Vegas Day #2! We are covering a whole bunch of content today. Same as yesterday, anything that is in my TpT store is on sale through the rest of the week. I put this is my post yesterday, but just in case you didn’t see it…I can’t post entire slides and presentations due to copyright issues. Thank you for understanding!
Let’s get right to it.
Vocab & Word Work…Let’s Get Spelling
We are definitely starting the day with the heaviest content. This session is really covering a lot in terms of how I set up my classroom for spelling. It can be a big task in a Kindergarten classroom…especially if you want to differentiate. This is also a pretty difficult session to recap because it is involved and sort of lengthy. I’m sure there are still people that are confused and not sure how to implement everything we are covering. My best advice is to just dig in and get started. It may look different in your room but it’s one of those things you just have to start even though it may not be perfect.
One of the letters I send home to my parents at the beginning of the year is a compare/contrast of Word Study vs. Traditional Spelling.
I use a lot of Kathy Ganske resources. Word Journeys and Words Their Way are both great places to start. Students use
My schedule looks like this:
M– Introduce sorts
T– Teacher Check Tuesday
W– Student led games
TH– Practice words on whiteboards
F– Test in groups
I think if I tried to really cover all the content, this blog post would last until Christmas. So, this really is skimming the surface, but I highly recommend trying developmental spelling in your classroom!
These 5×7 envelopes are perfect for storing sorts. If you use this, laminate it and they will last all year!
Squeezin’ in Science and Social Studies
Again, so much content! If you are like me, science and social studies is HARD to fit in…or you have to do one or the other. It’s difficult to do both every single day. One way to embed both subjects is to weave it in through literacy and math throughout the day if you don’t have time to get to it.
There are so many wonderful books out there that you can get your hands on that cover so many science and social study standards. We talked about some different activities today.
We chatted about a tree walk that we go on and here is a freebie that you can grab and do it with your kiddos.
We talked about going on a solid walk, a sinking and floating activity for states of matter. Here is my blog post that covers a lot of it and a fun freebie.
Another standard we addressed is weather and calendar. I have found that this is the easiest way to address weather every day. We do it as part of our calendar time. The skills build on each month. It has saved me so much time and paper!
Another way I like to implement weather is through a weather week and I use this weather unit. We try to tie in as much literacy and math that we possibly can!
Here is the link to the candy experiment with the free download.
Some of the Social Study units are Community Helpers, Family, Traditions, maps and globes and famous Americans.
Here are some of the units and freebies.
This American Symbols book is so perfect to use when you are teaching about President’s Day.
We talked about ways you can implement vocabulary throughout your day because trying to squeeze in both science and social studies every day can be challenging!
Try to incorporate as much as you can throughout your day without having to take 30-45 minutes of your already shortened day to teach about President’s Day or to do a lesson on family.
Another way to cover some of these standards is to have kiddos do presentations on these topics. I have students do a presentation on their family at the beginning of the year and one of our standards is famous Tennesseans…so we do a presentation on that in February. What better way for kids to learn?!? They teach each other!
Chants and Cheers: Let’s Go Kindergarteners!
Woohoo!!!! So many ways to get kids up and moving and cheering for each other and to help them remember standards. Here are some of the cheers and chants we are covering in this session (but not all of them 🙂
These are some of my content cheers.
My amazing friend, Amy Lemons, has some great cheers as well!
Even if you can’t use the content of these cheers, it will help get your creative juices flowing to give you ideas for your own classroom chants and cheers!
These free sight word chants from Cara Caroll are fabulous!
Another way to help students remember content and have a little fun is through music.
This Tally Unit has the Tally Mark chant we talked about.
Here is our fun word wall wizard activity that we do with our word wall chant.
We do a TON of call and response. It’s so much more effective than trying to ring a bell or turn off the lights. Here are a few of my favorites!
Hope you enjoyed your sessions today…whether they were spent with me or someone else! If you want to read up on some of the topics from yesterday, head here.
