Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Favorite Things to Do With Letters 

I am working with a few students who are struggling to learn the letters of the alphabet. I decided to pull together some of my favorite alphabet activities to use with them this week and decided to share them in this post today.  If you have a favorite not listed, I would love to hear from you! 

    

Letter Bag

1.  Give each student a plastic baggie of the letters that they know each week add a few new letters to the baggie. When meeting with the child, begin the lesson by sorting the letters that they know and slowly add new ones. Start from the student’s strengths. 

Magnetic Letters

2.  Have the student sort by color, shape, size. Students can match uppercase and lowercase. Using the name chart, have the student make and break friends names. It is so important that kids are touching magnetic letters and feeling their shape.

Alphabet Chart 

3.  Create a classroom alphabet chart.  Begin with a blank alphabet box with just the letters but no pictures. Have the student figure out what pictures go with what letters. You could make a ritual of creating alphabet charts for different seasons. I love the idea of using student work rather than clipart. When students take part in the project, it brings more meaning. The class could make the illustrations and then write a word to go with the pictures. You could also use that chart for shared reading too...yea!!

Become An Expert Chart Reader

4.  Have students read the alphabet chart in playful ways. The student could skip a letter, read the consonants, read the letters in their name while pointing. They could sing the letters or whisper them. I would also recommend using different alphabet charts. In my building, we teach Fundations and sometimes the students don’t carry over what they have learned about letters to other charts. Read the alphabet song template here. You can see how this will benefit students when reading.

Name Chart

5.  Use a name chart all the time, this is a helpful tool for learning about letters, sounds, and words. The name chart should be at the meeting area and referred to often during interactive writing and shared reading. Make small name charts for students. Play I SPY with the name chart. Have different students come up to the easel and find letters.

 Matching Letters

 6. Have students match letters to pictures. I love Joelle from a Place Called Kindergarten beginning sound match up you can find it here.

 Elmo Letters

7.  Play with letters on the Elmo moving them apart and putting letters together. This is a gentle introduction to building words. 

 Elkonin Boxes

8.  Teach students about Elkonin or sound boxes. This activity develops phonemic awareness as well as letter-name knowledge, letter-sound knowledge, and the ability to decode sequentially letter-by-letter. If the child learned the word bed, you would ask the student to listen for the sounds in the word bed, and, as the say the word, they would push a penny in the box for every sound they say(slowly) and hear. Once students are familiar with this activity, you could have them write a letter in each box for the sound they hear. It is important to select words from poems and books students are familiar with. Reading Rocket has a great resource here.

 Alphabet Books and Poems

9.  Read and make alphabet books all the time, especially if you have lots of students struggling with learning their letters. Have your students read poems and find the letters they are working on in the poem. Nellie Edge has the best poems around!

 WORDO ABC

10.  Play Wordo with letters. This is like bingo.

THE NAME GAME

11.  I got a great idea from a book called Teaching Reading in Kindergarten. You can see below you start the game by putting lines on the board (like hangman). The student's had to guess letters and eventually who's name it could be. Once we figured out the name we would see if the letters were misbehaving in that name. You can see below which letters were misbehaving. My class loved this game. 

We did this once a week, and the student would then be the Special Person. 

Lastly, while teaching letters, make sure you are assessing the student. If something is not working, change it up! Different students respond to different things.

Joyfully yours in matching capital M to lowercase m,

Melissa

Word Family Books

This post will share you some word family books 

you can illustrate and read during word study time.

I recently shared some word family books focusing on the short a vowel and chunks.

This post will focus on word families with the short e chunk.

{Word Families ET, ED, EN, ELL,  and EST}

Read a book to the class

talk about the rhyming words from the story.
{book suggestions below}

Build words using letter cards or magnetic letters. 

Make a list of the word families.

Have students work on individual books.

Books To Read 

I think Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems are excellent too! 

click here for word family books 

Word Work Wednesday

This week I have two simple games to add to your word workstations.

WORD FAMILY BINGO 

{Working on OP, OT, OG, OCK}

Step One

Read the key card together.

This little poster is on the table to help anyone who may need a picture clue to help them with the word chunk.

Key Word 

Step Two

Everyone gets the same board.

Step Three

Face the letter cards down.

Step Four

Take turns going around the circle and taking a letter card. Can you make a word on your board with the card you got?

Step Five

When someone gets three in a row they win!

click here for Word Family game Boards

Word Family Games for Dr. Seuss

Today's post is going to share a few simple games to add to your word work time.

Read the book Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss.

Illustrate Game Cards

Have the students make illustrations to match the word on the game card. I think it is much more beautiful when we use children's art word rather than clipart.

Match The Rhyme

Working with a small group of children I start with the cards facing up. I would pick a card and the students would have to find the card that rhymes.


Find the Rhymes

Working independently, students find words that rhyme and put them together. They could record them in their word study journals.

Memory Game

Play a game of memory. The object of the game would be to flip over a card and find a match.

ZOOSE!!!

The cards can be played for a game of ZOOSE! In the past, I have shared a game called Moose but instead of Moose we will use a silly word ZOOSE.  You take a card and if you read it you get to keep it. If you pick the ZOOSE card all of your cards go back in the deck. 

click here for Dr. Seuss Rhyming Cards 

Make a Word Game

This is a game to add to Word Work Time.

I am going to call this game Make A Word

Each child gets a game board.

Together read the word chunks.

{at, ed, ug, ad, it, ap, and, en, in}

Place the letters face down.

On your turn take a letter.

Can you make a word on your game board?

The first person to get 3 in a row wins.

For students who need extra support with some of the chunks, this sheet is there to help.  

click here for download 

I made a few copies of the letters and laminated them. 

3 Snow Word Work Stations

Finally, it stopped snowing in New England. We have a ton of snow.

I am ready to get back to school tomorrow. This week's post will share with you snow related word work activities to do in the classroom.

At word work, this week have students create acrostic poems. 

{ Snow, Winter and White}

Learn a new song at Shared Reading time!

Have students make skinny books using the pattern, 

I _______________ in the snow.

Thank you Nellie for this idea! 

Nellie's article about Skinny Books. 

Click here for Acrostic Poems and Song 

If you have an I Pad in your classroom, make

these beautiful snowflake poems! 

click here 

Happy Back to School! 

Word Family Books

This post will share you some word family books 

you can illustrate and read during word study time.

{Word Families AT, AM, AP, AD, AN}

Read a book to the class

talk about the rhyming words from the story.
{book suggestions below}

Build words using letter cards or magnetic letters. 

Make a list of the word families.

Have students work on individual books.

Have the students make illustrations.

{Each book has six words and a blank template}

click here for word family books

Some Books Suggestions
If you have any I would love to hear from you! 

Word Work Making Words

I blogged last week about how I am structuring word work time in my classroom.


This blog post will share with some word work stations I do in kindergarten.

Making Words 

Build 

Mix 

Fix 

Write 

I found this center much more manageable when I put out these little white boards I bought at Lakeshore.

 I put the magnetic letters on the board. The students come over to the table and work on one word at a time. When the student finishes, they pass the board to someone else.

{All of the five words that we are working on for the week}

Using magnetic letters can be confusing and messy in the beginning. I try to have an adult at the table the first few weeks. Once students are comfortable making words I, introduce the recording sheet.

words recording sheets 
{ word list from Teacher College }

Fountas and Pinnell suggest...

 Whenever possible, have children manipulate magnetic letters. These letters can be used for many purposes-sorting, building, manipulating words, changing letters to make new words, as models for writing the letters.

 I got these little containers at IKEA I think in the spice section.

This year I have two word walls. One wall is for words that everyone in the class is learning and expected to know. We add words slowly to this wall once we learn them.

The other word wall I use for the students who came to kindergarten knowing a lot of sight words. I have the wall above filled with sight words we are learning. There are words on this wall that we have not learned yet. This wall makes management easier for me. I can quickly take words down and use them during station time.

The Alphabet Station

{Using an Alphabet Chart}

Click here for Alphabet Station Chart 

On TPT, this year I bought Joelle's Beginning Sound Match Up, and I love it! It is an easy game that uses magnetic letters for matching. I think it is a great station to add to your word work time.

Word Study Wednesday

Over the summer, I went to an excellent teacher college workshop on Reading Workshop.  I took away many new things that I have been trying in my classroom this year.( I will blog about how I changed my reading workshop structure this year on another post. )

One big takeaway from this workshop was to set time aside every day to do word work. In the past, my word work was a choice during Daily Five.

This year I created a Word Study Board. 

Questions and Answers About Word Work

How many stations do students do?

Students are required to do two stations. 

How long do the students work in the stations? 

The students work at each station between 10-15 minutes. I have the students rotate when they hear the bell.

How do you manage the stations?

I start with four stations on Monday and Tuesday and put new stations up on Thursday and Friday. If you look above the blue group goes to Making Words and Big Books on Monday.  I will swap the blue square with the orange square on Tuesday and they will go to I Pads and Poetry. 

Are the stations always the same for everyone?

No,  for example if I have a group that knows their alphabet letters they would not go to an alphabet   station. 

How many days a week do you do the work board?

My goal is to have students do word study at least, four times a week. 

How do I pick groups?

I put students together by ability. I liked to keep the groups the same for some time, but as abilities change, so will my groups. 

What do you do during word study?

At the beginning of the year, I do a lot of interactive writing in small groups and making word lessons. 

I think it is‚ important for students to be learning about words in meaningful ways. Occasionally I will give students recording sheets that go along with what they are learning. I don't think you have to make your word work themed each week to go with the seasons. I try to keep activities simple and meeting their needs. Of course, students need to be using the words they are learning in meaningful ways. It is important for students to have the opportunity to write every day.

Word Work Stations 
You will see in the download above that I have created a lot of stations...I do not use them all!!

I plan to blog next Wednesday on what some of the stations look like.

The following are some resources I turn to for word study:

Created with Padlet

The Alphabet

Making a Class Alphabet Book

Each child made an illustration or two for this class book. This book is added to our classroom library.

click here for Alphabet book 

Making Individual Books

Students can make their own alphabet book.

{small books}
Click Here 

Alphabet Charts

Kids can make an alphabet chart. I have a couple of different templates below. My son Owen, who is in first grade, loved illustrating the Halloween theme above.

Click Here