Five for Friday {10/16/15}

It's Friday!  You know what that means! Five for Friday!

We have been practicing "reading" with our little poems to build out concept of word. 

This week I finalized 3 products and posted them. We used the number word practice at centers this week. 

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/October-OnOff-Math-Work-Station-Addition-Practice-2145805

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Fall-Stations-Pack-Literacy-and-Math-Stations-2148003

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Number-Words-Color-Words-Print-Go-2151845

The kiddos are getting the hang of center time and I'm finding myself more and more able to work with small groups and individual students.

Here's my top group. They were so excited when I told them we were going to read a book. We are gonna fly through these easy readers!

Our county requires us to set a goal each year as part of our professional growth portfolio. My team decided to focus on sight words this year. To gather our baseline data, we have to give a sight word spelling test. Most of the children only spelled the word "a" or "I"  these two girls had to go through the 4 lists of 6 words each before I could stop due to their great spelling ability!

Now, head on over and see what everyone else did this week!

http://doodlebugsteaching.blogspot.com/2015/10/five-for-friday-linky-party-october-16th.html

Back to School 2015

Hello again!  So I have taken the biggest hiatus from blogging one could imagine.  Last years bunch was a lot of work and fitting in this blog just didn't work.  But here I am ready to try it out again.  We have started our second week of school and whew is it crazy to think I keep doing this year after year with these kinders.  I am absolutely exhausted everyday by 10:50 when we go to lunch - as are they.   Anyway, I did want to tell you a little about what we have been up to.  As you know, in kindergarten our first month or so is all about routines and expectations.  My class has done a pretty good job grasping all of those things so far.  We started week one with our classroom rules book as our main academic focus.  I thought I took a picture but it looks like I didn't. 

This is the second week and I introduced the concept of reading centers. Each day, I model how to read our center chart t and where to go. The students work at a center about 15 mins, my timer has been woderful, then we all color in the center on our chart to track the things we have finished. Now, I introduce and practice this way because eventually, I release the children to complete all 4 centers on their own while I do guided reading. This is one less things to have to teach later because they have been trained to color their center chart after completing the center. 

    

  

Here is the poetry center at work. Students read the poem from the previous week to themselves, read it to a friend and listen to a friend. Then they glue and illustrate in their poetry journal. 

This activity is at the ABC center where the students are recognizing their letters to color and make a picture. These students are working independently so I can teach the groups at the poetry center. 

Of course, there is always teaching kids how to use the computer. Here they are working on www.starfall.com. Next week, they will start on our reading program. 

This was one of our opening work activities from this week. 

Right now at math stations, the kids are just exploring the manipulatives. Here's some pictures. 

Well hope your school year is off to a great start. I'm hoping to be back Friday with my Five for Friday pics.  Cheers!

HELP!!! Literacy Center/Stations Problems

Hi everyone!  I'm really struggling with my reading centers this year.  It has been great trying out the "Literacy Stations" concept where my kids go to 2 centers a day, visit with me and the computer.  They work in partners at their 2 centers but travel as a group of 4 or 5 to the computer and to meet with teacher.  It is great because they work so much quieter!  However, here is my problem.  I can only have 5 in a group because I only have 5 computers in my classroom.    In the past, I have had 4 centers a day and they go to each center 4, 5, or 6 in a group.  This worked great but it can sometimes get loud and without an aide in my room to help manage, it makes it difficult.      How do you do it?!!?!?  Please help me!!!!!    You can leave your comment below or send me an email (shiftingteacherk2 at gmail dot com).    

Back to School - Roll and Color

Hello!  It has been a long time since making a new product (aside from my freebie for the blog hop) but I have to try to wrap my head around the kindergarten standards again and think of new things to create!  I have a good feeling most of this will happen during the school year.  With that said, I have decided to make a Roll and Color Pack that features numbers 1-6, basic shapes (rectangle, circle, triangle, square), and color words (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, brown, pink. white).  

Here is a preview of my pack!  Click {HERE} or the image to get your copy.  It's only $2.00.
Here is a close up of the Roll and Color recording pages:

I left these pages white with little color so they would be more printer friendly!
And if you have read this far, you are a lucky winner!  I will give this pack away for free to the first 5 people to comment about how you might use this pack in your classroom this year.