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Showing posts from December, 2008
   

How to Pull Small Groups and Do Learning Centers in Kindergarten

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People often ask me about how I do small group guided reading and learning centers in my kindergarten classroom.  In order for me to do either of these things, I do a group rotation with my whole class.  I have attempted to explain how my rotation works below.  Hopefully, it will be clear enough to be some help to you! I do a group rotation every day with all of my students.  This is how I manage it:  There are four groups, and all of the children are in one of the four groups. We rotate through all of four of the groups every single day, and I meet with all of the children every single day. My Four Groups 1.  Language Arts 2.  Math 3.  Art - (We usually do book making types of activities that you can find here .) 4.  Independent Learning Centers When we begin, one group goes to my language arts table, one goes to math, one goes to the art table, and one is for either an independent activity with a manipulative or some type of reading or math game or acti
   

Teaching Writing to Kindergartners

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How do you teach a Kindergartner to write?  Getting children started writing can be tricky, but it is definitely not impossible!  Here are some things that I do that help my little ones get started writing. Kids need to be able to write some sight words if they are going to be able to write even the simplest of sentences.  So I always start in September teaching them some of my Sing and Spell the Sight Words songs.  We start with the color words, and once they have a handle on those songs, I add in "the," "is," and "see." The songs have movements to them, so they are engaging for the children.  I always hold the word card in my hand as we sing, and when we finish a song, I always ask, "What's that word?" and sometimes also ask them to spell the word to me.  This helps them focus on the letters that they see rather than just recognize the word as a whole unit or visual symbol. There are always some children that start to recogni