Do you ever feel like there’s NO TIME in your day to practice handwriting? Sure, in the first few weeks of school, you do daily handwriting practice, model each letter, and make sure your students know how to write each one. But soon, you will need to move on to
Report card time is approaching and grades are almost due! You know you have to complete lots of one-to-one assessments in your Kindergarten classroom in a short period of time. Giving one-to-one assessments is time-consuming and it can be hard to find the time to assess all of your students.
Do you use a weekly assessment to keep track of your student’s progress for each phonics skill or unit? It may seem like A LOT more to add yet another assessment to your plate. However, getting a glimpse at where your students are can be so helpful. I’m going to
When you think about assessments, you probably think of a student sitting at a desk with a pencil filling in little bubbles on a test form. However, assessments in Kindergarten are a WHOLE different ballgame. If you’ve ever had to give Kindergarten students a “fill in the bubble” kind of
Do you give spelling tests in Kindergarten? While there are some benefits to spelling practice in Kindergarten, I don’t think spelling tests should be required in Kindergarten. Students are just learning how to segment words and make letter-sound connections. Spelling is an important skill, but there are some do’s and
As students are learning how to read, write and spell, word work activities are a great way to practice their phonics skills! Word work gives students an opportunity to play with words, and develop into better readers and spellers. During my ELA center rotations, one of my go-to centers was
Which phonics skill do you teach after letter recognition and letter sounds? My answer is phoneme isolation, also known as identifying the beginning, middle, or ending sound (phoneme) in a CVC word. While this is a phonemic awareness skill, I’ve found great success with tying phonemic awareness into my daily
We all know those tricky letters that students confuse with one another. Usually “b” is confused with “d”, “p” gets switched with “q” or even the number “9”, and “n” and “u” always trip up your students. Even “m” and “w” or “z” and “s” can be challenging. Next thing
When you think of Kindergarten, you probably think of learning the alphabet. It is one of the first skills you will teach. It is also a stepping stone for so many phonemic awareness and phonics skills. However, you may be wondering, “How do I teach letter recognition?” Today, I am
