October Daily Messages

At the end of September, I posted a set of October Daily Messages for Kindergarten.  Would you believe that I'm just now gettin' around to blogging about them?  Oy...  You can find them in my Tpt store and I'm working on a November set as well.

The messages included look about like the image below, but each one is a little different.

When I did a daily message in my classroom, I put it under the document camera each day. We solved the words with missing letters together.  That gave us an opportunity to talk about specific phonemic awareness skills, phonics skills, word wall words, spelling words, decoding strategies and comprehension strategies together.  Then I gave each student their own copy of the message and they filled in the blanks, read it to themselves and read it to a partner.  Finally, they took their copy home to read it to their parents (or their dog, or a stuffed animal).

When we worked on blends, if we discovered a word that had a consonant blend at the beginning we added it to our Book of Blends.  You can also find My Book of Blends in my Tpt store.

I am lucky enough to visit lots of classrooms for my new job, which I love! I've shared my Super Spelling Forms and Autograph Bookmarks with several of my teacher friends for word work and accountability for independent reading time.

I'm off to a Painting with a Twist event with a friend!  Have a great week!

Put 'Em in the Blender ! (consonant blends)

We're having an unusual week at my school... 

Monday - no school 
Tuesday - MLK assembly
Wednesday 1/2 day for students + professional development for us 
Thursday 1/2 day for students + professional development for us 
Friday - pajama day + another assembly 

 Add all of that to the fact that we have had indoor recess (because of the wind chill being below 0) all week. Oy...

 It's kind of a miracle that we've been able to accomplish anything...but we have been working on consonant blends quite a bit this week. We work on them throughout the year, but I decided to make it more of a focus now that my writers are ready to start demonstrating their knowledge of consonant blends in their writing. 

Here is an anchor chart that we made last week.

 My students made consonant blenders today. They loved making their own blender!

  

I also asked my students to write the definition of a consonant blend (in their own words) and to make a list of examples of consonant blends. They are on display in our "gallery".

Here is the page they used to write their definition and some examples of words with consonant blends.  You can click on the image if you'd like to download it.

 We worked on making a consonant blend book. Each student will take home their own book once they are finished. Here is a sample of one of the covers. 

You can click on the image below if you'd like to check out the blend book in my Tpt store or my Teachers Notebook shop. 

I better go get my pj's ready for school tomorrow!   

 

Consonant Blends Book

Brrrrrr!  This is how my day started.

I love winter...but this is a bit much.  The temp in my Jeep was actually reading -4 for a bit on the way to school, but it warmed up to -3 by the time I could park to take a picture.  With the wind chill, they said it was -20.  We still had school.  :)  We did have indoor recess, which is rare.

We've been working on consonant blends throughout the year. I finally finished the consonant blend book that I've been wanting to make for my students. The plan is for each student to have their own Book of Blends to add consonant blends to throughout the year. You can find it at my Tpt store and my Teachers Notebook shop. Just click on the image below if you'd like to check it out.

In my room, I use a set of adorable consonant blend charts made by Kristen and Ladybug Teacher Files.  You can find them by visiting Kristen here.  Kristen is amazing and so is her blog!

I also recently purchased this great nonfiction set from Scholastic.  It is called Animal Phonics Readers and each book contains words with a different consonant blend.  The books were not leveled by Scholastic yet, but my guess is that they are about a Fountas/Pinnell level E.  The text is not difficult, but the books contain vocabulary that may be unfamiliar for early readers.  I think I'm going to buy an extra set so I can keep one in my leveled reading bins and another set for working on blends during my guided reading groups.

Today... I will try to RELAX for at least 10 minutes (it's my OLW for 2013).  Hope ya'll are staying warm!  Corrina (my Hawaiian friend) - perhaps you have a spare room? :)