Miss Bindergarten and Community Helpers

Last week we read one of our reading series books (SF), Miss Bindergarten Takes a Field Trip with Kindergarten.  The children were able to make some great text-to-text connections since we had read Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten back in August.  I was able to introduce the word schema and the children made some great predictions about the text based on their schema. 

I decided to use the theme of Miss Bindergarten to incorporate some social studies.  We took a couple of days and learned about what community helpers are and where they work/what their job is.  We also made a community map to learn about nouns.  These ideas came from April Larremore's blog over at Chalk Talk.

We made a circle map to brainstorm some things we wanted to be when we grow up.

 

We made bridge maps and did some shared writing to learn about community helpers and the jobs they do.  The children worked in pairs for this - we brainstormed a list of community helpers and their jobs.  They drew the person and the place where they work.  (sorry - for some reason, I can't get these to rotate! Sometimes blogger is stubborn!)

We also learned about nouns.  We brainstormed and made a list of all the things that we see when we are out in our community.  Each child drew some sort of building (house, restaurant, school, etc.) The next day, they drew the smaller things (nouns!) to add the details to the mural.  We added labels on the very last day! So, in total it took us about 3 days about 15 minutes each day.  There was a bit of prep work on my part - typing the labels and cutting things out for them, but they went away understanding what a noun is!  

Next up....pumpkins! Stay tuned....

Sight Words

Today I visited my good friend, Miss Jensen, in her wonderfully warm and welcoming kindergarten room! It's always exciting to visit someone else's room, don't you think?  I always walk away with great ideas!

When she introduces new sight words, she uses these two small magnetic white boards with the larger magnetic letters that are available from Lakeshore Learning.  She shows the children how to build the sight words, and throughout the week, she asks children to "mix and fix" the sight words.  The children are so proud coming up and showing their friends what they know!

 She also has the children write the sight words that they are working on on this paper to bring home to show their parents.  What a great idea! The families can hang the paper on the fridge, door, mirror, etc. and children can be reminded to practice them daily!

Thanks for the great ideas, Miss Jensen!! :)

Word Family Book

Every week we work on a new word family.  I use the book Making Words by Hall and Cunningham and choose a new lesson each week.  We build the words together using letter necklaces.  You can find a set from Dr. Jean's website. 

 

 I put the vowels on red construction paper and the consonants on blue.  I choose children to come up and be the rime (the ending part of the word) -- they say their sounds, and then come together to make a new sound/ending.  They keep their arms around each other and become one new sound.  I then choose another child to come up and be the onset of the word.  We practice segmenting each sound and blending them as well as by onset and rime.  Sometimes the children understand the onset/rime right away, sometimes we need to take a bit longer and segment each sound.  

When we practice blending, I tell them to get out their "sound arm."  They hold their arm straight out and tap their shoulder, elbow and hand for each sound they hear.  When they blend the word, they start out at their shoulder and slide their hand down saying the sounds fast. (Does that make sense?)

We practice the word family throughout the week - building the word on our dry erase boards, with letter tiles, and on the interactive white board.  Sometimes I will give groups of students baggies with letter tiles and let them figure out all of the words they can make! We also talk about words that are real and words that are nonsense.

Kim Adsit (or click here) introduced me to a great new idea which she calls the "Word Family Book."  I thought this was such a clever idea I had to do it right away! You need a steno notebook for each child (you can get them at Sam's club, and they are pretty reasonable!) Make a cute label for the cover.

 

Each week, we write a new word family in our books.  I write it on chart paper or on the interactive white board.  They write the words as we go in the word family book.   They write the words on the left side on the middle red line.  If we come to a word that does not follow the "rule" we write it on the right side.  The kids really enjoy writing word families in their word family book!

On the other side of the word family book is the book of lists! More on that to come...

Literacy Centers

Here are the literacy centers that the children did last week.

 

Matching beginning sounds: The children used the Lakeshore Learning beginning sound puzzles to listen for the same beginning sounds and match the puzzles.  When they found a match, they wrote the letter on their page.  

 

The children used letter tiles to build the sight word they chose.  They wrote the word on their response sheet as well.

 

The children matched candy corn puzzles.  When they finished they wrote their ABC's. 

Update: Candy Corn Puzzles and lots of other fall math and literacy centers are available by clicking {here}

 

The children built CVC words with magnetic letters.  When they built the word, they wrote it on their response sheet and drew a picture of the word they built on their response sheet.

Kindergarten...

I just found this Wordle on the Look At My Happy Rainbow blog, and I think it speaks volumes.  Go and check out his blog, he writes beautifully about his little "sprouts."

Text-to-Self Connections

This week's focus book was Plaidypus Lost.   I have to admit, this book was not one of my favorites until the author, Susan Stevens Crummel, visited our school last year.  She made the book come alive when she read it to us and gave us the background behind it.
 

 

I used this book to teach text-to-self connections.  In the story, the little girl loses her beloved plaidypus that her grandmother made for her from her grandpa's old shirt.  However, the little girl was not responsible (a vocabulary word that we talked about with this book) and misplaced (another vocab word!) her friend in many different places.  Before we began reading the book, I asked the children to think of a time they lost something special to them; how did it make them feel?  Did they ever find it?  Did someone help them find it?  And so on...I wanted them to get a good mental image so they could good make strong text-to-self connections.

After we read the story and talked about our connections and wrote about them in our Reader's Workshop journal.  This page is from Kim Adsit's Reading comprehension pack at Teacher's Pay Teachers.

 

We also completed a story map together created from an example on Kim Adsit's site.

 We made a list of all the places they were in the story as well as all of the characters.  The children each signed up for one that they would like to draw and they created it for our flow map. (I'll post a picture of the sign-up chart later, I must have forgotten to snap one!)  Here are pictures of the flow chart that we created.  They children were very excited about how looonnnggg it was!  They did a wonderful job re-telling the story to help create the flow map.

We also read the book, A Platypus Probably and discussed the differences between fiction and non-fiction texts.  We talked about the most important things we learned about a platypus and labeled the parts of a platypus in our science journal. (I'll post a picture later, I forgot again!)

Mental Images

Teaching children to make a mental image as they read is a critical step in developing fluent readers.  Debbie Diller says that "when readers create mental images, they engage in text in ways that make it personable and memorable to them alone" (from Reading With Meaning).  Children use all five senses to make a vivid picture in their minds of what they are reading.  Sometimes when we are teaching young children to read, we get so caught up on the accuracy of reading - we can easily forget that the reason we read is to enjoy what we are reading and understand what we read!  If we spend so much time on the mechanics of reading, it could burn a child out to reading.  Sad. :(

So, we had our first lesson in imagery today using a poem by Jill Egglton.  I love using her poems because the language is easy for children to understand, they often rhyme, and they use many high frequency words.  I saw a friend do this in her classroom and thought it was a really great idea. I started the lesson by connecting to a book that we had read earlier this week (Plaidypus Lost -- more on that tomorrow!).  Before I read that book, I asked them to picture something that they had lost.  I told them when they were doing that they were creating mental images.  I read the poem, "Ding-A-Ling" to the children - they love this poem, and it's so easy for them to picture the man in the poem.  I read the poem 2-3 times, and asked the children to close their eyes and make a mental image after each time I read it.  I then asked them to create a picture of the man that was in the poem.

We later discussed the things that were similar in our pictures (the hair, the nose, and the bells) and what was different.  The children came to the conclusion that the pictures were different because they all created their own mental images!

Here is a portion of Debbie Miller's Reading With Meaning book if you would like to read more about mental images and comprehension.

Sight Words

Here are a couple of quick and easy ideas for sight words!  I can't remember who the presenter was, but the ideas are from someone I heard at the National K Conference!

 

Sight word tattoos! Using washable ink, stamp the sight word on their hand for them to tell mom and dad what the word(s) of the week are!

 

My kiddos love this one! (Sorry the picture isn't great)  Underneath the blue flap, I have a post-it note with a new "password" every day.  This week, I am doing both a letter and a sight word.  The children lift up the flap and tell me what the word/letter is when they come in.

 

Word wall from last year (I have a separate wall for realia this year)

Word wall from this year (I like this one MUCH better!)  I got a new magnetic whiteboard this year, so the children can remove the words if they need to, and then put them back.  I can also quickly write words on there if I need to! The children's names are also not on there this year - I have a separate wall for those too. (The cars right next to it).  This picture is from before school started..there are no words on their yet.  I add the words as I introduce them - it is much more meaningful for the children, and they can easily find the word they are looking for. 

Apple-Licious!

We had a short week in Kindergarten last week, so we took some time away from our regular reading series to learn about apples!!  The children had lots of fun this week tasting, exploring, writing, and painting about apples!

We started off the week reading The Season's of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons.  We talked about the changes that that trees go through and how we can identify each season.  Here in North Dakota, we have 4 distinct seasons (most of the time!), so the children could make some great connections to the book.

We worked together to do some interactive writing, and create a mural of the apple tree's changes.  I was lucky enough to see Kim Adsit speak again this weekend at our state Kindergarten conference, and I learned a very valuable lesson:  when you are sharing the pen with children for interactive writing, they don't HAVE to do all the writing!  You can help things along a bit if it is too slow! We are still not quite finished with the writing, but we got quite a bit done in our three days of school.  I drew the outline for the mural, and outlined it with paint, and the children painted each section two kids at a time.  I was a little nervous about how it would turn out since we hadn't painted before, but I think they did FANTASTIC! (This was an idea that Kim shared at the conference)

We were working on the sight word the this week, and Deanna Jump has the best book for reviewing this word.  You can find it on here on Teachers Pay Teachers.  It's a great apple resource that has literacy and math activities in it.  We used the IWB to read and highlight the.  Each child got their own page, drew their self portrait and highlighted the.

Here are some other fun activities that we did last week: (syllable sort from Kim)

 

I got this idea from a friend.