Concepts of Print and Play This week we are playing the train game which I found at the Balanced Literacy website. To prepare for the lesson, I made little construction paper freight cars and laminated them. I stocked up on file cards and sticky notepaper. During read aloud, I introduced  the simple big book, I Like Me.  Afterwards we talked about the story and then I asked them what they noticed about the letters on the page. They talked with a partner and then I asked them to share while I wrote down their comments. One thing that T. noticed was that each group of letters had a space between them.       I used his observation and compared it to a train and said that just like a freight car, each group of letters was called a word, and that each word had it's own space and meaning. Then I introduced The T rain Game. Each day I will ask a closed question and their first classroom job will be to write their answer on sticky paper a...

Phonemic awareness instruction spans the first two years of a child's schooling in grades Kindergarten and Grade One.  Oral activities in Kindergarten focus on building beginning knowledge with sound and word discrimination, rhyming, syllable splitting, blending, phoneme segmentation, phoneme deletion and finally phoneme manipulation.  These skills can be taught in a sequence that maximizes student understanding using games, songs, books. Here is a sample of Kindergarten games or songs that we are doing in our classroom or outdoors. Some are small group while others are whole group. Most of my teaching moves to small group by late October and the rest is integrated into literacy work stations and circle time. Building letter recognition: sorting, matching and naming letters. singing different alphabet songs, dancing and marching to abc songs, playing abc games in the gym, reading alphabet books and putting letters into your different play centres. For example...

Blocks and Building I was in the classroom on Friday morning dropping off some dramatic play materials I had found through garage sales and  spent some time making adjustments to the learning area for block play. In my small classroom finding space for large hollow blocks has been a challenge, but the value is too high to exclude this important area. Actually if you know me you would probably say that I have an obsession with block play. But this is because of the huge learning opportunities that emerge from this centre. A little side job that I enjoy is designing learning environments  for preschool and kindergarten classrooms. Although this is totally done for the love and satisfaction of design, a couple of teachers decided to give me gift certificates this year  from our local teacher store. I used them to purchase classroom resources, which helped me to purchase the six new hollow blocks. Setting up the   learning area Three key considerations for the block ...

Song Books I like to have two sets of books for the first few weeks of school. One set I call my "comfort" books. These are familiar songs or chants that I use for transitions. The books then become the first books to go into their independent book tubs. I have about thirty but thought you might enjoy my top ten. Some teachers tell me that their weak voice stops them from singing but believe me the children will love your voice. My husband actually laughs when he hears a student admire my voice!!! However, if you still want to avoid singing then use iTunes or cds. Many of these books have different versions and I have collected quite a few different ones over time. They are all fun to sing and familiar to the Kinders. Hope that you enjoy my list. Please share your top ten Kindergarten song books, I would love to add to my collection . Thanks for stopping by, ...

I love to discover new books and embraced this opportunity to share some of our class favourite read alouds from last year!  The most popular books chosen many times for read aloud were definitely the song and rhyme books followed quickly by non-fiction and math books. Our spider tub was pulled off the shelf every day during the morning parent reading time when  the Kinders loved to sing and chant to their parents. Here is a sampling from our collection. (Any Raffi book was a hit, we have all of them)       ...

Estimation Jar Providing opportunities for Kindergarten children to make estimates helps them build number sense. Number sense is really a byproduct of playing with numbers and is often referred to as flexible thinking or good intuition about numbers. Challenging students to regularly make estimates enables them to make personal connections with numbers, to understand what they mean, practice with mental math and make comparisons. Key elements which I include in number talks are :  community of learners class discussion purposeful math problem time to work open ended teacher questions I introduce the estimation jar during number talks activity. I show one jar and tell them that it has five marshmallows (a friendly number of course). We count the marshmallows together to make sure that five is the correct number. Then using an identical jar, I ask them to think about how many marshmallows are in the second jar. They discuss it with their partner and then some o...

Part Part Whole Part Part whole involves seeing numbers in more than one part (three becomes two + one) and is usually introduced once students are able to count confidently. A strong understanding of this concept has been shown to increase understanding of other concepts like place value, addition, word problems and number sense. For this reason it is one of the concepts that we revisit many different ways during the Kindergarten year always using concrete materials. Like all math activities I introduce it first in small groups of six students. Using a friendly number, I begin the activity using two strategies; think aloud and modeling. Choosing a friendly number enables students to focus on the concept rather than a difficult number. I show a model to the students and ask them to talk with their partner. Next, I ask a few to share different combinations like 2+3 which I demonstrate using manipulatives.  The next time I meet with the students I review the activity and...

Subitizing With Dot Cards Subitizing means to instantly recognize a quantity without counting, is a foundation skill for students and listed as one of the six components for number sense. In Kindergarten students play with subitizing all year, beginning the first month of school. I begin with small numbers like three and four using dot cards in a small group of about six students. First I invite them to tell me the number, accepting all answers. I record the answers and then ask them how they figured out the number. Talking about their thinking is a great opportunity for students to learn from each other as they hear the many different ways that the number is figured out (2 + 1, 3+0, 1+1+1). As they gain experience I increase the complexity of the the dot card as well as the number of dots. Once students have mastered numbers to six, I change my format and use it as a pre-math warm-up and do finger flashes* with quick peaks at the number cards to build fluency....

Number talk is really another term for mental math. Research has shown that 75% of math by adults is done by mental math (source: K-5 Teaching Resources, an online teacher math development centre), so shouldn't we ensure that our students develop the skill?  Number talks are a short, daily routine that provides children with ongoing number practice. Just like reading every day builds literacy fluency, number talks help to build math fluency. Number talks encourage children to think actively about numbers as well as encourage divergent thinking about number problems. If you are new to number talks and would like to see a model, there are many teacher videos on Youtube. Here is one example. http://pinterest.com/pin/160370436703878520/ For short sessions like Number Talks, I choose a transition time in the morning for two reasons: young children have more stamina in the morning and our afternoon timetable has fewer transitions. In order for number talks to b...

Summer Reading Loss In May I attended a early learning summit where two speakers; Dr. Allington and Dr. McGill-Franzen spoke about the powerful and abundant research on summer reading loss. Their review of what is known about summer reading loss was juxtaposed with reliable interventions also identified through research. Together they recently edited an important book, Summer Reading , which offers a comprehensive review of what is known about summer reading loss as well as descriptions of successful interventions by experts in the field.  Some highlights of the research are  most of the large reading achievement gap found at grade six could be attributed to summer reading loss   summer reading loss is cummulative there is powerful evidence that summer reading loss is one of the important factors contributing to the reading achievement gap between rich and poor children (access to books being and being a poor reader being two other lead factors) bette...