Hannah Roehrig's Teaching Portfolio

Home

About Me

MAET Experience

Showcase: My Journey in The Classroom

Welcome to my Classroom Experience and Teaching Showcase! On this page, you'll find a collection of work that highlights my growth as an educator, from my student teaching internship to my long-term substitute teaching experience. Each artifact reflects different aspects of my teaching journey, including creating engaging literacy activities and fostering student development.

Thank you for taking the time to explore my showcase. I hope it offers insight into my teaching philosophy and the strategies I use to create positive, impactful learning experiences for my students.

Early Literacy

In this category, I highlight my approach to fostering early literacy skills, which are foundational for young learners, especially in kindergarten. I utilize a combination of researched strategies, including Secret Stories and the Science of Reading, to create engaging and effective lessons that help students build strong literacy skills.

Phonics & Early Reading Strategies

I use a variety of activities to teach letter sounds, word recognition, and early reading comprehension. One of the key strategies I incorporate is secret stories, a phonics-based program that makes learning letters and sounds more fun and memorable. By connecting sounds to “secret” stories and characters, I help students understand phonetic patterns in an engaging way.

Read-Alouds & Interactive Reading

In my classroom, read-alouds play a central role in building listening comprehension, vocabulary, and a love for reading. Two standout examples of my interactive read-alouds are If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes. Both books offered unique opportunities to engage students in thoughtful discussion, character analysis, and hands-on activities that helped reinforce key literacy concepts.

For If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, I used a cause and effect chart to help students visualize the story's sequence of events. As we read, students identified the cause and effect relationships between the mouse's actions and the results that followed. This activity strengthened their comprehension skills and helped them understand how actions in a story are interconnected.

Similarly, with Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes, I guided students through a discussion about Pete’s emotions and the changes in his attitude as he encounters different challenges. Together, we created a chart about Pete’s feelings throughout the story, which encouraged students to connect emotions with story events. This activity not only promoted emotional literacy but also helped students practice retelling the story, improving their understanding of narrative structure.

These interactive read-alouds demonstrate my ability to engage students in deep, meaningful conversations around books while fostering key early literacy skills such as listening, comprehension, and emotional awareness.

Read the Day Away
One of the most memorable activities I created in my classroom was Read the Day Away, an event where we dedicated an entire day to celebrating reading. Throughout the day, students engaged in a variety of reading activities, including independent reading, partner reading with our third grade buddies, reading around the room, and teacher-led read-alouds. They did so in a cozy way with blankets and pajamas. The goal of Read the Day Away was to inspire a love for reading while giving students the chance to practice essential skills like vocabulary development, listening comprehension, and critical thinking. This event not only encouraged students to immerse themselves in books but also boosted their confidence as they practiced reading in a fun, supportive environment.

Read with Buddies

Favorite Books

Read Aloud

Orthographic Mapping

In my classroom, I focus on helping students build strong reading and writing skills by teaching them the process of orthographic mapping—connecting the sounds they hear in words to the letters they see. This process is critical for becoming a fluent reader and speller. One strategy I use to reinforce this is a hands-on activity with a worksheet that has three boxes, each representing a sound in a word. For example, when we’re working on a word like “cat,” we break it down into its three sounds: /k/, /a/, and /t/. I give each student a worksheet with three boxes, and for each sound, they place a bingo chip or pebble into one of the boxes. As we say the sound, the students push the chip or pebble up in the box, reinforcing the connection between the sound and its corresponding letter.

This simple movement, where students physically push the chip up as they say the sound, helps engage both their visual and kinesthetic senses. According to the Science of Reading, this type of movement helps "activate" two parts of the brain—the auditory processing area (where they hear the sounds) and the motor area (which helps reinforce the physical action of moving the chip). By engaging both of these areas, the word is mapped into their memory more effectively, making it easier for them to remember and recognize the word in the future. After we finish with the sounds, the students have space to write the word, which further strengthens their ability to recall it when reading or writing independently.

In addition to these activities, I use decodable books, which give students the chance to read the words they've worked on. This reinforces the connections they’ve made through orthographic mapping and helps them build confidence in their reading skills.