Decoding Words with a Blending Snake

Decoding is the ability to apply knowledge of letter-sound relationships to correctly pronounce written words.  It is described as the foundation of reading.

Successful decoders are able to read more fluently, have increased vocabulary, and are able to better comprehend what they read.

As students gain word attack skills, they should be given the opportunity to read text that reinforces the phoneme combinations they have learned, and also challenges them with new learning.

Several years ago, I created blending snakes from old ties.  My students enjoy using the snakes to help them decode words.

I also created blending snake cards which enable the students to work on decoding individual words independently.  We begin by decoding CVC words.  Then we move to words with initial and final blends.

Students say the individual sounds in the word and then blend them together to read the word.  Then they open up the blending snake card to check their answer.

You can try them out for FREE in your classroom!

{CLICK HERE} to grab a set of my blending snake cards!

The Tortilla Factory

We are immersed in our Food Unit and I thought The Tortilla Factory by Gary Paulsen would be a great addition this year.

Tortillas are a delicious part of all of our lives here in Southern California, and for many of you all over the world, so it was a no-brainer.

The book shows how corn seeds planted in the ground, grow into tall corn stalks.  How the corn is dried and ground into flour.  How it is made into masa dough and then into tortillas.  How the tortillas are taken to stores, purchased, and brought to our kitchens.

After reading, we discussed food that we like to eat with tortillas.  And of course, we created a circle map!

Then we used a sentence starter, I like tortillas and ______ , to create sentences.

Food is such a popular topic in my classroom!  You can see more of what we have done with food {HERE}.

And more Thinking Maps {HERE}.

Class Books - We LOVE Them!

I love class books!  My students love class books!  We all love class books!  And you will love them too!

In my room, class books are THE most popular books that students choose to read from our library!

Students love seeing themselves in the books, and they love reading what the other kids have written. The students feel a sense of ownership and pride, when they contribute to a class book.  The relevance that the students have to the books make them want to read them over and over!

Here are some of the books that I have created with different classes over the past years.

At the beginning of the year, we like to create a name book.

One year, we took our stuffed lion mascot around the school and took pictures.

We read The Three Billy Goats Gruff, and wrote this book.

The Gingerbread Boy gave us inspiration for this book.

After reading a book about animal babies, we wrote this class book.

Of course, food is a great topic for a book!

And a field trip to the zoo, inspired this book.

And don't forget to include your teacher pages in the books!  The kids really love seeing them!!!!

So fill up your classroom library with class books!  Everyone LOVES them!

Guided Reading in Kindergarten

Hi!  It's Kay again from Sommer's Lion Pride with some Kindergarten guided reading tips!

I am currently rereading The Next Step in Guided Reading by Jan Richardson to better prepare and plan for the year.  Here are some guided reading tips to get it up and running in your Kindergarten classroom, my take-aways from Chapter 1, which is all about preparation.

#1 - First and foremost, don’t rush it!

Before you can begin to pull small groups to your table for specific lessons, you have to make sure that your class is able to work independently for 30-60 minutes.  You will also need to introduce students to all of your literacy centers.  And that takes time.

We all know how our Kinders come into the classroom on that first day of school!  These little ones just aren’t ready to work independently yet for any length of time.  So ease into it!

Jan Richardson says that you should spend 6 weeks teaching routines and procedures.  During this time, you will gradually release responsibility to the students, as they work their way up to more sustained independent work.

#2 - Map out a plan to introduce your literacy centers to your students.

In the book you will find a week-by-week plan for introducing literacy centers during the first 6 weeks.  Jan recommends that you pull 1 group at a time, show them how to use a center, and give them a chance to work with it, while the rest of the class is working in groups with an activity that requires little direction from teacher.

As you introduce the literacy centers, don’t forget to teach your students all of the procedures and routines that go with each literacy activity.

#3 - Decide how you will manage centers during guided reading.

Here are some questions that you need to answer before getting started.

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How will you group your students?  (I will explore this more in my next blog post on Sommer's Lion Pride.)

Do students choose their own literacy activities?  Or are they assigned?  Will you have a chart of some kind that shows that?

What signal will you use when it is time to stop working, clean up, and rotate?  What do the students do when you give them the signal?

How do students move to the centers?  How do they access the materials for the centers?  Who is in charge of getting the materials?

What is the expected noise level during literacy centers/guided reading?

What should students do when they encounter a problem?

What happens if a students is being disruptive and not working cooperatively?

How will you organize your guided reading materials?

#4 - Here are some ideas for literacy centers at the beginning of the year.

I try to keep it simple!  Lots of opportunities to work with letters!

#5 - Use a timer!

This will keep you on schedule.  I have a few timers around my classroom so that I can always find one to set!

Experimenting with Apples

It's science fair time again and we have been working on our project.  We used the scientific method to guide our experiment.

We began by talking about our problem.

Then we formulated a question.

And a hypothesis.

Next, we each made a prediction.

Then we conducted our experiment.

I prepped by dividing paper plates into 4 parts and adding the names of the liquids.

Then we dipped the apple slices into either soda, milk, lemon juice, or water and placed them on the plates.

Then came the hard part for my Kinders ... waiting!

We waited an hour and then observed the apple slices.

The differences between all of the slices was very subtle, but we did find that dipping an apple slice in lemon juice slowed down the browning process.

We recorded our results on this sheet.

Here is our display board, all ready for the Science Fair!