beach in Yarmouth

I got a review of syllable types that I hadn't had since college, and a sense of where the kids should end up by the end of the year in terms of reading.  It seems that they need to have one syllable, phonetically regular words really solidly.  They will have a certain number of sight words.  They will be starting two syllable words and compound words, and they will learn some affixes.  I couldn't help thinking about all those book bins arranged by genre.  What are those even for; there is no way they can read them if this is where they are at in their literacy development!? 

She showed us Echo and baby Echo, but I was kind of hoping she would model a part of a lesson with the larger puppet.  It sounds silly, but as gorgeous as it is, I feel like it will be a little cumbersome to hold it and a letter card.  I tried searching YouTube for video demonstrations but couldn't find any.

Yarmouth House was excellent for dinner!

I also regretted not looking at the manual before the training.  I felt like she was rushing through and I didn't have time to really digest what she was saying.  She had told us to write questions we had, but there was no time to go over them.  Maybe if I was familiar beforehand it would have helped? 

So overall, I'm glad I went.  At least I can look back and say one, I tried, and two, I have had some training for this new position.  But as with anything else, I won't really feel comfortable until I actually start implementing it.


Is there anyone there who likes Fundations and can talk it up for me?  Or even better, link to a blog post?






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