Soaring with Reading and Writing

About the Book

In this book you will find the McLaughlin Model of teaching emergent literacy to young children set down in a clear format that makes it easy for you to glean the information you need to establish the program in your classroom. As it spreads through pilot programs in Palm Beach County School District, Florida, this model of teaching is proving to be highly successful for children from many different backgrounds and to produce outstanding results in "Title 1" kindergarten classes.

Chapter by chapter, you will discover how to lead your students into reading books and flowing with writing. You will find how to do this by teaching skills through meaningful reading and writing and by training your students in the habits they need to be successful. You will be guided into quickly evaluating your students and dividing them into small groups where they can learn at their own level and pace, moving on and up when they are ready. You will learn how to build your students' self-esteem and self-confidence and how to train them to work cooperatively as part of a positive, risk-free classroom community where everyone is a teacher and learner. You will also learn how to keep the excitement and momentum flowing in your classroom all through the year.

As you use this model with your students, you will find that your expectations rise. Your enjoyment of teaching will increase as you get caught up in your students' energy for learning and their excitement at what they achieve. Like the teachers in the McLaughlin Model Pilot Programs, you will most likely be amazed at the results.

About the Author

Josephine McLaughlin

Josephine McLaughlin was born in Manchester, Jamaica, West Indies, and worked in elementary schools there as a pre-trained teacher. In 1977, she emigrated to U.S. and in 1983 graduated from Coppin State College, in Baltimore, Maryland, with a bachelor's degree in Early Childhood Education. Since then she has taught kindergarten in schools in Palm Beach County, Florida. She received her Master's degree in Early Childhood Education from Nova Southeastern University in 2000. Her extraordinary success year after year in teaching young students of all different backgrounds to read and write, usually well above grade level, brought many educators and the media to her classroom.

In 2001, the Palm Beach County school superintendent took Josephine out of the classroom to set up and implement the McLaughlin Model Pilot Program in several Title One schools in the district. The results have been outstanding. This program has been so successful that it is being expanded to other schools. For the second year, the pilot program is offering summer training to early childhood educators to prepare for the coming year. Josephine and several teachers experienced in her model of teaching will mentor teachers new to the program during the next school year. When she is not guiding the teachers in her pilot program, Josephine has fun singing and teaching her four-year-old granddaughter, Gabrielle, to read and write.

Sylvia Andrews

Sylvia Andrews grew up in a village in County Down, Northern Ireland. After she became a certified elementary school teacher, she taught in the village school before leaving to "teach her way around the world". For several years, she taught elementary grades in two schools in Nassau, Bahamas, where she met and married a photographer from California. Shortly after their son was born, they came to live in West Palm Beach, Florida. There, she taught language arts and creative writing to children in Grades 2 - 8. At present, she teaches students with physical disabilities in the Palm Beach County School District. She is a graduate of Stranmillis Teachers College, Belfast, N. Ireland, and Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida.

Sylvia is also an author. She has two picture books published with HarperCollins (Rattlebone Rock and Dancing in my Bones) and several poems published in anthologies by Meadowbrook Press. She cannot remember a time when she did not love to write. Through her long teaching career, she has taken a special interest in teaching children to become writers and has produced school newsletters and literary magazines. In her position on an educational support team, she taught in-service writing workshops for teachers. That is how she met Josephine McLaughlin and became interested in her model of teaching emergent literacy. Sylvia also organizes and chairs three writers' groups in her area including a local branch of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.