Kindergarten How To's

We just finished our unit of study on Procedural writing.  I used this first template A Book Of How To's  to have students draw an illustrations for a How To IDEA. You can see some Ideas below.

The longer I teach the simpler I am making my b.boards! 

The child fills in their How To Topic samples below
click here

How To Decorate a Christmas tree

 How To Jump in the pool

How To  Make a snow girl

How To  Read a book

How To  Make  A Jack O' Lantern

How to Be a Teacher

How To Be a Princess

click here for How To Paper

My class wrote about three/four How To's each. We used the checklist below when we were ready to publish.

click here for READY to PUBLISH sheet

I will share How To samples some time next week! One thing that was really tricky for K was starting with transition words. I did not use the paper with the transition words. Many students started with the word THEN. When rereading their stories if they started with too many THEN'S they had to change a couple.

Math Story Problems

This year one of my goals has been to pose more problems with my kindergartens. It's difficult to get it all in when there is so much to teach! I was inspired by the book Math Exchanges by Kassia Wedekind to really carve out some time to meet with small groups of students and pose some problems. I think this book really paints a picture of how it can look in your classroom.

Snow Problems

It has been snowing where I live! We read the beautiful book the READER and it lead to some sled problems. This is a beautiful book. It has noting to do with math but it is the perfect book to read on a snowy day.  When I do make story problems I use the names of student's in my class. After a few weeks of snow problems I will have students create their own.


Step One: I will read the problem
Step Two: The child will retell the problem in their own words. I know in kindergarten kids have a difficult time retelling the problem many want to shout out the answer. I found that teaching kids to retell in a small group of four kids has helped me. If a child struggles with this I will help retell with them.
Step Three: When solving problems I make sure I have many tools at the table.
A bucket of cubes, a tens frame, a number line, hundredth chart and pencils etc.
Step Four: Share the different ways we solved the problem.

The following are some winter theme problems.

Click here for

Snow problems

Pattern Problems
These are some story problems we worked on during our pattern unit.

I love the idea of leaving a blank for the number! That way kids can be working at a just right level for them!  It also discourages kids from getting the answer from their neighbor. The idea of leaving the blank comes from Math Exchanges.

Quick sheet 

The unit piece is so tricky 

click here for the

Pattern Problems

Happy Math!

Procedural Writing In KC

Writing Time

The unit of study we have been focusing on is Procedural Writing. I recently purchased the Tony Stead and Linda Hoyt's writing book called Explorations in Nonfiction Writing grade K. This was an expensive book but it also comes with a big book full of mentor text for the lessons. I love everything about this book. If you are looking for a way to meet the Common Core standards this is the book for you!  A special thanks to my friend Genie who encouraged me to buy this book! Thanks Genie!
This is just a quick share of some of the work we did!

The beginning units focused on map making

The above example are some of the features we learned about map making.

There were many different lessons leading up to the student making their own final map. Some of the maps were class projects and some individual projects.  I loved that these lessons involved lots of rereading. The students had to double check, read to a friend go in the hall way and see if there map worked. In the past, I would often start with How To Stories and the kids often pick topics that they weren't necessarily going to try out right then and there. These map making lessons helped student learn first hand about revision and editing.  The lessons were challenging. As a class we walked  the routes they were making many times. I think knowing left and right is tricky for K's too. 

Learning About Procedural Posters 

(We did fix the first step to Stop what you're doing with correction tape) 

After mapping we moved on to Procedural Posters

We worked on Having a Title

Numbering the steps

Giving the information with not too many words

Having steps that go in order

Making illustrations that match our words

Using action words

Procedural Posters 
Class Write 

What to Do At Dismissal Time? 

 You can hear the kids read them on this Voice Thread

This Week In KC

This post will share with a mix of different things we are doing in KC kindergarten. I don't know about anyone else, but I can't believe how fast the school year is going by!

Bridge Map
It's that point in the year, where we have to assess different things for the report card even if it may not be the units we are working on right now. I created this Bridge Map to see how the kids did with sequencing  and recording  numbers.  I love how they came out! They had to cut paste the number on the top and draw the amount for the bottom.

These are how they came out

click here for download 

Shared Reading Poem 
This is a fun poem to learn. I am missing on my class chart a row of Chip chops! We will highlight the CH's in the poem. We also worked on the OP chunk. 

click here for poem
I know it says first but I did fix it! Thanks for the email.

Organization
Along with the new year comes some organizing the classroom! Aren't we always organizing??

 What Are We Learning Today?

I tried this lots of different ways but I think this is simple and easy. I wrote the words on sticky long white sentence strips. I just use a EXPO marker to write what we are learning in the different subject areas.

 These are different word families we have learned. At Daily 5 time I am just putting one in the house and the kids can come up and write the word chunk. Some days we add a new one, some days I just put an old one that we learned for review.

 I stuck these words on my white board that are magnetic. I was using it for kids to practice reading and for kids to take them down when they want to use it to help them spell.

 I saw this on PINTEREST and just LOVE It!! I don't know why I didn't think of this. 

 At the beginning of the year, I hot glued the clothes pins and they quickly came off! Gluing the tack on made all the difference!

I saw this in my art teachers room and I had to have it! It is a calendar that you can peel on and off. You can add the info with a wipe off marker! This is my favorite find this month. You can buy these at the Paper Source store.