Feature Friday: Sarah from Kindergarten Alphabet Soup

Yeah, friends! We have made it to the end of another week! Let's celebrate by having another Feature Friday!

 

Today we are featuring Sarah from Kindergarten Alphabet Soup! She has some great ideas on how to set-up your elf on the shelf! Take it away, Sarah...

Hi all! I am Sarah from Kindergarten Alphabet Soup. December is my favorite month at school because it is full of Holiday fun, and who doesn't love a good holiday! I wanted to piggy-back on the previous post that Molly from Miss K's Little Rays did on introducing the elf, and show you some ideas for what to do with your elf in the classroom!

 

I want to preface by saying that I teach in a private, Christian school, therefore Holiday time around here is very Christmas oriented. However, many of the ideas that I have used for the elf antics are very universal and can be used in public or private schools, as well as at home!

The following are some of my favorite ideas:
1. Zip-lining on the Christmas lights.
2. Sleeping in a tissue box.
3. A Marshmallow fight with some buddies.
4. Fishing for Goldfish.
5. Hiding in classroom decorations.
6. Kindness Challenge Day!

  
     
 

The following are some more ideas that can be used in a private school classroom:
1. Shepherd Elf
2. Elf and the Advent wreath.
3. Elf admiring the angel.

  


The elf really helps to motivate students to come in to school in the morning excited and curious about what we're going to learn about that day! I try to always utilize what we are learning about during the day in the elf's activity, as well. (i.e. this week we're talking all about angels therefore a lot of Elfie's antics involve angels.)

Where are you and your class finding your elf in your classroom? Have a happy Holidays! :)
xoxo,
Sarah

Alphabet Small Group Intervention Tools

Hi friends! This is Yukari from A Pinch of Kinder and I have been thinking long and hard for what to share with you for my featured post! 

Today I'm posting about something that is very important to my planning and that is interventions. We are very data driven at our school for both language and math. But what do we do with all of that data we collect? Here is what I do for language at the beginning of the year. 

First I assess all students on their letter identification and sound production and record the data.  Here are the sheets that I use. Click on the image below to download them for free!

Since I teach JK/SK (or Pre-K/K) we only perform letter interventions at the beginning of the year for our SK's.  So I look through the SK assessment sheets and write down the students name for each letter they still need to learn the letter name or sound for.

It looks like this:

I used fake names to show you what it might look like!

Do you know what TV show they are from? :P

Then I get to grouping my students for interventions.

I teach my intervention groups in McCracken letter order.  I'm sure you can do it in any order but this is what has worked well for me.  The McCracken letter order is:

M, S, F, B, T

C, A, R, L, P

O, D, G, N, W

I, H, J, K, V

Q, Y, U, Z, X

I can usually get through 3-4 letters a week.

So for the first week I might plan:

Monday: Meet with M group #1: Morgan, Mindy and Danny

Tuesday: Meet with M group #2: Jeremy, Beverly and Tamra

Wednesday: Meet with S group #1: Danny, Morgan

Thursday: Meet with S group #2: Tamra, Jeremy

Friday: Meet with F group #1: Morgan, Jeremy, Mindy, Beverly and Tamra (I will only meet with 2-3 kids but I write all of their names down so that I make enough copies for everyone who needs an F book.  Then I will meet with the second group on the following Monday.)

Here is what my intervention basket looks like:

It includes: Whiteboards, The Alphabet QR Books, Alphabet Linking Charts, Verbal Path for the Formation of Letters Sheet, Crayons, Markers, Expo Markers, Date Stamper and the Letter Booklets. And pencils/erasers. But they are missing from the picture because someone took my pencil bin when I wasn't looking and now I can't find it... #reallife

For the actual intervention lesson we:

1. Recite the alphabet linking chart (mine is from the LLI kit, there are lots of free ones if you search on TPT!) or read our QR Code Alphabet Book.

(You can read more about the QR Code Alphabet Book by clicking here.)

2. Write our name on our letter booklet and talk about the letter and letter sound we will be learning today.

3. Learn the path of motion (I use the "Verbal Path for the Formation of Letters" sheet from the LLI kit as a guide but you can make up your own wording too) for the uppercase and lowercase letter and practice printing them.

For example for A you might say

"Slant, slant, across"

and for a you might say

"Make a c and pull down"

4. Read the mini book portion together.  Students take turns answering what the picture on each page is using the initial sound.  Then I read the sentence and model pointing at each word as I read.  Finally the students read.

5. Have students color the circles with the focus letter in it.

6.  I start pulling 1 student at a time to do the last page with me while the others are working on step 5.  I have the student say the word for the picture and circle the picture if it has the focus letter at the beginning and put an X if it does not.  I like to do this 1 on 1 so I get a quick assessment on their beginning sound identification each time we meet.

Once they are done their booklet it goes in their book boxes and they have a book they can read independently at independent reading time.  At the end of the week they take the books home to share with their family :)

We also send home these personalized alphabet books.  I use the data I gain from our September alphabet assessment to put these books together.  

This post is already getting super long so if you want to learn more about the personalized alphabet books you can read more about that here.

And as a thank you for reading this long post I am giving you a free week of alphabet intervention booklets! It includes the letters M, S and F.  Click on the image below to download the booklets!

I will also leave all of my intervention resources 20% off until Wednesday! Click on the image below if you would like to check them out.

I hope that this is useful for those of you who are new to Kindergarten! 

Thank you for reading!

Organizing Your Alphabet Activities

Hi friends!  It's Amanda from Mrs. Pauley's Kindergarten here with you today.  I have a quick tip for you about organizing your alphabet activities.

Each year I spend two days for each letter at the beginning of the year.  We focus on forming the letter correctly, learning the name and sound, and of course do our Heidisong songs for the letters.  I use many different resources for this time and it was hard to keep them all straight.

I decided to change up how I keep track of all these resources.  Here is my new Alphabet binder:

I bought a white binder and added this cute new binder cover.  (You can grab it here for free!)

Then I went to Staples and bought these tab dividers.

I put all my resources together and separated them by letter.

The best part about this is that later on when I have a student who is struggling with their letters and sounds I can pull out just the resources they need for the letters they are struggling with.

Here is an example of one of the many activities in my binder.  This was a freebie on the blog Over the Big Moon.  Grab this freebie here.

I will have a post on my blog soon about interventions I use for students who do not know their letters and what I do to help them.

I hope you enjoy these freebies and that they are useful to you in your kindergarten classroom.