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.

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Short a and u sort freebie

Since google docs and I are not playing nicely, I added the short a and u sort to TPT.

You can get your copy by clicking here

Hope you like it!

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A gift for you...

I love breaks from school. These are the times that I get re-energized and that I get to create. The last few weeks I've feel that desire to create growing (and growing and growing). I started a list... and kept adding to it almost daily. Well today I FINALLY crossed off several items. First... my shapes activity unit is done!! I'm so excited, and hope to have it over to TPT tomorrow. I can't wait for the kids to see this one. It has several of their favorite activities in it.

I've also been working on my stations for Daily 5. I found at Target, while I was Christmas shopping, the cute paper baskets that I passed up at back to school!! I had no idea that they had them and was about to buy some for WAY more than the Target dollar spot. So in honor of the great gift of the baskets, I am sharing this with you.

short a nd u sort

For some reason google docs changed the font, and I honestly don't know how to fix that. This will go into our word work station. The idea is to match the picture to the word. Then I go a step farther by having lined paper in the center and the kids pick 5 words to write 3 times.

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Word Work station

Happy Saturday Ya'll!! Only one week of school left... and it's a biggie for me. I'm working on my masters and I have to wrap up an action research project enough to write a final paper, however it's a project that we are still working on at my school. Yikes! And this week is behavior reward party, class Christmas parties and the Polar Express!!

This year my kinders are very young and many of the things I wanted to do this fall just haven't worked for them. It took a break down moment this week to finally get some help from the instructional coaches. I think they didn't believe that I really need help since they both have been in my room a number of times. Here is what they learned (I already knew it)... my kinders have NO independence what so ever! I've been begging for them to come and see what I was working with... and understand why I keep saying "um we can't do that". Now don't hear that as we can't do lots of things, we can... and each day we are adding new skills! It's that some of our "district" goals just are unrealistic with this group of kinders. For example, the district wants us to know 100 sight words by the end of kindergarten. We have been teaching them in our district 2 words a week this fall and jumping to 4 or 5 in the spring. This isn't going to happen with these little ones. So now we are backing up the truck. Not exactly sure what that is going to look at but some of the things I tried this week ROCKED!!

First I took the sight words that we have been working on the longest and made them into a word work station. Here is what I did... I used the clip art from the WONDERFUL kpmdoodles to print large black and white images on colored paper.

Then I printed the sight words on white paper and cut the squares and glued them to the cut outs. And of course I laminated them ;) Then they look like this...

The kids get them in a word work station and practice writing each word 5 times. I am thinking about having the kids write on white boards some days and on paper other days. I am still working out our station rotation. Right now we are doing one station then a mini lesson, then a station, then a mini lesson. I am really hoping to get to a place where we can have 2 stations and then a mini lesson. I want to have 5 rotations a day were every child reads to self or someone, works with words, visits the writing station, works on critical thinking or fine motor skills and the computer. Not to mention I pull them for work too. Like I said we are getting there!! I hope to post some of the sight word files by the end of the weekend so everyone can use them!

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Poetry Folders and ABC Chants

I am in need of some new resources for our poetry folders. We have 2 SUPER cute ABC chants that we use; one is a teddy bear one and the other is about school. Here are the words to the school ABC chant:

A B C D E
School is where I want to be.
F G H I J
Learning to read and write each day.
K L M N O
Boys and girls I want to know.
P Q R S T
Sharing books with you and me.
U V W X Y
Now it's time to say goodbye.
Z Z Z Z Z

School is where I want to be.

 My kids LOVE this chant! So I thought I would do a little google search and find TONS more for them to start learning...WRONG! I can't find any more... so either I am calling them something other than what they are, or I need the help of the teaching community! If you have one of these chants, could you share it on your blog? or maybe leave a comment on where you found it! I've already spent way to much time not being successful... help!

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ugh... I forgot to take pictures!!

man, I don't get how I can forget to take pictures!! But I did. Our winter tree is AWESOME!!! The kids are loving thinking about winter and snow! On Thursday we are going to talk about what happens to the animals in winter. I have a hands on science experiment that we are going to do. I take a zip lock and fill it with crisco. We then place another zip lock inside the first to make a "mitten". The we put a hand in the mitten and put the mitten in ice water. The kids see how animals put on fat to keep them warm during the cold winter months. I can't wait!! It's such a fun afternoon.

Today was day 2 of Daily 5 learning read to self. WOW... that is all I can think to say... WOW. I had hoped to have us ready to go with all 5 stations before Christmas but I'm rethinking that goal. Yesterday we were only able to "read" for about 45 seconds. It was HORRIBLE! Truly I felt like running from my room screaming... so try 1 was a bust, but it gave us LOTS to talk about. We tried 2 more practice sessions yesterday and only got up to a minute. We also made our I Chart. Today we reviewed the I chart, I modeled how to retell a story we already knew, three little pigs. Then I had several children model : how read to self should look, how to retell, the different ways to "sit" and what the voice should be. We have a school wide voice level. I decided that read to self would need to be a 0 voice because so many of the children struggle with a whisper voice.

And then we practiced! Try 1- EPIC FAILURE!! Just under a minute, with LOTS of loud voices. So back to the carpet we went... more models- this time including more children modeling voice... and by practice 3 we had gotten up to a minute and half!! I feel like we have conquered a MAJOR beast! LOL... My biggest problem is having enough just right books. But I am working on that, thanks to reading A -Z and several sight word readers I am working to finish. We will work on these in a mini lesson and add them to their book boxes. I feel like it is a chicken and egg type problem. Since Kinders are just learning to read they don't have many choices in books or I don't have enough copies of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Brown Bear for the children to each have one in their book box, they don't have much ability to read for 3 minutes on day 1. And then the flip side... the kinders need to READ READ READ!!

There it is a re cap of my epic failure and the hope I have in building the materials that the children will need to be able to sustain reading to self ;)

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Walking in a Winter Wonderland!! Yep that's us...

This week we are learning about winter. It turned off COLD here over the weekend and it's a bit to early to talk about Christmas around the world, so I am SUPER excited that my teammate came up with this idea (she saved the day!!). And with all the Black Friday online, and Cyber Monday sales out there... I snatched up some of the cutest ideas for us to use!! I will try to update through out the week with what we are doing, I hope the kids get just as excited as I am about this unit!!

So far I printed winter pattern block mats from www.prekinders.com Here is a picture:

I didn't print them in color. There is a black and white version and I used that... and light blue paper. ;)

I also found some other winter things that I am going to add to my work stations. Like I said we are starting Daily 5, so stations will be within one of the 5 choices: read to self, read to someone, listen to reading, writing and word work.

I also bought several units over at teacherspayteachers.com from Deanna Jump, Fran and Kim Adsit. I can't wait to use them. And I made a few things as well.

I hope that you have had a wonderful Monday back in the classroom!!

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Where did she go???

I know I should take a trip to the thinking desk and think about why I have been such a bad blogger. But honestly, I know all the reasons why. The biggest reason is that I want this blog to helpful and positive and those are two words that have been SUPER far away from my vocabulary lately. See this year has been the MOST challenging yet. I am working with a WONDERFUL teammate across the hall and we are doing some of the most wonderful things but positive and helpful have been hard adjectives to be this year.

I have been using the following things for too long as reason why we can even attempt certain things, so for the last time EVER here are my excuses:

1. Of 20 children 11 of them turned 5 in May, June and July. 
2. They are so desperately behind!! Only a handful came to school being able to pick out their name, and of that handful only a few can WRITE their name
3. I have 3 MAJOR behavior problems- read children who are violently attacking others, themselves and are a major disturbance to the class
4. I am OVERWHELMED!!

Did you see that last one? Ever been that adjective? Well I still am overwhelmed but I spent some time over hte break to see how far we have come... and it's been a long way baby!!  I can't do anything about when birthday's fall or the behavior of a child when they enter school but I do know how to get them moving forward, even if it seems like we are stuck in park! So while I am feeling better about where we have come from I am still overwhelmed and could use some help... so I am appealing to the blogging world to offer your best advice!!


I am preparing to start the Daily 5 with my kids. We are going to work over the next 3-4 weeks (until Christmas break) on read to self. It might sound long, but these kids are going to need this baby steps and when they blow me away, we will add read to someone ;) Now we have been working on whisper voice and what that looks like while I pull one or two back to my table. With the young age has some a lot of squabbles that I am not used to having so we have been working on "school manners". Think how you listen, how you ask for something, how you sit next to someone with out disturbing them, etc. So we are starting to get a quite voice (#1 whisper voice- we have a school wide system). So here is what I need help with... I need advice on what materials to have in the kids book boxes, they know only a handful of letters and maybe 3-4 sight words. I don't have a TON of extra time on my hands because I am working on my masters. Suggestions... battle scars you want to share... or how about things you learned while starting Daily 5??

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