Peek at My Week-Winter and Dr. King

Here’s a little peek at the week we are having in Megan’s room. You can download the plans (here). We are going to continue talking about winter and add in our unit of study on MLK.
We can’t wait to get into our Non Fiction Writing Unit. We have focused on non fiction text during our guided reading. We have loved using the the various levels of text---with the same content and the same non fiction features.
We want all kids to see themselves as wrtiers---so what a perfect connection. It doesn’t matter the level of the text they write, if they only use illustrations or if they write full paragraphs, they can still develop the concepts of non fiction text! Wow! That is pretty powerful! So…your children can master the writing standard without writing text? The writing standards require the children to know the features of the genre.  Now, don’t get me wrong. They do HAVE to write text to accomplish the foundational standards—stretching words, spacing, letter formation, etc.

We are going to spend Monday reading lots of books about Dr. King. Here are a few of my favorites:

Then, the rest of the week we are going to put that information to work-writing non fiction text, making connections, and learning about cause and effect.

During math we are moving on to Unit 5—Number Combinations 6-10.  I have a very smart friend, Catherine Kuhns. When I have a math question, I give her a call. So this past week we were having a discussion and it came up again about number combinations. She said, “According to the NCTM, kids need to see multiple representation for each number. They need to break it apart and put it back together in many different combinations.” So,that said—here’s what I think. SLOW DOWN!!!! If we can have children confident, fluent, and able to draw on mental images for each number---it will pay off big time in the long run. Be sure and check out Catherine’s resources. She is pretty fabulous!

Here are a few ideas from last year when we celebrated Dr. King. Many of these ideas are in our plans this week. These ideas are from Hooray for Dr. King Day.



Be sure and hop over to my friend Deedee’s blog to see what others are doing this week.

FREE ABC Book: What do you do if they can’t recognize the letters?

So..here we are half way through the year. Do you still have kids who don’t know the alphabet? Then, read on….
At one time, we had Reading Recovery, a great program for first graders in our school. (We no longer have the program—$$$$$.) The Reading Recovery teacher often shared ideas with us that she thought might help our kids not need her in first grade. So, this is one of the Reading Recovery ideas, tweaked and changed, but originally a Reading Recovery strategy.
This book is a FREE file, so keep reading to the bottom of the post where you can snag it up!

At this time of year, I would do this with any kinders who do not know the alphabet!

To get ready:

• 1. First, reproduce the pages to make the abc book.
• 2. Cut and staple the pages together.
• 3. Now, reproduce a page of clip art for each child making the book.
• 4. Invite the children to cut the pictures apart and put them inside a baggie with their name written on the outside.

Here is what it will look like. Each child will need their own book and their own set of pictures!

To use the book:

• 1. Assess alphabet naming knowledge.
• 2. For any letter, capital or lower case, that the child knows, find the picture in the bag that starts with that letter.
• 3. Invite the children to glue the picture on the page with the beginning letter.
• 4. Repeat this with all of the letters, capital or lower case, that the child knows.
• 5. Now add in three more pictures to go with letters that they do not know. Put a post it note flag on these three pages. ****Leave all other pages blank!

Now:

• 6. Each and EVERY day, the child should “read” you the book.
• 7. To read the book, they turn the pages one by one. If they do NOT have a picture on that page, they skip it.
• 8. If they do have a picture on the page, they read it like this: “G g goat”.
• 9. When they get to a page with a post it note flag--if they can read the letter to you correctly, remove the flag.
• 10. If they do not know the letter, you read it to them and leave the flag on the page.
• 11. After finishing reading the book, any post it notes in your hand now can now be used to add more pictures.

What about letter sounds?
I use this abc book for teaching letter recognition, not letter sounds. I teach letter sounds mostly through writing and songs. I love Shari Sloane! She has great songs for both abc recognition and letter sounds! I made a lot of her songs into music books that we use as we sing along.You can get her music on her website www.kidscount1234.com or on itunes.

So I wanted to print the music books small enough for their little hands…and to save ink, cardstock and laminating!  I love the way they turned out.

• I printed them 1/2 page.
• Then, after binding the books, I put a sticky cd holder on the back of the books.
• Finally, I burned the song on a CD.
• I put the CD inside the sticky CD holder.

To print the books1/2 page size, follow these steps:

• Open the print menu.
• Click on “multiple” and on “2” for pages per sheet.
• Be sure you click on “landscape” under orientation so that the pages fit nicely on the paper.

Here are the abc books that I remade--with new clip art! If you already have them, you can get the updates in your “my purchases” section on tpt. Also, for “The Letters on the Bus”, I added the rest of the alphabet so that you can use the book with the open version of the song that Shari also included on the CD.





I do use a sound sorting activity each week to differentiate where they are in sound production. You can read more about it here in another blog post.

20 Dollar Store Deals FREE File

What teacher doesn’t love the Target Dollar Spot and The Dollar Tree? Can’t really say the same thing for my husband.  He actually drops me off at the door at Target…not because he is trying to be kind (which he is), but because he wants me to finish that Dollar Spot hunt before he gets in the store!
So here are some of my latest finds….be sure and read to the bottom.  There are a few freebee recording pages to go along with some of the items!

Here are some of the items in Target:
1. Love the clipboards! Can never have enough of those for write the room, center work, teacher assessment holder….
2. The abc dry erase boards will work great in our making words center.
3. Love playing cards…Here’s a tip…If you want children to pay attention to the “set” not the numeral, simply cut the numerals off of the playing cards. This forces the kids to pay attention to the configuration of hearts, spades, etc on the card---subitizing! They will be able to tell you how many on the cards very quickly…without counting!
4. Love those microphones. We have several! The kids love to use them for share time, show and tell, read to friend, etc…. “The brain learns by pattern but seeks novelty.” Give ‘em a mic and let ‘em talk!
5. The spinner games—perfect “can do” centers for literacy and math!
6. Not sure yet what we are going to make with the mailboxes. But, I wanted to get some before they were all gone! Any ideas?
7. ABC puzzle---perfect “can do” center! Now that’s what I call No Prep!
And here are a few things from the Dollar Tree:
1. Love the divided plastic plates. They are perfect for number bonds!
2. Dice for addition, counting, on…. Also found dice with sight words. Can’t wait to come up with a game for those!
3. Okay, so I’m going out on a limb on the “science boxes”. Not sure if they will actually work or not. But, they had them for making instant snow. So I bought 3 to use in my small groups. These are going to be great for a How To Writing experience as well as the scientific process! Check back next week at the Peek at my Week plans to see how it worked!
4. Love the light up bear. I give these to my kids in our small groups. Then, when I ask a question they can hit their light if they know the answer! They really love it!
5. Had to get those robots because they were just too cute to pass up!
6. The abc page is a sheet of magnetic letters and pictures that start with each letter. We are going to add these to our magnetic letter center.
7. Saving the grow frogs for the spring!

Also saw these at the Dollar Tree:
1. The monster box was back in the gift wrapping area. The mouth had clear plastic, and I just cut it out. Now we are ready to feed the monster! Put sight words, abcs, numerals, addition sentences, etc on cheap valentine cards. Now, have the children feed them to the monster as they read the card.
2. Are those tiny red solo cups just not the cutest? Okay, another “I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this but I just have to have it” item! Would love to hear if you are using them!
3. The speech bubbles came 3 to a pack. They are magnetic! Here’s what I’m thinking! We could have 3 kids write something on each of the three bubbles. Now, put the speech bubbles on the magentic board. Then, other children have to decide which kid wrote which bubble. Once they do that, the child goes and stands under his speech bubble! Can’t wait to give it a try!

More from the Dollar Tree:
1. That magnetic spinner is smart! I have seen them at teacher stores for nearly $10! So here’s what you do….draw a large circle on the magnetic board. Around the edge of the circle write numerals, sight words, etc. Place the spinner in the middle of the circle. Now, give it a spin. Whatever the spinner lands on….the kids read!
2. Close up pic of the instant snow.
3. Frog and lily pad toy (see below).

Here’s a fun addition/number combination game to go with the frog game we picked up at the Dollar Tree!
1. Decide which number combination you want them to work on.
2. Invite the child to count out that many frogs.
3. Now, the child tries to jump the frogs into the pond by pressing down on the frog.
4. So now on the recording page, the child writes the number combination of how many landed in the pond and how many landed outside of the pond.
5. The recording page is available at the bottom of this post as a free download.