November Alphabet and Sight Word Game Cards

Use these handy cards as Flash Cards or for any activity that calls for alphabet or letter cards such as:Write the Room
Boom (Or a similar type game where all cards are lost if the extra card is drawn). * Each set contains an extra "Boom" type card
Go Fish
Old Maid
Memory Match
Draw and Write

*Sight words include all kindergarten level words in Wonders, Journeys, and Imagine It reading series.

Rhyme Away!

When students are familiar with a few nursery rhymes, you can help them develop a greater awareness of rhymes by having them complete a well known line. For instance, start the first line of Jack and Jill, then pause to have the students name the missing rhyming word: Jack and Jill went up the _________. By highlighting the rhyming words of familiar rhymes, students will tune in more to the word play of rhymes.

As students continue to develop a better sense of rhymes, they need opportunities to match rhymes. Games can provide the practice needed to help students move from matching to producing rhymes. As students master the production stage of rhyming, they can then focus on reading rhymes within word families.

Rhymes help develop the foundation for reading. Capitalize on the “fun” of rhymes through books, songs, and games to help your students progress through the stages of rhyming. For games, activities, and supporting materials, check out these products.

  

Kindergarten And Preschool Math and Language Arts Common Core Assessments

Are you looking for assessments that are authentic, strategic, and linked to Common Core Standards?  Are you looking for assessments that will lead you to be organized, effective, and powerful in your teaching.

These assessments gather information about the language arts and mathematic strengths and weaknesses of your students. You will be able to immediately use important information to guide your classroom instruction, strategically target intervention groups, and inform parents of individual student progress.

Additionally consider using ESGI, a secure assessment platform to digitally conduct your one-on-one tests, score, and report your assessments.  The digital and paper format are a great way for you to visualize your assessments and keep yourself organized!

You will love the ease that ESGI gives this assessment product. I have done the work for you; all of these tests are there: click, click, done. Simply click on the test explorer tab (within ESGI) and look for my name: Kathy Crane to find the correct tests. (Important: At the very end of the testing documents are screen shots of how to organize your tests on ESGI to correlate with the paper copy).

Even if you are not sure whether paperless testing and data retrieval is for you, you will want to take advantage of their free 60 day trial! Simply go to  https://www.esgisoftware.com/ESGI/ click on the orange button!

Please remember to enter promo code B7227 to receive $40.00 off the already low price.

             

                                      

    

Keep Kids Reading This Summer

Read, read, and read some more....that sounds like a wonderful summer! Our students may not agree, but they might be tempted to read a little every day with the right resources. 

First on the list should be the little paper books that you have used for guided reading. These books are often “old favorites” that students will return to again and again. With these books, students can review sight words and practice fluent reading. 

To keep students interested in reading, however, they need access to new or different stories. These can take the form of books checked out from a public library or purchased at a bookstore. Technology can also provide access to new titles.

Farfaria is an app that allows members to read one free book per day. (For unlimited access, parents can pay a monthly, yearly, or lifetime fee.) The books are divided by subject, theme or genre; each division includes books representing a wide variety of reading levels. Students can choose to read the book or listen to it while individual words are highlighted. Simply put, children love to read using this app. It has over 1,000 books that are aligned to Common Core reading levels. And, new titles are added weekly! Additionally all books are professionally narrated to aide students in listening comprehension.

Reading is critical to success in school. Encourage your students to keep reading this summer to maintain reading skills...and to have some fun doing so!   

Reading Words in Kindergarten

Throughout the second semester of kindergarten, students work on reading words. For teachers, this emphasis on words can be a challenge. We need a variety of methods to keep word reading engaging and interesting. 

Try this approach to involve all students. Use large letters - magnetic letters on a white board or a set of flashcards in a pocket chart. Put the vowels in a column down the middle of the board or chart; use all or some of the vowels, placing them in alphabetical or random order.  Next have two or more students each choose a consonant letter. Arrange them before and after one of the vowels, then have the class (or an individual student) sound the word out. Continue with more students choosing letters for another vowel. With your guidance, letters can be arranged so you can work on CVC or CVCe words. You can also focus on digraphs or blends. If you allow students to put the letters around any vowel, you will definitely have a lot of nonsense words to read!

Your students will enjoy the variety of this activity and their added involvement in creating words. Give it a try for a fun word-reading experience!

Fostering the Five Domains of Human Development and a Freebie!

Teaching is a performance skill. Like a dancer who practices muscle movements daily until his body can perform intricate dance routines with ease, an actor who studies unconscious body movements until she can recreate them on the stage, or a writer who knows all of the elements of a well written tale so well that she can construct a page turning novel, teachers learn and practice the elements of lesson design, behavior management and modification, and lesson delivery, until these become second nature.

While studying Early Childhood Education as an undergraduate, I received tutelage from great instructors who were true early childhood theorists, Dr. Barbara Taylor and Dr. Sally Pena. Both of these women taught me the importance of including the five domains of early childhood development into every lesson plan. I remember the time I spent writing exhaustingly detailed lesson plans made specifically to include all five domains. The time turned out to be invaluable practice for my performance art, however, as now it is ingrained in me to be mindful of these important aspects of the learning of young children. Although I don’t write these mega-detailed lesson plans anymore, those domains of development are always fore-most in my mind when planning my kindergarten day.  

So what are those important areas of development?

1. Gross Motor Development: Are the young children in our care using their large muscles daily? We must give students the opportunities to crawl, walk, run, skip, climb, and climb.
2. Fine Motor Development: Do we give children opportunity to develop hand-eye coordination? The opportunity to control precisely the small muscles in their hands? We must give students the opportunities to color, write, use tweezers, tear paper, glue beans, build with small objects.
3. Language Development: Are our students hearing stories with rich vocabulary, participating in vocabulary rich dialogues, participating in enriching phonemic awareness activities, and strategically practicing phonics skills? We must give our students a rich auditory and oral environment and be keyed in to their needs in vocabulary.
4. Cognitive Development: Do we challenge our students with cause and effect, reasoning and problem solving skills? We must make sure that our teaching affords opportunities for neurological development and that we are helping to wire and in some cases, rewire, their young minds.
5. Social/Emotional Development: Are we giving our students opportunity to be social? Do we have adequate opportunity for play-rich experiences? Do we foster a classroom environment of caring? Do we explicitly teach important life-skills? We can never underestimate the importance of social development to a young child. 

As I learned from Taylor and Pena, crafting lessons that include all of these domains takes practice, but after time, it becomes second nature. And, sometimes, you just might find a kind blogger who gives one away for free! Like this game, "Day Traders" that includes all five of the domains: Gross Motor (walking), Fine Motor (writing words), Language (Oral Language and Sight Words), Cognitive (Problem Solving) and Social/Emotional (Play Based). 

Mystery Box Magic

Do you have a mystery box that you use for hundreds of things in your classroom. There is hardly a day goes by when I don't use one of mine to hold cards, objects, letters, etc. to play a skill based game. To make this box new and exciting, at times I decorate it to match the game or activity.

To make the cover I take a 11X17 sheet of construction paper, measure and cut to the width of the box. Then I measure the length of the cover to equal the three sides.  Next I crease the construction paper to fit the corners of the box (to make it foldable) and laminate.

This Cover is for an Alphabet Mystery Game

To prepare for the game, I simply cover the box by attaching the laminated sheet with a small piece of masking tape on each end. Here is a very simple snow scene cover that I use when I play some of our snow themed literacy or math games.

When , so I will have this box cover each time I need it, I simply fold and file.

Teaching Kindergartners to Rhyme

For those children that enjoy the 1000 plus hours of lap-time recommended to ensure kindergarten readiness by the National Institute for Children’s Health and Development, the skill of rhyming is usually learned unconsciously and effortlessly. However, for those students who enter kindergarten without that skill under their belt, learning how to rhyme can be a laborious task. So, why do children need to learn the skill of rhyming anyway? Does it really matter if they know that Jill rhymes with hill? Yes! Rhyming paves the wave to future reading success.

Rhyming impacts many components of the reading spectrum. It teaches children about patterns and structures in both spoken and written words. It helps children to read with inflection and animation which leads to increased fluency and comprehension. Rhyming is a crucial skill that will lead to enhanced decoding skills, especially when reading multi-syllabic content words. It helps children be more aware of the commonalities in letter sequences which will make them better writers and spellers.

As with any new skill, teaching a student to rhyme takes practice. A typical student will master any new skills with 25 opportunities to practice. But for a children with lack of exposure, speech and/or language difficulties, and for second language learners, this practice may equal 25 times 25! But, it will be worth the practice because learning to rhyme will increase awareness in the phonology and graphology of English, which are imperative to reading, writing, and oral communication.

If you are looking for games to fill those 25X25 times, most of our thematic units include rhyming activities. 

This packet includes four lessons and a worksheet to help your students understand the concept of rhyming. The lessons vary in style and format. Some lessons are scripted, others are designed for independent practice. Some lessons can be used with small groups while others can be completed with a large group. All lessons can be adapted to support struggling students or to challenge high-achieving students.

Rhyming Pairs: Matching rhyming words
Rhyme River: Producing rhymes
T-Shirt Twins: Matching rhyming words.
Home Sweet Home: Producing rhymes
Match a Rhyme: Matching rhyming words.