MISSOULA — We go to Jeannette Rankin Elementary School in Missoula for this week's One Class at a Time winner.
Michelle Salisbury -- who is in her 12th year teaching kindergarten students -- says she looks forward to the new challenge every school year.
"I always forget the first six weeks of kindergarten are definitely exhausting. Especially this year. A lot of them didn't have preschool last year because of COVID,” Salisbury said. “It's a learning curve but we're getting there.
Salisbury will use the $250 grant to buy hands-on tools for the students, including games to teach phonics and the alphabet. It's part of the lessons she incorporates for "word work" which helps students gain more confidence with letter names, sounds, phonics and reading.
"Kindergarteners especially need a lot of movement, so we have things around the room that they can actually move to and touch and work with,” Salisbury said. “That will help their phonics skills later on.
"It might be working with whiteboards; it might be working with those types of things to start putting words together,” Salisbury concluded.