Hi! I'm Patty!
Hi there! My friends call me Patty and I'm a recently retired teacher who thoroughly enjoys living in Temecula. I have one adult son who lives nearby. Soon after moving here in 2010, I began teaching Rocket Readers classes at the Temecula Community Center. While my first 5 years in education were spent teaching Kindergarten and 1st grade, I found my true calling as a Homeschool Teacher in two different North County San Diego schools.
My experience has been that when reading is easy, children LOVE to read! I make learning to read easy and fun by teaching them through games. To teach alphabet sounds and digraphs, we play engaging games like Bingo and Match Game. Children learn to decode words while reading silly riddles and playing Simon Says. The curriculum I primarily use is called Rocket Phonics, which was designed for homeschooled students and can be found at www.rocketphonics.org. I also incorporate the Barton system into my lessons to address individual student needs.
My goal is to take the mystery out of reading for struggling students, challenge proficient readers, and instill a love of reading in all of my students!
Where's the syllabus?
I don’t create a syllabus because I make decisions about my next lesson based on the skills and abilities I observe in each class or tutoring session. I begin in a place that’s easy for the children then present work that’s progressively more challenging. The program I primarily use is systematic and focuses on sounds. We begin with one sound, then one word, then phrases, then sentences and then paragraphs. The pace depends upon the children and their abilities. Here’s an outline of the letters and digraphs children will learn or practice, listed in the set they will be introduced:
a, e, I, f, h, k, l, m, n
j, b, g, o, t, r, z, d, s
y, p, u, w, v, ay, sh, ch, th (as in thin)
oo, ow, oy, oa, ea, it, ou, th (as in that)
For each set, they will learn or practice the sound-letter association through games, we’ll play phonemic awareness games that will develop their ability to blend and manipulate sounds auditorily, then we’ll blend to read cvc words, and then move on to cvcc words, and so on. Children who are already reading will move quickly through the beginning of the program to read text that is at their instructional level. The text we’ll begin reading is silly and fun — we read Simon Says, riddles and tongue twisters and then move on to Aesop’s fables. The text is written to provide students with ample practice to learn the most common 1st, 2nd, and later, 3rd grade words.
If you have any questions about the classes or about teaching reading, please email me at rocketreaders123@gmail.com.