Thanksgiving Freebie

Have your students investigate.  Use magnifying glasses to find the tiny sight words on the pictures to write on the response pages provided.  It also includes some differentiation for your higher students. 

PBL

Make your own photo slideshow at Animoto.

Movement and Review

Everyday, after lunch, our students take a walk around the track that is around our school.  When we get to the flagpole, they get an opportunity to run around it.  But first, they have to complete a task.  We review skills like: Line up in ABC order, line up by birthday, line up by zip code, line up if you know your phone number (and they have to say it before they take off), etc.  If they don't know the answer or where they should be in line, they don't get to run with the others.  This encourages them to learn it so that they can run too.

Red Reading Folders

Several years ago, we attended a presentation by Niki Campo Stallone about literacy centers.  We have tweaked and tuned those ideas and made them work for us.  We are also trying to mesh them with the Daily 5 ideas.  One way to accomplish this for us is the Red Reading Folder.  We leave students' leveled readers in the front pocket (for read to self and guided reading).

There is a poetry section in the front where we focus on buttering popcorn words, finding capital letters, and ending punctuation marks.  Students are to illustrate the poem as well.  We always ask students to tell us about their picture and how it relates to the poem. This is a great way of getting students to retell the "story". We also have a poetry flipchart for the IWB that goes along with the poem of the week.  In the beginning we mainly focus on Nursery Rhymes- I am always shocked at the number of students that do not know Nursery Rhymes.

In the back there is a section for all targeted reading comprehension skills that are aligned with our reading curriculum.  For this section we love the sheets made by Deanna Jump.  This folder serves many purposes for our reading block. (One of which is hitting many of those Common Core Standards.)

Showcasing Work

We each used frames to showcase our students' work.  I left the cardboard in the back with scrapbook paper, a picture of the student, and their name.  I spray painted the frames yellow and purple (our school colors).  Amy is polka dot crazy! She spray painted her frames red and painted white polka dots on hers.  She left the cardboard out. Staci loves lady bugs.  She left her frames black.  We each customized clothes pins and hot glued them to the tops of the frames to hold the work.  The original idea was from pinterest. We just tweaked it and made it our own! ;)

The real Kindergarten Krazies

Hey guys!

I am a member of one of the greatest teams of kindergarten teachers on earth! We three teachers work together on everything.   I will be sharing some of the things we do.  We each have our own way of doing things.   Maybe all of our different perspectives will help someone.  Also, we have the most wonderful para-pro - I do believe she is really Super Woman.  We could not do all of the great things we do without her.