Elementary teachers building strong foundations for literacy

Scurrying through the halls at Glacier View School during my prep period I love to pause briefly and enjoy the myriad “learning sounds,” as I like to call them: An elementary aide catches up on the latest K-2 gossip as she ushers a student to her classroom, a second-grader sings to herself as she completes her writing worksheet, a teacher’s voice lofts out of her 3-5 grade classroom as she asks if her students “can imagine that happening?” There’s also the K-2 teacher tapping out a sentence on a desk as the sole kindergarten student reads the words in her squeaky voice while a first-grader stands at a shelf of books fidgeting with her pigtail with one hand and exploring the book covers with the other.