Alphabet & Sight Word Practice

I hope your October is off to a good start! I am still in a bit of shock that it is already October and time to start thinking about report cards! I'm not ready for that at all! September went by so quickly, that I still have tons of photos that I never got around to posting and blogging about-I will try to get to that this week!

My kinder kiddos have been working super hard to learn all of the letters in the alphabet, and they love playing different alphabet games during our center time. We have also started working on our kindergarten sight words-and I am thankful that I can take my time with our sight words and just focus on one per week (we only have 26 required words-and I know plenty of schools have more than that!).

Here are some of the alphabet and word work activities we did last week during center time.

That would be the front to my heater that the kiddos are making words on. I lucked out that the heater is metal so the magnetic letters stick on perfectly! I just used some tape to make a little grid.

 

My students this year LOVE wikki stix. They have been practicing making letters and words out of the wikki stix. I have a special dry erase board designated for wikki stix only since it makes the board so sticky!

 

I just adore this "Roll a Sight Word" game. It is so easy to play-just roll a dice and write down the corresponding word on the sheet. We play this all year long and the kids think it is a new game every time I switch which words are on the paper. To get this awesome freebie from Mrs. Parker, click here.

 

 My students are doing a great job practicing their sight words with these fun little cards. First they read the word at the top, then they build it with letter tiles, and finally they trace the word at the bottom and practicing writing it on the line. These sight word practice cards are a part of my Fall Fun: Literacy Games Pack.

 

This little sight word board game was a big hit last week with my students. So easy too-just roll the dice, move that many spaces, and say what word you landed on. This game (along with lots of other game boards) is also from my Fall Fun: Literacy Games Pack.

 

We're still practicing letters too-so the kids also had the option to play the same board game, but with letters instead of sight words.

 

Yes, I am a brave teacher-our stamping center is open for business! My students have been practicing stamping the alphabet with these wonderful free alphabet stamping pages from Shannon at Kindergarten Hoppenings. For my more advanced kiddos, I have been using Mrs. Wills' fantastic sight word stamping pages.

 

I'd love to hear what your students have been up to-and please share any fun alphabet or word work ideas that you have! 

 

Apple Themed Centers

I'm gearing up to start teaching a unit on apples to my kinders in about a week or so. I guess that means fall is almost here! To go along with our study of apples and how they grow, I like to have a few fun math and literacy activities for my kiddos to do that have an apple theme.

Last year my students worked on lots of different apple themed math stations. Click here to check out my apple post from last year which includes links to several free apple math games!

This year I made some new apple themed literacy center activities to help my kinders learn their letters, sounds, and sight words. One of the games my students will play at our alphabet center is this very simple letter tracing game. I'll have a bag of magnetic letters and students will take turns picking a letter out of the bag and tracing the letter they picked on their paper. Click here to download these free letter tracing sheets (both capital letter and lowercase letter sheets included).

This game can easily be differentiated for students of different levels. The easiest way to play would be to give them a bag of capital letters and a capital letter sheet so they can trace the exact letter they pull out of the bag. To make it a little trickier, you can give them a bag of lowercase letters along with the capital letter sheet, so that they pick a lowercase letter but then have to find and trace the corresponding capital letters. Or, for really high students, I think I might give them a bag of little objects/toys/pictures and then when they pull out an item they have to determine the item's beginning sound and then trace that letter on the sheet.

I also have a pack of alphabet themed literacy games for sale in my TPT store that works on lots of different literacy skills, including: syllable counting, beginning sounds, capital and lowercase letter recognition, and sight words. Click here to check it out! I'd love to give away a free copy of this game pack to the first 2 people to leave a comment (and their email address) on this post!

Anyone else planning apple activities for the coming weeks? If so, I'd love to get some new ideas and hear what you and your students will be up to!

Alphabet Practice

While several of my reading groups are now reading leveled books, I still have two small groups that are working on the alphabet. The first group knows roughly half the letters in the alphabet, so we are really working hard on learning all of the letters. We are practicing reading the alphabet chart daily, and doing lots of letter sorting so they start noticing the different features of each letter. We have also been playing some fun little games.

One game we play involves them locating different letters. I will tell each student a letter and then they have to point to that letter on their alphabet chart. I can individualize this easily if there are certain letters I have been working on with the particular student. If they locate the letter correctly, I put a little pumpkin eraser on that letter on their chart-which they love!

Another game we have been playing is where they can point to any letter they want on their alphabet chart and tell me its name-if they do this correctly, then I let them take a little Halloween eraser to cover up that letter. These are similar skills, just in one game they are locating the letter and in one game they are generating the names of known letters so that they become more fluent with the alphabet.

My second reading group that is working on alphabet skills is a little more advanced. The students in this group know most of the letters in the alphabet, so we are not just reviewing the letters, but also working on developing knowledge of letter sounds. One game I play with this group is where I will make a letter sound (like mmmm) and then they have to point to the letter on their alphabet chart that makes that sound. If they do it correctly then I let them put a little ghost eraser on that letter of alphabet.

We have also been concentrating on hearing the first letter in words, so we've been playing a fun little game to go along with that. I have a pack of alphabet flashcards that I got at Target over the summer that I use for this game. I show the students a picture flashcard and they write down on their dry erase board the letter they think the word starts with. For example, in the photo below I showed them a picture of a turtle, we all said the word turtle together, and then I asked them to write the letter it begins with. Then I turn the flashcard around so they can see if the letter on the back matches the letter they wrote. They all did great and wrote the letter T! When they write the correct letter I let them take a little pumpkin eraser to put at the top of their dry erase board-it is amazingly motivating for them since this is a challenging game!

I really encourage them to refer to the alphabet chart for help if they get stuck. So, if they weren't sure what turtle started with, I would ask them to think about what picture on their alphabet chart started the same way, hoping they would think "Oh, turtle starts like tiger on my alphabet chart, so they both must begin with the letter T." I like how with this game they are not just working on hearing sounds, but also writing the letters as well. Soon I hope to move on to middle and ending sounds and have them write down several letters they hear in each word.

You might notice in my photos that I sometimes use file folders that I have cut in half as little "privacy screens" between each student at my table. We don't use these everyday, however this just makes things easier so that I can say something like "Point to the letter B" and they have to do the work themselves instead of just looking to see what letter their neighbor is pointing to on the alphabet chart. Another thing I do is keep little baskets on my guided reading table with a dry erase marker an eraser in each so that when we use the dry erase boards everyone has all the materials they need in their little basket.

I would definitely recommend the alphabet charts I use in my classroom. I got them years ago from Teaching Resource Center and laminated them so they would be extra durable. I love that they come in a large poster size that I keep on my easel for shared reading (see above photo) and then also the small individual size so I can give each student their own copy of the alphabet chart to work with. My students frequently use the mini-charts for writing workshop, reading groups, and even several of our literacy stations. I think that consistency is important when students are first learning the alphabet, so I like that they use the same alphabet chart with the same picture icons for everything.

I'd love to hear how your reading groups are going-especially any tips you might have for working with those kiddos that are still struggling to learn the alphabet.

Letter of the Day

Anyone do letter of the day? I can't believe that we're already finishing up the 6th week of kindergarten and are nearly to the letter Z. In another week I'll be gearing up for round 2 of letter of the day (we go through the entire alphabet once each quarter- of course focusing on more challenging alphabet skills each time!).

I just have to share this video-it brought a smile to my face after a long week in kindergarten! It combines 2 shows I love-Sesame Street and Glee! I definitely plan to show it to my kiddos when our letter of the day is G.



If you are looking for some great alphabet video clips, go to Sesame Street podcasts on iTunes and you can download a free video podcast for every letter. They are each around 5 minutes long. I plan to show these quick letter videos each day for the letter of the day as we go through the alphabet next quarter.

Happy Friday!