Daily Reading

 We are reading in Kindergarten!

Kindergarten is not what it used to be! We are expecting our kinders to read and write at a pretty high level. Unfortunately, a lot of kids come in without the skills they need to start kindergarten at a level that the school districts and curriculum expects. My district is currently shopping around for a Common Core aligned ELA and math curriculum. This year I have been creating my own activities so that my kinders are learning with CCSS and will (hopefully) move into a Common Core 1st grade class with ease. One thing we do each morning is journal writing. I give my students a journal (just writing paper stapled into a book). I tape these cards to the front as needed:

These cards are free and give your kids immediate access to words they want to use in their writing. We combine our word family words and sight words to write. I also give a sentence frame to my students that are not ready to write on their own. They look like this:

I like my _________________.

It is ____________ and ___________.

Students can then use their vocab words that are on the front of their journals to fill in the blanks. A lot of my students are not using the sentence frames anymore because they realize it is more fun to write what they want!

After journal writing we do word family and sight word work. We do our weekly sight words, which are 5 words a week and come from the Kindergarten Pre-Primer and Primer Sight Word Unit I sell in TpT and TN. Grab the Kindergarten Sight Word Bundle, it really gives Kinders the skills they need.

 After our sight word work we get out our fluency folders. These are the folders my students use when we do small group instruction. I have 4 leveled groups. They each do a different center each day. For example: on Monday I will work with my Blue Stars while the other groups do various centers. Tuesday I will work with the Yellow Stars, etc. This allows me to differentiate my instruction so that I can get on-level work done with each student. My groups each have 5 or 6 students. They carry their fluency folders with them during this time so that when they are finished with their center activity they can open their folder and practice their readers. This picture is one example of my readers from my Pre-Primer Sight Word Books.

 I pick out the words that my students need the most work in and give them small activities to do while we read the books. It keeps them engaged.

 

We drew a tongue on our frog, just for fun.

 

If you would like to use these books, click here. They are free. They do go along with my Kindergarten Sight Words Lists 1-8. I am working on sight word books for Lists 9-18. I will post them when I am finished.

I finish morning reading with Word Family Work

I use a lot of Marsha Mcguire's word family stuff. I have her sight word bundle (which is AWESOME). I love the clipart and the different activities that come along with it. Her Word Families Galore Bundle is a great asset to my class. I also use a lot of Heidi Butkus' sight word activities.

I am trying to get CCSS into the classroom and getting my Kinders ready for the upcoming changes. I am looking forward to incorporating more technology into my everyday lessons. Right now we are using the iPads to play word games, but our school just purchased the Flocabulary program, which we will begin using very soon.
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