Take Home Reading Log Bags

In my grad school classes we have discussed several times over that you can teach reading all day long to your kiddos but unless they get extra practice at home, they will never reach their full reading potential. At this point many of us begin to wonder "What if my students don't have anyone to read with them at home?" In my class we have books on each child's reading level go home twice a week. For some of these kids the books have 100+ words and for others the books may only have sight words with pictures in the sentences to help them read the rest.The most important thing is that these books are ALWAYS on the child's level, so even if mom and dad are too busy to read with them, the STUDENT should be able to read the story to THEM! I have some kids who tell me they read their story to mom in the car on the way to soccer practice or they read to dad in the car on the way home from After School Care. The children get to keep these paper copies of their books and add them to their home "library". By the end of the year my students have over 70 books they are able to read on their own at home. This is HUGE for helping them to grow as readers. 

At the beginning of the year, each child gets a "suitcase" to keep their paper books in safely while at home. We do "suitcases" because our Literacy program is called Journeys and our theme is "We are going on a JOURNEY through books!" What do you always take with you on a journey? A suitcase of course! I always go to the Dollar Tree and get cheap bags like the ones below for each child to keep at home as their "suitcase".

 

We make little card stock luggage tags for our suitcases with our names on them and tie them to our bags. These suitcases always stay at home and twice a week, when the new paper books come home, they add their new book to their suitcase to keep it from getting damaged.

When I send the stories home at night they go in the "Kindergarten Reading Log". This is just a gallon size Ziploc bag that has a paper taped to the front of it. On the paper we write the title of the story, the parents initial next to it showing they heard their child read the story, and then there is a place for a sticker next to the initials showing that we have seen that the story has been read and the story is at home (hopefully in the suitcase!).

I get the books from our reading series decodable reader book as well as from the website www.readinga-z.com. I have access to a subscription from one of my grad school professors because my school does not have it (yet! I am pushing it sooooo hard!). Also in the reading log bag is the new sight word for the week typed on card stock and hole punched to be added to our sight word ring. Each child is also given a "Sight Word Ring" to keep in their suitcase to practice nightly. 

 

Do any of you do reading log bags? If so, how do you do yours? I love new ideas that can help me to make mine better. Hope you all had a great weekend :)

Colors Unit

This week we are wrapping up our colors unit. Every day we focus on a different color and a few children are chosen to bring in show and tells of that color. For example, last week on green day one of my little girls brought in a doll from Ireland who had on a green dress. Another student brought in a green Matchbox car and another brought in a green paperweight from her house. It poses an extra challenge for them to find something in their home that fits the color they have been assigned. We also have been playing a few different games from my Colors Unit on TPT.

Here we have Color Word Memory. It is a little hard to tell from the picture, but each color word is written in the corresponding color to ensure correctness (in the picture most of them are flipped over). At this point in the year I am focusing more on my students learning how to play rather than how much information they are actually taking in. If you choose to do this unit later in the year though, the cards can be printed in black and white for an extra challenge.

 

In this picture the kids are practicing their handwriting by going over laminated sentence strips with Expo markers. When the are finished, they wipe them off with a tissue (I need to have them all bring in a sock!).

 

This one is a new favorite, the Rainbow Land game. This game is played very similar to Candy Land except instead of flipping over a color, they flip over a color word. The color word is written in the color it represents.

 Here is a closer picture of Rainbow Land... I will try to post more later in the week!

There are more pages to this unit that we have not gotten to yet. I will be sure to post more later this week!!

Classroom Pics

Well I can't believe it but I am finally almost done getting my classroom put together!! There is still a little left to do, mostly just sorting through a bunch of stickers that were donated to me and organizing them. Anyway, here are the pictures!! 

Ok, you caught me! This first one is not actually of my classroom, it is a 4th grade classroom I saw while attending a workshop. I just love this bulletin board because I have had the song "Call Me Maybe" stuck in my head all summer and this board made me smile :)

This is a view of our carpet area where I hung up the pom poms I bought at Party City. I think I am overdue to update that super old chair. It looks like it has been there since our school opened in the 60s.

This is just a side view of my classroom. It is very unorganized right now but this is where we keep most of our games for centers and some math manipulatives in the red and brown bookshelves.

I am so proud of this! This is something I saw on Pinterest and actually made it! I am the worst about pinning things I think are adorable and then never going back to them. But this time I actually made it!! It is made of two of my file cabinets that I put back to back and then covered with paper and border, then put magnets on it. Later in the year, this can be one of our centers where they spell their sight words using the magnets.

This is our specials classes and special events schedule board. At my school, which is Catholic, we go to mass every other week. My kids are always asking "are we going to mass this week?" We also have some specials that are every other week and they ask about those. Hopefully by keeping this board updated it will keep them informed on what to expect that week. The days of the week are from Mrs. Lemons blog and the specials tags I found on TPT from Little Miss Glamour. Sorry for the blurry picture!

Last but not least, here is the view of my room from the door. Hope you enjoyed seeing the pictures!! 

Caution: Picture Overload!

Oh my goodness, it feels like it has been FOREVER since I put anything up on here!! We had Spring Break and then I had my finals for grad school and had zero time for updating my little blog! Well I am happy to have all of that behind me (the finals at least, not Spring Break!) and I am back in the groove! Here is a little of what we have done so far this week:

This week we are learning all about caterpillars and butterflies. We were so lucky that our Science Lab teacher found caterpillars in her yard and gave them to us right before they went into their cocoons! Here they are in their cocoons inside the little home we made for them.


One of our craftivities we did this week was on caterpillars and butterflies, another glyph. Oh, how I love glyphs!

We even got to act out the story The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.

One of my projects for my grad school finals was to write up a big 25 page long paper on some of the activities I do in my class that assist with reading. I took pictures of my students completing these activities and figured it might be nice to post them on my blog as well :)


This activity is something we do as a pre-assessment and a post-assessment on many of our units that we study. It is called a Graffiti Wall. For the Graffiti Wall, I have four big pieces of bulletin board paper and write four topics relating to our theme. Our theme for this particular lesson was Spring and the topics were Spring Weather, Spring Clothing, Spring Activities, and Plants and Animals in the Spring. Each table has four students at it and they get 5-7 minutes at each paper to write a sentence and draw a picture relating to the theme. When the 5-7 minutes is up, I have them rotate to the next station. This is always a big hit, you can literally hear a pin drop in my room when we do this (which in kindergarten is a big feat!). Here are the pics:

Another one of the strategies I used was the game boards found in Words Their Way and using educational games to track reading success. Throughout the year I put out a few game boards at a time and the students play these games during centers. These games can be geared towards whatever strategies I am trying to help my little ones develop at the time. We have games that focus on beginning sounds, middle sounds, ending sounds, sight words, decodable words, CVC words, etc. Once my kiddos have become very strong in a particular area of focus, I switch out the game for new one in order to keep it challenging. I must have about 15 of these game boards and keep making more, I can't get enough of them! Here are some pictures of a few of them:

President's Day

Last week we celebrated President's Day and made some adorable Abe Lincoln hats with facts to hang up in the hall! My kiddos LOVED learning about Abraham Lincoln this week, they loved finding out that he kept important letters in his hat :) George Washington was equally as exciting as they are now spotting his face all over the quarters and one dollar bills they bring in for lunch money!

 

These were the "Abraham Lincoln Fact Books" they made. The outside covers are stovepipe hats.

 

Then inside they wrote down some of their favorite Abraham Lincoln facts :)

These were super easy to make and my little ones loved making them :)