Reader's Notebook Organization

Conversations in Literacy: Reader's Notebook Organization: When students come to my table for reading, I like everything neat, organized and easily accessible.  Saves me and them  a lot of time th...

This is a great blog post from Conversations in Literacy about how to organize notebooks for Reading Groups.  Awesome!

The Three Billy Goats Gruff mini-unit

Reading:


Characters
Setting
Retelling 
Sequencing
Sight Words


After reading the story, we recreated the setting and characters.  The river looks black, but it's really dark blue.  The kiddos got to draw their versions of the three goats and the troll and create the river and bridge. Then we made our characters into finger puppets and took turns retelling the story with friends.  Later, we use our setting and characters to solve math problems (see below).

 

 

Sight Word Game-Over the Troll Bridge!!

(bridge and playing cards below)

Object:  Cross the bridge before the troll gets you!!

In a bag place all the sight word cards, 3 trolls, and 3 billy goats.

Players take turns pulling a card.

If you get a sight word card, read it and place it on a plank.

If you don't know it, put it back in the bag and lose a turn.

Billy goats are lucky!  

If you pull a billy goat, he goes onto the next plank, and you take another card.

Look out for the Troll!!!  

If you pull a troll, he takes all your cards and puts them back into the bag!

Math:

Problem Solving

When we created our setting, we made sure that we had 8 planks on our bridge to use for the math problems.  Students use their goats, troll, and counters to solve the math problems on their bridge.

Billy Goats Problem Solving

3 Billy Goats Game High Frequency Word Cards


Copy of Sight Word Bridge 3 Billy Goats



Enjoy!!

Sight Word Slap Jacks

I'm always looking for new ways to practice sight words with my kids.  This game I was going to originally introduce with cards from 0-30, but I got the sight word cards cut out first!
 Partners take a deck of sight word cards and divide them between themselves.

 

I post a sight word on the board to be the 'jack.'  

The kids flip the cards one at a time and read the words.  When the 'jack' comes up, the first student to put his/her hand on it gets the pile.

 The partners then wait for the next 'jack' word and keep playing.

We had to have a little discussion about what happens if you lose all your cards before our time is up.  Instead of getting upset that you don't have any cards to flip, you wait for the 'jack' word like a tiger in a tree!    That really perked up the kids who were getting sad about losing all their cards.

Here are the words I use:
High Frequency Word Cards (3)

Sentences Workstation

Another great idea from a teammate!  Thanks, Vero!


These are sentences that are all mixed up.  I use mostly sight words and at least one word in the sentence that they have to use more brain power to decode.  


The kids put the words in the correct order, read, write, and illustrate!  Fun!  


They love the mystery!


Step 1:  Pick a set.

Step 2:  Unscramble

Step 3:  Read and record

Step 4:  Illustrate!

Enjoy!

Sight Words

Here's a quick sight word station idea.

Each 9 week set of sight words are color coded on the tongue depressor and clothespins.


You can see the one on the table has dots.  Each dot corresponds to a letter in the word so the kids know exactly where to clip on the clothespin. 

The kids love to stand them up!

Enjoy!

Dr. Seuss Days!

We had an amazing week of Dr. Seuss activities over in Kinder-land!


We focused on a book a day, but I supplemented with others for read alouds.  There are just too many good ones!

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

We made a shape book of words that rhyme with fish.

Click on the fish black line picture to go to the site that has shape books.

I manipulated it to make the mini book.

Click picture for shape book master.

We drew an underwater scene and wrote about what we could find in the water.

Mrs. T gave us a great idea to create an underwater scene that illustrated the title.  The kids could choose to draw and cut out their own fish or use a fish template to trace.

The Cat in the Hat

We made hats and bow ties.  

We wrote about what would happen if Thing 1 and Thing 2 came to our houses!

If I Ran the Zoo

Before reading we brainstormed about what we knew about zoo, and what kinds of animals live there.

Koala-Dog

After we read the book, we created a class animal.  It was a ladybug-elephant-cheetah.  Then we wrote a sentence to describe it.  

Then the kids got to create and write about the animal they would find for their own zoo!

Dinomite

Green Eggs and Ham

We graphed before we read.  

Do you THINK you'll like green eggs and ham?

And after...

Did you like green eggs and ham?

I was very surprised!  Everyone tried and LOVED the green eggs and ham!!

We had lots and lots of fun celebrating Dr. Seuss' birthday this week!

I couldn't bring myself to eat the green eggs...Could you?

Texas!

We are starting our Texas activities this week!  Our school hosts a chili cook off and celebrates Go Texan Day on Friday!


This is a Shared Writing activity from Room 36.  These boots were made for....

Here is a great labeling idea, also from Room 36.  Draw a cowboy/cowgirl and label him.

Here's one that we labeled as a whole class.

Here are some examples that the cowpokes drew!

Everything's Bigger in Texas book to make with your class.

Room 36! and Chalk Talk

We made pepper patterns from the idea I got at Chalk Talk.

We also made a cowboy glyph using the key from Chalk Talk's Texas Unit!

We ate pecans and graphed whether we liked them or not.  Lots and lots of LIKES!

We were learning about area in math, so we covered the area of a Texas flag!

On Friday, all the we had Texas Rotations.  All the teachers in Kindergarten read a book or song and did an activity with each class.

The book I read was The Cowboy and the Black-Eyed Pea.

We compared the story to The Princess and the Pea.  Then we covered the area of saddle blankets with black eyed peas.  

Finally we had a black eyed pea relay!

Go Texan!