WOW what a week!!

with as bad as this week started for me, I have to say that this afternoon was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!! I am going to stop right here for not having pictures! I know bad bad blogger. But I will take some on Monday. Ok back to amazing... we used this week to really practice our behavior and procedures. One thing that I decided to change with my class is how I do stations. My kids are not independent enough to complete more than one rotation at a time. So now we "play" my turn your turn. I should mention that our school embraces walk to read. Our kinders are "leveled" according to DIBLES the first nine weeks and a combination of DRA and DiBLES in the second semester. Teacher observations are mainly what would move a child between the two groups. So I have the lower group of children. I love my kids but I really wish that they were a little more independent.  My stations now work like this... 15 minute opening/ whole group lesson on phonemic awareness. Then 10 minutes at a station (I pull a small group). Then 10 minute whole group  phonics (sound/ symbol) or spelling lesson. Next, 10 minutes at a station. 10 minute lesson on sight words and "reading". back to stations for 10 minutes. 10 minute whole group lesson- sounding out/ blending or writing. One more round of stations for 10 minutes. and lastly, read to self time. We are not up to 10 minutes yet (we just started after thanksgiving). We have reached 5 minutes.

This schedule is harder on me but it is SO much better!! Here is something else, if you don't quickly come to the carpet, you sit out of some of your next station time. This is REALLY cutting down on kids not cleaning quickly. I set a timer and even if I don't say a word, the second you hear the timer (and it's LOUD) you start cleaning up. Then I count down from 10 (either slowly if everyone is doing the right thing or quickly if children are playing). I do include 0 in my count down. When the kids here 0 they may circles around their eyes and say "Eyes on Mrs. Day". Then I start my lesson.

Here are a few pictures of my letter activities that I have at Teachers Notebook.

snowman activity

This is the snowman letter naming activity.  You can grab it at Teachers Notebook by clicking on the picture. 

 

Look at how hard this sweet baby is working!! LOVE these!! There will be a LOT more of them to come. In lots of different versions (think math, beginning sounds, ending sounds etc)

 

These babies are working with the monkey letter naming. The day I introduced this station, 3 of our 5 stations had versions of this activity. The second day 2 of the 5 had this activity and then the third day we were ready for this to be a single station. I like the reinforcing of having multiple stations with the new activity.