Distinguishing Between Number, Letter, and Word

This is a literacy activity we did to see if the students could distinguish a number from a letter and a letter from a word. Surprisingly, both classes did really well with it. I mostly had the older children participate. This is super easy to prepare and great for practice with beginning reading skills. 

Tutorial Tuesday: Puzzle Sight Words

Puzzle Sight Words 

Happy Tuesday! I am so excited to be joining Cachey Mama's Classroom today. I am Jillian also known as A Mom with a Lesson Plan. One of my favorite lessons to plan is sight words. Making sight word practice fun and easy is one of the ways I keep my kids excited about learning new words.

How to Prepare

Do you have any old puzzles with missing pieces? Don't worry if all your puzzles are full sets, you can find a cheap puzzle at a garage sale, thrift store, or dollar store.

 I used a puzzle with big pieces but any size pieces would work.
  
Put the puzzle pieces together. Make sure you have enough pieces connected to match the letters in the word you are making. Then flip the puzzle over so the back of the puzzle is up.
 Write one letter of the word on each puzzle piece. That's all the prep you need. Easy right?

3 Ways to Play

I love this idea for a couple of reasons. Puzzle sight words is perfect for a quiet classroom activity or for at home practice. I also love that it can be varied to work with kids of different levels. 1. Lay out the sight word card right next to the letters needed to make the word. Mix the letters up a bit and then have your little one put the "puzzle" together to match the card.

2. Lay out the sight word cards. Mix up all the letters and have your little one create the words by finding the letters in the pile.

3. Mix up all of the pieces and ask your little to make words from the pieces available. This is a good one if you've already practiced these words quite a bit.

Besides a love for her kids (and well just kids in general) Jillian has a degree in Early Childhood Education and 10 years experience as a preschool teacher. Right now her “students” call her mom. Jillian believes that life offers an abundance of learning opportunities. She loves figuring out what they are and how they can be expanded on. Join the journey at amomwithalessonplan.com.

Tutorial Tuesday: Words Their Way

Hello, this is Beth Ann from Taming My Flock of Firsties.

I wanted to thank Lori for letting me guest blog on Tutorial Tuesday. What a great idea!

Words Their Way came into our classrooms one Monday morning. "This is what you are going to use for your Spelling program." Hmmmm?

The first and second grade teachers all got together and "learned" what this program was about. Some teachers took the initiative to dive right in so that others could learn from their expertise. It's a good thing we have some penguins in our school. :)

Now that we have been using it for two years, we have all embraced it.

Once you get into it, you will LOVE it!

One of my colleagues developed a system for each day. We pretty much followed by the book but we tweaked some things to make it our own.

Monday: Hand out sorts.

Discuss with groups.

This is the part they love.

NAME

SCRIBBLE

HIGHLIGHT

CUT

SORT


Name: They write their names REALLY BIG on the back of their sorts.

Scribble: They scribble...really, on the back (this is usually a lighter color than their name).

Highlight: They highlight their features.

Cut: They cut out their sorts.

Sort: They sort their sorts.

There is usually a lot of discussion going on about connections and other things they have found.

After they have sorted they put their sorts into their baggies and off they go to Daily 5.
They are given two copies (one for home and one for school).
I send home a little note each day in the beginning to explain what the parents should be doing each day.

Tuesday: Speed Sort
I have found that my firsties have a really hard time reading the clock in our room...really???
I put a timer on the Smart Board and we all do the speed sort together.
The timer counts up and when they are finished they record their time on their sheet.

Click on the image to download a copy for you.

I have to explain to them that their sorts are not the same. They are comparing their time from before and not to compare other students with their time. It worked pretty well for me this year. If they beat their time from before, they get a sticker on their page. :) I LOVE stickers!

Wednesday: Buddy Sort

They find someone in their sorting group.

I broke their groups up into berries this year (blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, etc.). When they find someone, they work together to "quiz" each other. "What word would go in this feature?" "Where does this word belong?"

Thursday: Word Hunt

Using their Daily 5 Read to Self  bags, they have to find words that go along with their features. I started out with trying to find 10 of each. Boy, was that a nightmare! I finally figured out that what worked best for the students and me was to go through all the books (there are only eight) and try to find some words that fit in the features. If they cannot find any (which happens a lot), they can look at the word wall or try to think of some words that would go with that feature.

Friday: Test

The students sort their words and then glue them into their Spelling Journals. After the entire group was finished with this I would call them back for some extra testing. 

I would give them 5 words to spell (from their features) and a bonus word (maybe an oddball word).

The kids really looked forward to Spelling.

They made some great progress.

We have them take a pre-test to see where they fit in groups and then a post-test to see how much they have grown.

I enjoy this program so much! 

If you have any questions or suggestions, please email me at bakteach16@gmail.com.

Have a wonderful day!

Thinky Linky Thursday

Here are the most clicked links from last week:

Outer Space Sensory Bin from Mama Of Many Blessings

Shaving Cream Prints with Glitter Twist from Glittering Muffins

Spring Literacy: Forming Words from Teaching Munchkins

If you were featured, feel free to grab a button below!

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Storytime Sunday: More Farm

Ok, I know I have been a slacker this weekend. It is technically Monday when I am posting this. Please forgive me. Anyways, we have been studying pets and farm animals the last few weeks. I have been getting the idea that there were still a few things my kids were not understanding about the farm. For example, they know about specific animals and barns, but I'm not sure if they know about what a real farm looks like and the names for some of the baby animals. Here are some books I found in my personal library that I thought would be helpful for them.

This story is great because it explains in detail what the farm looks like and what all the animals do on the farm. It tells about the sounds the animals make and some things that grow in the fields. It has colors, counting, and rhyming and it goes through the whole day from morning to night. There are a lot of descriptive words and vocabulary.

Next is a book about a boy who lives on a farm in Mexico and takes care of the animals. I especially love this one because it is going to be an awesome transition into our study about countries and cultural diversity. It has some simple words in Spanish and tells 5 stories about different animals and each one has a riddle that Ramon makes up about the silly actions of the animals. I know the children will love this one!

A very simple book with large print and very few words, this tells the name for each adult and baby animal.

And last is a simple reader that introduces the sight words "a, big and little" and other words "chair, sheep, three and white." Kids will enjoy reading this all by themselves!

HAPPY READING!

ABC Fishing

Over the years I have been teaching preschool, this has been one of my favorite activities because the children really seem to like it and get involved. It is very simple to arrange. All you need is a dowel rod, yarn, a magnet, letter cutouts and paper clips. Attach the paper clips to the letter cut-outs (which I laminate). Then fix the rest of the items into a fishing pole with the magnet as the "worm."

I use the top of this sensory table as the pond, but you can just lay them on the floor or whatever container you can find that's large enough.

The children will take turns "fishing" for letters and when they catch one, tell what letter it is and what sound it makes.

Some other variations of this would be to use numbers instead or shapes, words, animal pictures, etc. It can pretty much be anything the children are working on. Also, you could have them try to catch a particular letter such as the first letter of their name.

Some extensions are graphing which letters were caught and how many times, arranging them in order in the pocket chart after they are caught, or asking questions about what words begin with that letter and even having them write the word.

I hope you have as much fun with this activity as we do!