what worked: literacy centers

The first 20 days of school are all about procedures and routines. My district actually gives us the first 20 days for setting up procedures. I honestly can not say more WONDERFUL things about giving teachers 20 school days to get things established before hitting it. Y'all this year my centers were the best they have EVER been.

We started slow... I mean snail's pace slow! Heck we had the time. We started with everyone doing similar activities but working with a partner. This is one example. This is a matching game. It's from one of Deedee Will's sets called... A Cat, A bear, A tree math and literacy centers (click the picture below).  We learned lots of games and how to play them. Matching or building games like this one start at letter ID, move to match letter and picture by sound, and finally by the spring we are building CVC words and sight words.

We played lots of games in the first 20 days.  Games like Bam (pop, bang-- lots of names for it), letter puzzles, matching, bingo. Anything that could be done in partners we did it! Over and over, changing partners many times to keep from getting board. 

This is our book or library. This station is one of 2 that I open ASAP. As soon as we have had our lessons on how to handle books (this comes really early in readers workshop) and 3 ways we can read a book (look at the pictures, make up a story to go with the pictures, or read the words). Each book has a icon in the upper right corner that matches one on a bucket. The hard part the first few weeks is getting the books back into the right bucket. We practice whole group as part of our early readers workshop on getting a book, reading the book, and putting the book back. I reinforce this by checking in with the children in this center. We do A LOT of practicing by placing new books into the center. The kids get to add the books to the right bucket. Yep I add 20 books at a time so that every child gets a chance to place the book into the correct tub. How do I do that? Scholastic book club! I also get my listening centers from the monthly flyers. ;) 

These boys are using write the room. I LOVE this center and so do the children. I have used themed WTR (write the room) cards, pick a letter and find words in the room with that letter, or write the words you know. It is easiest for me to teach this center by using themed cards where the picture that is on the card is also on the recording paper. We start this whole group. Every child gets a clipboard, paper, and pencil. We start at our carpet spots and I send away small groups of students to "find the words". When they finish they return to me and I put a sticker on their paper and into their cubbies the papers go! We will do the same one several times, all I have to do is change the picture location on the recording paper. This is probably one of the easiest centers to maintain. 

These two are working on puzzles at red table. This is the "game and puzzle station" and it is also easy to maintain for the school year. At the beginning of the year we have out the wooden puzzles (no real teaching needed to start with wooden puzzles.) Then we start adding games as we learn how to play them. I have high ho cherry-o, don't break the ice, chutes and ladders, and candy land that we put into this center. 

This was actually a math center but it shows so well how each table has it's own activity going on. Here the littles were measuring using links. All of their center supplies are in the bucket. And they pull the labeled bucket and bring it to the table. I teach them to make room by putting the bucket on the floor under the table, and they can move the table trash cans or supply caddies too. 

This is our magnetic center. These littles decided to sort the letters by color! And no that wasn't one of the options that I had ever thought to do at this station. We sort letters, build names, build words, match pictures to words, but I had never thought to sort the letters by color! That became an activity. This giant magnetic board is just an oil drip pan from Walmart with holes drilled in the 4 corners. I use command hooks to hang them on the wall. 

This is the last center I am going to talk about today. It's the pocket chart center. This is a poem that we had worked on in whole group about our names. Once we had gone through every child I modeled and opened pocket chart center. There is a small basket that slides under the pocket chart that holds all the pieces. The things you can do in pocket chart are kind of endless! I am working on a TPT file for pocket chart that I hope to have ready by the end of July. But some of the things we sort: letters (tall, small, tail, straight lines, curved lines) beginning sounds, matching letters (upper to lower, upper to upper, letter to sound), build cvc words, build sentences, rhyming match... and the list goes on and on. The great part about this pocket chart is that I hot glued it to our chart stand. This gives me the ability to teach the center whole group RIGHT where they are going to be using it! 

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Rhyming Practice

I love whole group learning that is meaningful! One of the things that ELL students struggle with is

rhyming. This past year I had a student who this was his first year in the U.S. It was so hard on him, but his growth was AMAZING! One way that we supported that growth was with make a match type games. We matched everything letters, shapes, rhymes, anything that we could think of. We practiced as a whole group activity were each child got a card and had to find their match. I loved this! And when I realized how easy it was to uses this activity for formative assessment I was in heaven.

I also used these cards in small group RTI type instruction. One activity that I did was called code breakers. I would set out several cards face up. Then I would say the sounds to make one of the words. For example if one of the cards had a cat on it I would say the sounds /c/ /a/ /t/. Then the children would decide which picture matched the word I blended. As this group got better recognizing just sounds. I would show two pictures that did not rhyme, like tree and box. Then I would give them the code of a word that rhymed with one of the pictures, in this example it might be /f/ /o/ /x/.

I not only had rhyming cards but alphabet cards, number/ set cards, beginning sound cards, and ending sound cards. We used these to review skills, make partners, and to fill those minutes between activities when time was short. After much begging, I have decided to make these public. I am giving away my upper case letter match as a freebie. I am also going to be adding the other sets to TPT and TN.
You can find the first set here:
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Make-a-Match-Rhyming-Set-1-781112

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Apple centers...

This week is apple week in my room! I spent the weekend working on what my centers will be. I can not wait for my kinders to get a hold of them. We will be practicing all kinds of literacy skills. Here are the Common Core standards that we will be covering:

RF.K.1d Recognize and name all upper- and lowercase letters of the alphabet.
RF.K.2a Recognize and produce rhyming words

L.K.1a Print many upper and lowercase letters

RF.K.3c Read common high-frequency words by sight

L.K.5 (a) Sort common objects into categories to gain a sense of the concepts the categories represent.

RF.K.3a Demonstrate basic knowledge of letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary or most frequent sound for each consonant.

There are 9 printable centers and several more centers that can be set up using white boards and magnetic letters. I put this on TPT at a sale price. I hope that it is something that you guys can use. Come back later this week to see these centers in use!

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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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Word work and teachers notebook

I have been working on some ideas to add to my word work station. This is a simple matching game where the kids match the upper case and lower letters. Then they record the upper and lower case pair on the recording sheet. I added them to my Teacher's Notebook store. There are three different themes monkeys, snowmen, and zoo animals. Click on the pictures below to go to my Teacher's Notebook store.

monkey-letter-naming

snowman letter naming

zoo animal letter naming

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It's Friday...

It's Friday and this is usually the day I LIVE for but not so much today...why? Well silly willy it's the last Friday of vacation! ;) We don't head back until Tuesday (which will knock me off and we will likely miss specials etc) but I'm sad to think that my days of sleeping in and staying up late are almost over!! Oh and grad school starts back next week too...hello stress level- can't say that I've missed ya much ;)

So in my time off... I've finished up my shape unit and uploaded it to both TPT and Teacher's Notebook. Oh I guess that I should say that I've FINALLY opened a Teacher's Notebook store. I've finished our first unit that we will teach next week. I'm thinking that I might post it too... not sure though. It's HEAVILY tied to Benchmark Phonics Start up program. Does your school use Benchmark Phonics?

It comes in this big kit, but we don't have all the pieces or we don't use all the pieces. For example, I don't use this ABC chart. We use the UALR literacy support Alphabet chart that is part of the Arkansas ELLA project. There are as many charts out there as there are teachers ;) and really any chart will do. But what I like about our chart is that a photo copy of it can be found in Shaping Literate Minds by Dr. Dorn (literacy guru around these here parts ;) and professor at UALR) Our district gets them through ARCH FORD co op (http://www.archford.org/login.asp). You have to have your schools LEA number and the phone number used to get in but they have word wall cards, large color posters and student posters too. I use the word wall cards as flash cards. And every student book box has a copy in it. I also photocopied the one in the Shaping Literate Minds book and put it on construction paper with a 100 chart on the back. Oh and I've reduced the size and have one in EVERY literacy and MATH center! Why? because most of my centers have you writing something and the kids learn very early that Mrs. Day is going to send you to the ABC chart rather than answer your question straight out. I wish I had a picture here to show you what the color ones look like... you might see it in the back ground of some of my classroom shots, but here is the one out of the book.

So back to Benchmark Phonics... our letter next week is short Uu, and I will be teaching New Years traditions all week, as well as Chinese New Years (I know it's not until Jan. 23). So everything in the unit is party themed. ;) I've also been thinking (stressing) about our upcoming DIBLES and DRA testing. I HATE IT! The DIBLES isn't so bad, well yeh it is...my schedule just isn't big enough for all this assessment and teaching. I know, I know... you have to assess to know where the kids are. And I do that every day... but this is assessment for assessment sake. And I just don't have time for that! Anyway... I'm working on some "race" games for my kids to play in centers and I wanted to know what kind of games/ activities do you use to practice fluency?

If you got this far...YEA! I hope that you comment with an answer to:
1. Do you use Benchmark Phonics in your room/ school?
2. What activities/games do you use in centers to practice fluency (letter naming, nonsense words etc)

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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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