Word Work

This post will share with you some of the Word Work we have been working on in KC kindergarten. During Guided Reading time, I have introduced Elkonin boxes with small groups. 

I see lots of kids struggle with breaking apart sounds and putting them back together again. I decided to incorporate some of the sound boxes with the large group. After shared reading time, a follow-up activity has been to take out the board below and have the whole group do some word work focusing on a familiar word family from the story.

We worked on the AT family, but we also played around with making words and nonsense words too.  After sounding out letters and words, we talked about how once you learn a new word, you don't have to sound it out.

We did this with our bodies! The kids loved this.  

Investigation Letters 

You can see a few Thinking Maps focusing on letters. 

I love how a boy in my class puts the e in the middle because it has a half circle. 

My girlfriend Genie did this Tree Map with her class. 

Click to download letter for pocket chart

Thinking Maps Comparing Letters

Kids have been having some great discussions about letters.

During shared reading, this week I have returned to a familiar big book and told the students we would become letter detectives looking for uppercase letters. Some student didn't know what upper case letters meant. We put highlighter tape over all of the uppercase letters we found. The class began to talk about sentences.

Interactive Writing 
I have been doing a lot of Interactive Writing with my class, and one thing, I have struggled with, is what to do when students are using capitals in the wrong places.

My primary goals in the fall are to build confidence in writing, reread our writing and creating a message that makes sense. Now, I have students learn when to use capital or a lowercase letter. You can see below in our KC Learning Journal that we are starting to use some lowercase letters.