Thursday, February 7, 2013
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
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
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Using pointers to track print (K.RFS.1a)
Common Core Reading: Foundation Skills
K.RFS.1
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
Friday, January 25, 2013
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 dalmatian 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.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Winter Bulletin Board Ideas
I wanted to do a winter bulletin board to hang out in the hall for a while. I used a circle punch to cut out lots of white circles. Then I assigned each student three sight words to write out on the snowmen. We are going to go out in the hall and count how many sight words we can read/write.
For math we are working on addition so I used a die cut of a Christmas tree and the kids balled up tissue paper for the ornaments.
This was my November bulletin board. We have been working on short vowel word families, each child was assigned a word family and on each feather they had to write a word from that particular word family. On the turkey's clothes the word family chunk was written. We went out in the hall and count how many words we could read and write as a class!
For math we are working on addition so I used a die cut of a Christmas tree and the kids balled up tissue paper for the ornaments.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Letter Sounds Book (K.RFS.3a, K.RFS.1d)
I am having great success with using a new approach to phonics and phonemic awareness. When my kids come in at the beginning of the year their letter and sound knowledge is always all over the map. I like for all my students to have mastered letter and sound recognition by Halloween. This allows them to build from a foundation and move on to short vowel word families, manipulating phonemes, blends, and vowel patterns early in the year and get lots of practice at these higher level skills.
Starting with the first day of school every student is given an ABC book that we practice first thing each morning. The book follows the same format as going through an alphabet chart. Students repeat the letter, sound it makes, and picture. However, I find it way more successful for a few reasons.
* It isolates only 5 letters on a page at a time. (After they repeat after me for the 5 letters, I give them a word that would start with one of the 5 letters and they have to pick which letter is making that beginning sound. This gives them beginning sound isolation right from the start.
* They each have their own copy of the book, every student points to the letter we are on. The visual being in their own hands and them verbally saying each letter helps to make it more concrete for them.
* When I ask the question about a word and what letter it would start with, they all write the letter on their whiteboard. This gives them practice writing the letter and gets everyone involved.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Classroom Cheers
I have been using classroom cheers in my class for years. The kids love picking out what cheer we are going to do for them when we celebrate their success. It is very motivational for the kids and everyone wants to participate in the lesson because they want us to cheer for them.
Dr. Jeans has some great cheers that you can use in your classroom. I have posted a link to her cheer cards that are free to print off.
http://www.drjean.org/html/monthly_act/act_2004/06_june/06_2004a.html
I have also made up a few cheers.
The fishing cheer:
Pretend to cast your imaginary fishing pole out, and pretend to reel it in as you say _________caught a big one!
The baseball cheer:
Pretend to swing a bat and say ___________ hit it out of the park
The Winner:
Pretend to ring an imaginary bell and say "ding, ding, ding, we have a winner"
Your so fine:
Hand jive as you say: "_________, ____________, you're so fine, you're so fine, you blow my mind. Hey ___________ (clap) Hey, hey, hey ___________.
Do you use any cheers to motivate?
Dr. Jeans has some great cheers that you can use in your classroom. I have posted a link to her cheer cards that are free to print off.
http://www.drjean.org/html/monthly_act/act_2004/06_june/06_2004a.html
I have also made up a few cheers.
The fishing cheer:
Pretend to cast your imaginary fishing pole out, and pretend to reel it in as you say _________caught a big one!
The baseball cheer:
Pretend to swing a bat and say ___________ hit it out of the park
The Winner:
Pretend to ring an imaginary bell and say "ding, ding, ding, we have a winner"
Your so fine:
Hand jive as you say: "_________, ____________, you're so fine, you're so fine, you blow my mind. Hey ___________ (clap) Hey, hey, hey ___________.
Do you use any cheers to motivate?
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
technology in the classroom
Last year I changed my calendar to an interactive whiteboard power point presentation. I incorporated YouTube video songs that teach the skills we are currently working on, a calendar page, weather graph, and other skills I want my students to have extra practice with. They look forward to calendar time each day and it teaches lots of common core standards all at once! The October Calendar I made for this school year has the following videos embedded in it.
All of my kids know all their letters and sounds now so we have moved on to blends, they love this song.
Our end of the year goal for counting is 100, we are just working on counting to 50 for right now.
All of my kids know all their letters and sounds now so we have moved on to blends, they love this song.
We are learning about coins this month in math, this song has helped the kids in recognizing coins and remembering coin values.
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