Kindergarten Literacy

With my two weeks off I have started reading a new book, Kindergarten Literacy by Anne McGill-Franzen. This is a great practice and theory type of book. This year my professional goal and teacher evaluation revolve around students data and assessment. I have that total nerdy side where I LOVE to keep data! crazy I know.

The book starts off by talking about the importance of assessing students, so you can make sure you are challenging students no matter what their level is. And sometimes the curriculum guide is not always the best route! For example is half of your class knows their letters and sounds and the other half barely knows any, is it really that helpful to teach a letter a week???? I don't think so, you need to keep challenging your above benchmark students while while doing interventions with your below benchmark students.

The assessments they suggest are: Letter-sound identification, phonological awareness, print concepts, spelling, text writing, word writing, text reading, and word reading. They also provide how to do the assessments, copies of the forms, and class recording sheet. They also give samples of student work to compare with your student's work.

I really recommend this book! I will post later what my data binder looks like, and some student work samples.

WOW!!!

Can I just say WOW! I am a first year teacher and the last four months have flown by!!!!! I had great intentions of writing on my blog a lot my often. I have kept up my classroom blog however, which is the most important. If you would like to check out how I have laid it out, the website is

http://mrsleeskinderclass.blogspot.com/

Since I cannot share everything I have done in the last 4 months I will give a quick overview, and try to continue to post through winter break.

Literacy

Daily 5 still going great! Hey know the routine down to a tee, and they are very independent. I do 3 rotations and 3 lessons, 10 minutes each. So 60 minutes of Literacy each day. The students can choose from Read to self, Writing, Word Work, Listen to Reading, and computers, or I will add small groups. Students pick their choices each morning. I ring a bell for transitions.

Read to self- students pick their books out each Monday. In the beginning of the year I let them pick any book, as they are beginning to read I am having them pick books at their level.

Writing- They can free write about what they would like. In writing lessons I give them sentence starters, or we do shared writing.

This is from one of our Shared Writings. The students were very proud!

Word Work- They do white boards, or Phonics cards. With the white boards students practice their words using Caitlyn Clabby’s (Kindergarten Smiles) Writing and Word Work Cards. The Phonics cards are from my favorite TPT Teacher, Julie Van Alst. 

Computer Work- I use www.starfall.com.

I am happy to say my students are doing great, and I think Daily 5 has a lot to do with it. They love writing, and are becoming great readers.

Math:

Math is what I want to focus on over my break. I am doing Math Work Stations by Debbie Diller. To be honest though, they are a huge mess!!! I am going back reorganizing them, putting them in new containers, adding the “I Can” paper, and getting new stations.

My students love them, but I feel like I didn't take enough time to explain how to take care of the material, and keep it organized. I also do not keep very good track of what they are doing. But as teachers we need to constantly reflect and revise, and I am not ashamed to say that! So here comes my second attempt=) When I am done reorganizing I will devote one post to just my stations!

Social Studies/Science

Another one I want to reflect on. I tried doing Science Journals with my students and they turned out kind of Messy=( I need to do some Post searching on this for help!

Well I hope to be back soon with some more posts on what I have been doing, including one on how I keep Student Data (Which is my focus this year.)

~Amber Lee