During the session What Difference Does it Make? The Impact of Early Literacy Training on Youth Services Staff, Julie Westby of Hedberg Public Library shared a creative way to promote letter knowledge and vocabulary in preschool storytimes — the Mystery Bag!
To use: feature a new letter each storytime. Julie demonstrated using H, told the group “today’s letter is H” and then pulled the letter from her brightly colored bag. Then, slowly and dramatically she pulled objects out of the bag that started with the letter H, having the group guess the word and reinforcing the letter. What a great technique for increasing early literacy skills in a playful, dynamic way!
Sharon McClintock
City of Mountain View Public Library
Mountain View, CA
abbylibrarian
I love the mystery bag idea! We are totally going to start doing that at our storytimes!
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