Hello to my faithful readers and to-date free subscribers. I’ve been writing this Busy Bee Kindergarten blog/vlog for four months now. During this time, I have greatly increased my knowledge about the science of reading and changed up my instruction and instructional materials accordingly. I’ve been teaching for 30+ years, I mostly develop my own scopes and sequences and make my own teaching materials, and I’m at a point in my life where I have extra time to devote to reading and learning. My mission is—and will always be—sharing what I know and love and continue to learn about in order to make other teachers’ teaching experience easier and more effective.
In the past four months I’ve taken the time to write and share with you about twice a week. There seems to be no shortage of topics or content from which you might benefit. The response to the sharing of instructional materials I’ve created (generally, “Are you making more of these?” “How can I get more of these?” “Can I buy these from you?”) indicates that my readership is in need of pre-made, quick, easy, handy tools, especially ones that an actual kindergarten teacher who understands the science of learning to read has used and tested on her own students.
From Hobby to Part-Time Job
With the end of the school year approaching, I am doing what I always do in the spring—thinking about August and a new class and what I want to keep and what I hope to change up and improve. I’m sure you are all doing the same, especially if you’ve been learning about the science of reading and putting effort into rethinking your instructional approaches and the books and materials you use.
Additionally, I’ve been considering how best to assist you and enhance your experience with this blog. I have two big goals at this point:
1) Post on a regular basis over the summer on topics that I generally reserve for the nonworking months when I have more time to reflect and think deeply. Topics will be “big picture” in nature, including daily schedule, year-long planning, development of instructional materials, weekly lesson plan template, and classroom layout. I like to get all this in place in June and July so that when I walk into my classroom in August I’ll be able to focus on the details.
2) Post a few times per week when the school year begins to bring you along with me on this journey of incorporating the science of reading and the establishment of expectations, pacing, and weekly lesson plans that result in exceptionally strong kindergarten readers and writers. The nature of these posts will be all the details that make or break the effectiveness of a classroom.
To date, writing this blog has been a hobby of mine. Writing is enjoyable and rewarding. Doing this has resulted in even more intention with my teaching as well as greatly enhanced and solidified my own learning about the science of reading. But with my two new goals—to post about over-arching ideas/plans during the summer and then to post much more frequently once school starts up—this blog will be more than a hobby. It will become a part-time job. I will be exhausted each day in August (and September, and October, and…) from a full day of teaching and then I will sit down and write about the day and create videos to share. It will be crazy busy until I get a rhythm going. Because of the hours and energy I pledge to commit to this and because of what I believe you’ll get out of it, I have decided to offer a paid subscription option for Busy Bee Kindergarten.
What is the Value of a Paid Subscription?
What does a paid subscription mean for you? First, you have two options. You can continue to subscribe to the blog for free and have access to about once-per-week free blog posts. If you’ve benefitted from the Busy Bee Kindergarten posts that you’ve already read, you’ll continue to see the same quality content. The second option is to sign up for a paid subscription. With this, you’ll have access to an average of three posts per week (I promise to keep them on the short side because you, too, will be busy) and this is what you can expect content-wise:
weekly lesson plans (to get an idea about daily schedule, scope and sequence, expectations, what to focus on and when, instructional activities, how to use your aide, classroom management, behavior management) with opportunity for AMA (ask me anything)
continued sharing about the science of reading (I’m reading and learning a lot right now and want to share it with you)
how to balance balanced literacy and leveled text with the science of reading (like me, you might not want to scrap everything you’ve been doing and had success with)
The Name Game (what does it look like week one, October, February, April?)
phonics scope and sequence (to use as is or to enhance your phonics program) and daily whole group phonics instruction
instructional materials, including classroom alphabet and phoneme cards, heart word book pages and slide show, phonemic awareness/phonics practice sheets, read and draw, I CAN assessment/data book, rapid reading numbers and fast facts practice sheets, high frequency word lists based on spelling patterns and ordered according to difficulty, and much more (all included with a paid subscription)
weekly themes, read aloud ideas, and related activities
organization of books and materials
ways to address all strands of Scarborough’s reading rope
vocabulary instruction and enthusiasm
small group reading instruction ideas, materials, books
ways to best use your instructional aide
daily intervention/prevention ideas (reading disability prevention starts with us)
how to teach proper handwriting, starting the first day of school
whole group writing scope and sequence, management, enthusiasm and ownership
social emotional learning (class/school “rules,” classroom vision, Habits of Mind)
parent involvement
play
math ideas (somewhat limited due to the fact that we have a math program and I mostly follow it)
classroom management
making the most of instructional time
student engagement
behavior expectations and management
assessment strategies
special projects, arts and crafts, and the annual alphabet countdown
many posts supported with photographs and videos of teaching and learning in action
every single post delivered to your inbox
all posts (including archives) available any time
ongoing access to my Google files of instructional materials (check back, get updated versions, get more than what was previously in the folder)
the opportunity to get so much of your thinking and planning done this summer before you even go back to work in August
and much, much more that I cannot yet fathom but know will arise.
Free subscribers will get about one email each week. Paid subscribers can expect an average of three per week (once school begins again).
For those of you who just recently signed up and don’t yet have a sense of what Busy Bee Kindergarten is all about, check out these posts or just browse around on your own:
Individual Writing Goals in Action
Twenty Takeaways from Kilpatrick’s Essentials, Chapter Ten
Cost and Special Offers
I know you’re wondering about price. Subscribing to Busy Bee Kindergarten will cost you far less than the time, energy, stress, and money you might otherwise commit to your own reading, thinking, creating, lesson planning, researching, testing and modifying, and instructional sequencing, not to mention what you might spend on expensive programs. The cost will be $12/month (three coffees?) or $120 for the calendar year. Please know that approximately 13% of anything I collect will be loss to platform and credit card processing fees. I highly recommend you share Busy Bee Kindergarten with your principal and ask if there might be funds available for you and your grade level teammates to subscribe. Or, you might have school district classroom money remaining that could go toward your subscription. We are professionals and should not be afraid to ask for the things we need to do our jobs well rather than defaulting to paying for everything on our own.
Busy Bee Kindergarten paid posts will start on May 1, 2021. May is the month for wrapping things up and thinking forward to the following school year. It is always the beginning of deep reflection for me and the process of thinking through how to do things even better the next time around. Remember, there will still be free posts; but to see all posts and access the materials I create and share, you’ll need to have a paid subscription.
“Early bird” subscribers get 20% off by signing up on or before April 30, 2021. An early bird subscription is $9.60/month or $96/year.
In my efforts to support new teachers, I will offer 50% off twelve months or one annual subscription to those who are teaching kindergarten for the first time this year or during the 2021-2022 school year. That’s $6.00/month or $60.00/year. Have your principal email me, certifying that you are indeed in your first two years of teaching kindergarten. This offer expires May 31, 2021.
You can also offer to pay me even more and become a Founding Member. You know who you are, my biggest fans…
Okay, I will leave you to think about it. I really do hope you’ll join me in planning for and implementing the 2021-2022 school year. It’s not going to be just another year; it’s a year for learning and totally rethinking the way we teach. And for many of you (I hope and pray), it’s the year you get back to face-to-face teaching. It’s going to be big, it’s going to be exciting. Let’s do this together!
Sincerely,
Randee Bergen
missbusybeekindergarten@gmail.com