Common Core App

Monday, August 31, 2015

Kindergarten Writing Ideas (Week 3) (Writing Samples)

My students are really loving to write this year. We talk about putting our thoughts on paper. I tell them that when we talk, our words just go into the air, but when we write, our ideas go on paper and can be read by a lot of people. We also talk about how fun writing is and that we are ALL writers!

We are teaching students to write about what they know. They can't write about things they do not have experience with. We made a chart showing ideas that we know about. 


Students can write about ideas from the chart or other things they know about. Before they write, I have a few students tell what they are going to write about. Then I choose one student's idea and model good writing with their idea. We discuss what good writer's do: start sentences with capital letters, use lowercase letters throughout the rest of the sentence, leave spaces between words with our space stick, put an ending punctuation mark, spell word wall words correctly, and stretch the other words. 

Here are a few student writing samples from week three. I am excited about how well these students are writing this early in the school year. 


My dog is going to play outside. He is brown.


I go to school and I love teacher. She is beautiful and Jonathan is my friend, you and me.


I like to play my Xbox 360 and I like to play my WWE (wrestling) game.


My friends are playing on the new playground and it was fun. I love it! 

I love how this last one even has labels and an ending. 

I can't wait to see how their writing grows during the school year. I will be sharing more about our writing throughout the school year. Stay tuned for future writing!

Thanks for stopping by!

Saturday, August 29, 2015

New Awesome Playground: Excitement is in the Air!

Excitement is in the air! Woo Hoo! I can't believe our new playgrounds are finished! We have been needing new playgrounds for quite some time now. Two of these playgrounds for our school were fully funded and built by donations and time from our community. Just last school year, our school started selling these adorable t-shirts to begin the process, and now both playgrounds are complete after one month into this new school year. 

Aren't they adorable? (Excuse the wrinkles)



We are absolutely amazed at the huge donations from our community to help support this need. To make the savings even greater, workers from the community came together during one weekend to do a "community build." Two playgrounds were put together and ready to play on the following week. We just held our ribbon cutting for the playground yesterday. The students are so excited and I think we teachers are even more excited than they are. Take a look at this amazing playground! 








I can't wait to use my "Playground Read and Write" and my FREE "Opinion Writing: Favorite Playground Activity" with my students while relating to our new playground. The "Playground Read and Write" could be used as a read aloud in kindergarten followed by discussion early in the year, and then they could actually read it and fill in the blanks independently later in the school year. First graders could complete it independently now. 

Playground Read and Write

If you are interested in this, you can find it HERE!

Free Downloads
Grab this FREEBIE HERE


Thank you for stopping by!

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Kindergarten Writing at the Beginning of the Year!

I always seem so overwhelmed when I give my kindergarten students a writing paper for the very first time. I know how their writing must look to be prepared for first grade, and when I see their very first writing, I always cringe wondering if we will ever make it to mastery level.

I have learned that MODELING is the key to kindergarten writing. Students must see you write everyday as you discuss what good writers do.

We have been writing using our daily sight words and learning to "stretch" our words as we write during these first two weeks of school. During this past week, we chose a couple of days to write about particular colors. We named and made a chart with things that are red and then named yellow items another day. As students named an item of the color, the student said the sentence they would write using our sight words "see" and "the" as I modeled writing the sentence on chart paper.




After modeling, the students had their turn to draw something that color and write a sentence to tell about it. Some of them did a really good job. Here are a few of the writing samples.


The strawberry is red.


The flower is red.


I see a yellow banana.

We still have a long way to go to get them and all of the other students where they need to be by the end of kindergarten, but I know we can do it with a lot of modeling, patience, and daily writing practice. Stay tuned for more writing samples throughout the year.

If you have any writing ideas to share, please comment below. I would love to hear from you.

Thank you for stopping by!

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Emergent Reader: Sight Word: HE (Community Helpers)

WooHoo! I just finished another of my sight word emergent readers. I am in the process of creating a reader for each of the 100 most popular sight words. I just completed book 11 of 100. Yes, I still have a long way to go, but I am determined. It may take me a while, but I will eventually finish all 100. I need more time in the day! Take a look at the description and photos below. I hope you and your students enjoy this reader!






This emergent reader for the sight word "he" is connected to several CCGPS listed below. This 13 page book includes a title page with bubble letters spelling the focused sight word for students to color, then 10 pages include a black and white picture at the top of each page with a sentence using the focused sight word. There are two more pages asking students to draw a picture of their own and write a sentence of their own using the sight word, and then the final page asks students to trace the sight word three times and then write it three times on their own on the blank line. After this, there are 13 additional pages with the exact pictures and words as the first 13 pages. The only difference is that on this second copy of the book, the sight word being focused on is dotted on each page for students to trace. 






If you like this reader, you can find it HERE!


The clip art in this book focuses on community helpers. 

Title page: it (bubble letters to color)
Page 1: He is a chef.
Page 2: He is a detective.
Page 3: He is a firefighter.
Page 4: He is a mailman.
Page 5: He is a mechanic.
Page 6: He is a policeman.
Page 7: He is a vet.
Page 8: He is a farmer.
Page 9: He is a fisherman.
Page 10: He is a waiter.
Page 11: creative sentence writing
Page 12: tracing and writing sight word

The PREVIEW shows all pages included.

The pages of the book are not numbered giving the teacher flexibility of removing pages not desired when using in small guided reading groups for differentiation. 

This 13 page book is designed so that you can copy the book, cut in half, staple, and then it is ready for use. 

Students can benefit from this reader by tracking print, identifying spaces between words, identifying particular letters of the alphabet, recognizing sounds (beginning, middle, and ending) in each word, and reading sight words and grade level text. For extension activities, students could add another sentence to each page giving details about each picture shown. The black and white pictures allow students the opportunity to color the pictures. This reader is great for guided reading groups, homework, or literacy center activities. 

***This is the 11th of 100 emergent readers for popular sight words (high frequency words) in the works. The readers will build on the words focused on in the previous readers as much as possible. 

ELACCKRF1a. Follow words from left to right, top to bottom, and page-by-page.
ELACCKRF1d. Recognize and name all upper and lowercase letters of the alphabet.
ELACCKRF1b. Recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by specific sequences of letters.
ELACCKRF1c. Understand that words are separated by spaces in print. ELACCKRF3a. Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary or many of more frequent sounds for each consonant. 
ELACCKRF3c. Read common high-frequency words by sight. 
ELACCKRF4. Read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding. 

You may also like:
Emergent Reader: Sight Word: that
Emergent Reader: Sight Word: you
Emergent Reader: Sight Word: in
Emergent Reader: Sight Word: is
Emergent Reader Sight Words BUNDLE (the, of, and, a, to)
Emergent Reader: Sight Word: the
Emergent Reader: Sight Word: of
Emergent Reader: Sight Word: and
Emergent Reader: Sight Word: a
Emergent Reader: Sight Word: to
Back to School: Progress Through the Year - (P, K, 1st, 2nd)
Writing Through the Year
Opinion Writing BUNDLE
Addition and Subtraction Word Problems BUNDLE
Pocket Chart Activities (Color Word Sentences)
Pocket Chart Activities: Phonics and Sight Words (I, see, a)
Morning Work August Kindergarten
Emergent Reader: Let's Plant!
Emergent Reader: Butterflies (variety of sight words)
Read and Write Bundle
Insect Read and Write
Morning Work - October - Kindergarten
Morning Work - November - Kindergarten
Morning Work - September - Kindergarten
Emergent Reader: It Can Go!
Emergent Reader Bundle A-Z (26 Books)

You may visit me at:
BLOG
FACEBOOK PAGE
PINTEREST
TPT STORE

Thanks for stopping by!

Sherry Clements

Ladybug Classroom Door and Bulletin Board

I meant to post this during my preplanning week. I got so busy with preparing for the first week of school that I forgot about it. Here is a photo of my classroom door and outside bulletin board (Look Who's Been Spotted in Kindergarten) for the beginning of this school year. The outside bulletin board has student names on the ladybugs, of course, but I covered them up to post here.






Thank you for stopping by!

Friday, August 14, 2015

Kindergarten - Day 6 - Emergent Reader

My first emergent reader for the year was a success! The students loved it! I know they are at home tonight showing off their reading skills to their parents. 

The students felt so successful as they tracked the words, traced the sight word "the," and colored the color word and picture the correct color. I'm so excited for them. I can't wait to see how much their reading skills grow this school year. 

These readers are perfect for guided reading groups and for take home readers. This reader has 13 pages, but can be shortened if needed. I did not put page numbers on these to give the teacher flexibility in choosing the pages she wants to use. Here are a few of the pages in the emergent reader that we read today. 










If you are interested in this reader, you can find it HERE

I have many more EMERGENT READERS available HERE


Thank you for stopping by!


Thursday, August 13, 2015

Kindergarten: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and Letter Mm (Day 5)

I can't believe we've already been in school for five days. Our beginning of the year testing is taking up a lot of our time these first two weeks, but here are a few things we did today.

We read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. Then students made a brown bear bag puppet to use for retelling. The puppet has all of the animals from the story for students to color the correct color. They glued this to the front of the bag to help with retelling the story. If anyone knows where this sheet came from, please tell me so that I can give credit. Mine does not have a copyright on it. Then they made a head for the brown bear. After the wiggle eyes dried, they took turns retelling the story to their partner. They loved doing this. They will really love taking the puppet home and retelling the story to their parents! Aren't they adorable?



We have been working on the letter Mm all week. Today, I had students bring in pictures from home that start with the /m/ sound. We made an "Mm" chart with the picture and words written under them. Now students can use this chart during their writing time. We also watched the Mm video from Have Fun Teaching. They love these videos. They have such a catchy tune!



Then students completed a worksheet to show whether or not they could find the pictures that start with /m/. The sheet also had a sentence to read at the top and Mm's to trace before they cut and glued the pictures that started with /m/. Students that finished this early turned to the back of their paper and wrote a row of uppercase and lowercase Mm's and their sight words for the day. They could also write some words from the Mm chart that we made earlier.


You can find a worksheet for each letter of the alphabet A-Z HERE






We also got caught up on our daily calendar time. I love our new "Number Corner" series. It incorporates so much from the skills we are learning and at the correct times. The calendar is only a small portion of  "Number Corner." 



I hope all of you are off to a great start to your school year. Thank you for stopping by!


Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Day 3 of Kindergarten!

Today was very overwhelming while we started our "Student Learning Outcomes" testing while keeping the other students busy at the same time. Much of this testing is one on one.

This is just a couple of the activities we completed throughout the day. The students drew a picture of themselves to go in their "Back to School: Progress Through the Year" portfolios at the end of the year. These photos were precious. Since they were drawing a picture of themselves, they also created their rainbow names (found on Pinterest, of course). Students loved outlining each letter in their name with the colors of the rainbow. 

These two names below are not the names of real students in my classroom. They were made up to share with you what we did today, and these two names were short compared to many in my classroom, but everyone completed their name. After making the rainbow names, students compared the number of letters in their names and found classmates who had the same letters in their name as they did.




The students had a blast drawing their pictures and making their rainbow names. 

If you are interested in this page in the "Back to School: Progress Through the Year," you can find it HERE




Thanks for stopping by!