Becoming Readers

Reading can be very intimating for kindergarteners. I want my students to know right from the start of school that they are readers! We have been practicing the three ways to read books. Students practice basic concepts of print by starting from the beginning of a book and turning each page creating a story as they go.

How to read the pictures
I provide short level A, B, and C books where students can have success telling a story just by looking at the pictures. We think about the characters and how they are feeling. Students are encouraged to come up with voices for characters. We use words like next and then to make the story flow across the pages. This is done independently and also with a partner.

How to read the words
Teacher made simple pattern books are used. Students practice pointing to each word, following the pattern, looking at the picture for help, and getting your mouth ready to say the first sound. Students have opportunities with a partner and independently to highlight the first letter of each word and circle sight words.

How to Retell a Story
A book is chosen each week and read to the class each day that week. Then after the book has been read to students five times they are given copies of the book and retell the familiar story with a partner and independently.

Opinion Writing like MO Willems (K.W.1)

My kids have been having so much fun learning about opinion/persuasive writing and reading Mo Willems books.  We start the week by being introduced to the author using this video.  Then I talked a little bit about what persuading means and I read Don't Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus.  They were given a paper with speech bubbles to write things that the pigeon could say to get to drive the bus.  My higher students came up with their own using the style of Mo Willems and others wrote words very similar to Mo's.  Either way was fine with me, since this was a new type of writing I just wanted them to get comfortable.  When writing time was over we made a circle and they got to share their favorite words they wrote in one of the speech bubbles.  We worked on using voice and gestures to act out our quotes.
On the second day I read Don't Let The Pigeon Stay Up Late then we used the same paper to write things that we say to our parents to try and stay up late.  These were hilarious by the way.  I had them share what they said with their writing partner at the end of our writing time.  During snack time and  read aloud I was able to fit a few more Pigeon books in that I found on YouTube.  I paused the videos several times so they could pair share schema they had about Mo Willems writing, text to text and text to self connections, and predictions.

 

On day 3 we were ready to write our own tale of the pigeon and they were excited.  I played this video, pausing along the way for turn and talks about how the first graders that made this book used Mo Willems idea but made it their own.  Then they could choose if they were going to have their animal be a pigeon or something else.  We talked about making sure to start your book with a person in charge that asks you to watch the animal.  I was really impressed with their original titles.  We had Don't Let the Pigeon Be Santa Claus, Don't Let the Squid Drive the Plane, and Don't Let the Pigeon in the House to name a few.

On Day 4 we watched another example, this time done by a high-school class where I again paused the video for turn and talks.  We worked on the same book we started yesterday and decided on somethings that HAD to be part of your book if you were writing like MO Willems.
*has to start out with a person asking you to watch the animal
*then the animal persuades in lots of ways
*one page written in all caps where the animal is really mad
*the person has to appear again at the end thank you for watching him
*animal has to be looking at something new at the very end (what is his next adventure)

On Day 5 we shared our books with the class, reading the book with feeling and gestures.  Then we wrote a letter to Mo and told him if we liked his Pigeon books or not with three examples of why or why not.  Of course they all wrote that they love his books and some kids even included which book was their favorite.  How do you teach persuasive/opinion writing?  

                                                                                                               

                                               

Here is a link to the speech bubble paper.

                                                       

Jeopardy (K.RFS.3b)

Short and Long Vowel Jeopardy

                   

My kids have so much fun playing jeopardy and it gives me a wealth of knowledge of the words they know how to spell.  I strive to teach lessons where every kids is engaged and no one needs to "go to the bathroom." We play jeopardy once a week, I have all the kids bring their dry-erase board to the carpet and we sit in front of the whiteboard.  We play boys vs. girls, I call on a student and everyone writes the answer on their board.  I can easily see who understands the concept and who needs more practice.  Try out my short and long vowel jeopardy for $1.00 by pressing the highlighted link.

Fluently Add Within 5 (K.OA.5)

We have been working on our fact fluency for the past few weeks.  I was trying to come up with a catchy song to practice the facts each day.  I wish I was more musically inclined, here is what I came up with...

I created timed test that the kids take each week if they pass the zero's then the next week they take the one's test and so on.  When they pass a test they get to color part of their ice cream paper.  We are working towards an ice cream party when we have a at least 80% of the class pass 0-5.  This is a picture of their ice cream papers. They color the spoon for passing the zero's, bowl for one's, ice cream for 2's, and start to add toppings of their choice for 3-5.

We also make french fries to practice each week by putting the problems on popsicle sticks. I just used a library pocket to hold the sticks as the fry container.  They take them out and practice their facts every day.

Dr. Seuss (K.RFS.2a)

In celebration of Dr. Seuss's birthday we have been doing a special activity at the end of each day.  If students are good all day and keep their stamp they can participate in the 10-15 minute activity.  I read a Dr. Seuss book earlier in the day and then we do the related activity at the end of the day.  Here are a few activities.

I read  The Cat in the Hat and then we came up with a list of rhyming words and made our own hats.

We read One Fish, Two, Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and then graphed goldfish crackers.  Here is the worksheet we used to graph on.  It's a freebie on Teacher's Pay Teacher's, click on the link at the bottom of the picture.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/One-Fish-Two-Fish-Graphing

We read Green Egg's and Ham and partnered up to play Tic-Tac-Toe.  One person was the green eggs and the other was the ham.  Click on the link for the printable.  This website has lots of cute Dr. Seuss games and activities.

http://www.seussville.com/activities/GREEN_TicTacToe_2.pdf

I would love to hear other ideas for Dr. Seuss activities!

Poems (K.RFS.3b, K.RFS.3c, K.RL.5)

Reading: Foundational Skills 3 b c

Each week my students get a new poem to add to their poetry notebook.  We sing the poem/song throughout the week as they are transitioning to the carpet.  We circle all the sight words in the poem and highlight any chunks or vowel patterns that we find.  They each have a folder with prongs in the middle, I put 5 page protector sleeves in each folder at the beginning of the year.  Every Friday the kids insert their poem into their sheet protector and it is stored in their book box.  They love reading/singing old poems during partner reading and even during read to self time.  After the kids get ten poems in their folder I have them take them out and I make them into a book by stapling them inside a large piece of construction paper folded in half.  Then they have some poems they can take home and continue to practice reading and some at school to enjoy.  Here is an example of one of our poems.  I try to pick songs or poems that go with topics/things we are celebrating in class or songs they sing in Music class.

(If anyone can tell me how to rotate pictures using blogger I would really appreciate it.  I can't seem to find a way to edit pictures on here.)

Sight Words (K.RFS.3c)

My kindergarten students know on average close to 100 sight words.  My district uses the Teacher College lists of sight words.  I cut a list of words in half and staple them into a book.  Everytime a student learns and gets all 25 words highlighted in their book they move up to the next colored book.  We have a student in class that is on the black book (the last book of sight words) they think that is so cool.  This is very motivational for my kids and they can see their growth.  They love when they move on to the next colored book.  I also send a note home so parents are aware of the new words their child is currently working on.

I put this hangman game into a sleeve and the kids flip to a page in their sight word book and play hangman sightword to review words too.  The creater of this sight word sheet is listed at the bottom of the picture.

Vowel Patterns (K.RFS.3b)

I can not say enough about introducing Kindergarteners to vowel patterns.  Every book out there has words in it that contain vowel patterns.  We do this video every day in my classroom to learn the sounds each pattern makes.  I have seen a huge difference in my kids reading abilities just from using this short video.  I had my daughters do the motions, this helps kids learn them quicker :)

We also work on spelling vowel patterns by using this chart.  I put the paper in a plastic sleeve to save paper.  We practice spelling words on it once a week.  If we come to one that has two different patterns I will tell them to circle the pattern that we are going to use to spell that word.

None of my kids came in reading.  I have 2 on level G, 4 F's, 1 E, 7 D's, 4 C's and 2 B's

Bossy R Jeopardy

My kids had so much fun coming up with the clues for bossy r words.  I gave them each a half sheet of paper that had a bossy r word written on the top.  They had to come up with a clue for the word.  Then I typed them up into a jeopardy game.  We practice bossy r words a lot, they can make it very tricky to sound out a word if you don't know the sound they make. 
Each student has a dry erase board, we play boys vs girls. When it is your turn you get to pick the category and points amount. Every child writes the answer on their board every time. I have them all sit on the floor close to me so I can watch their spelling of each word. They love jeopardy and think it is so cool that they made the clues.  The game is just $1.00 on teacherspayteachers.com

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Bossy-R-Jeopardy

Using pointers to track print (K.RFS.1a)

Common Core Reading: Foundation Skills
K.RFS.1

I like to provide my students with pointers to use when reading the books in their book boxes.  This provides them a fun way to practice tracking print from top/bottom, left/right.  I have them just use a plain stick for the first month of school.  I tell them if they are responsible and take care of their stick they will get "cooler" pointers as the year goes on.

August/September: popsicle stick with a smile drawn on

October: witchy fingers Oriental Trading

November: feathers

December/January: snowmen (cut the fingers off of white gloves, add a little cotton stuffing, a pipe cleaner scarf, and decorate with a sharpie.

February: Southwest Airlines stir sticks

March: Shamrock sticker, some years I make gold glitter sticks

April/May: foam flower

Happy 100th Day

We had so much fun on our 100th day of school today.  For our question of the day I asked the kids if anyone knew someone that was 100 years old.  I showed them a picture of what someone looked like that was 100.  Then we had our first challenge, could we come up with 100 words that we can read/write. We have been working on short vowel word families for quite some time.  They were each given a sheet and had to make a real word for each chunk or word family.

 After everyone completed their sheet I had the kids call out words they made for each chunk.  I wrote all the words on the board and they were excited to learn that we came up with 110 words!

Then we switched classrooms for different 100 day themed activities.  In my classroom we seen how many numbers they could write in 100 seconds, how many  letters they could write, and how many times they could write their name in one hundred seconds.  Each classroom competed and then I crowned one winner of each category for all of kindergarten.  After that we partnered up and played the roll to100 game.

In one of the other rooms the kids made glasses in the shape of 100 and painted 100 spots on a dalmation.  Each student had to bring in a 100 of something arranged in a creative way.  We put them all on display and went around to the other classrooms to see their masterpieces.  Here are a few of my favorites.

To round out the day we made hats that read I am 100 days smarter.  We had ten strips hanging off of our hats and made a picture of ten items on each strip.