Make a meaningful book with your kids as the characters

Does your family / class, love the story "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?"  If so... make your own "Brown bear story" featuring them.

A fun activity is to take your camera with you on an outing to the local zoo.  Snap pictures of your family looking at different zoo animals.   Upload your pictures to the http://www.blurb.com/ and make a book.  Add text to each picture telling whom is looking at each animal. Each book costs about $10 - $20 dollars based off book size and cover material.

For example:

Jessie, Jessie, what do you see?
I see a lion looking at me.

Teacher, Teacher, what do you see?
I see a monkey looking at me.

Family, family what do you see?
A zoo adventure by Jessie Mork-Fishel and Patty Ann Mork-Cline | Make Your Own Book

Letter of the week

To practice the letter of the week, I write a quote that starts with our letter of the week.  I work at a faithbased preschool, so I use Bible verses.  In a public school a teacher could use children book quotes or quotes from authors.   The letter of the week is also the theme for our weekly show and tell time.  Together we read the quote of the week every morning.

Tip: sometimes it might be a challenge to find an item that starts with that letter, as a class we discovered adjectives (ex. my "interesting" book for letter "i") to be helpful as well as proper nouns such as names (ex. "Elizabeth" my doll for letter "e").

place value & Number of days in school

In my classroom I wanted to reinforce using manipulatives to keep track of the current date.  Together the students and I count how many hundreds, tens, and ones we have in each group and what that number is together.  I chose to use magnatized base ten blocks because the students will see place value repesented on state tests more often by these blocks, more so than using traditional straw bundles.

In addition to using the base ten blocks, as a class we also show the number using dollar bills and coins.  The money is a bulletin board cutout set that I attached magnets onto the back.  We also use these coins  to practice counting by ones, fives, and tens.

Encouraging students to raise hands when speaking

Looking for a way to encourage your students to raise their hands during group time or calendar time?  I like to use this tool.   I took a paper and divided it into equal squares.  Every time a student raises their hand to contribute to our lesson and shows self control to wait for the teacher to call on them, I write their name in a box.  It is a requirement that to get their name in the box, what they contribute to the conversation must be about out lesson.   This tool helps students to recognize what behavior a teacher is seeking during calendar time.

Tip: some teachers have used this chart to also encourage students to bring back homework.

Tip: What happens when the chart is filled?  That's up to you.  Some teachers bring a special food treat for everyone when it is filled.  Other teachers number each square, then draw a number at random from the chart.  That selected student (or students) might get to pick a prize from a reward chest.

Class Marble Jar

Looking for a way to encourage good behavior? In my class I also use a class marble jar.  Students get to earn marbles for such things as eating healthy at lunch, napping at nap time, tieing their own shoe or someone elses shoe, reading school work directions correctly with out teacher help, get compliments for walking/standing in line quietly in the hall, etc.  Often marbles focus on encouraging students to perform behaviors that are undesireable, require self control, or are extremely challenging.  Once the marble jar is filled we have a "marble party".  On our marble parties, we do all kinds of learning activities, such as review white board football (a loud favorite activity), practice writing letters in foam, get to play a video during work time, get to do a messy science activity, etc.  Marble parties are  my students favorite activities.

Whole Brain Teaching - Management

This last summer I discovered a management style through the Whole Brain Teaching website. I have found their techniques to be very effect. One of the simplist is teach kids how to get their attention back on you. I say "class" and the kids respond with "yes". The students are taught to mimic the way I say it... so if I whisper "class" they whisper yes. If I say class in a singsong voice, they say yes in a singsong voice.    I also have them trained  to say "yes" when I say their names individually.  

For a class motivation, I draw a chart on the board with a smilie face on one side, and a frown face on the other.  The students get points through out a group time for following my directions together as a class... if I have to repeat instructions more than twice then they get a point under a frown.   If they win, they get either extra free choice center time, or we play white board football.

Another key to this was to teach your students the rules daily, by having them listed out visually in words, represented in a picture, and given them a hand action to help remember what to do.  I work in a preschool - daycare center teaching Kindergarten this year and we use the same rules with all the kids Kindergarten-fourth grade.

rules:
1. Listen to the speaker : students point to their ears, eyes, and mouths to remember to listen with all their body parts.
2. Respect my teacher and my friends by doing what is asked the first time quickly : students hold up one finger then put hands together and wiggly them quickly (like a fish swimming quickly).
3. Have fun: students smile ear to ear
4. keep my friends safe: students point to each other
5. keep myself safe: students point to themselves
6. Be a good steward: students pretend to pick up an object off the floor and put it away on a shelf.
7. Use inside vocies and walking feet: students point to their mouths and their feet.

Phonics

My favorite phonics book is:

I like to use this book with either letter tiles, dry erase boards, or pencil paper notebooks.   This book tells the teacher word for word how to teach students to sound out words phoneticly.

example:  1.  spell the word  at   like "we are at the park".
2. Add a letter and spell the word cat.  There is a cat in my house.
3. Take the c away and spell the word sat.  He sat on the sofa.
4. Take the t away and spell the word sag. Don't let your pants sag.
5. Now lets do a trick, move the letters around to spell the word gas.  We put gas in our cars.

One of the reason I like to use the alphabet mat, is that studies show that childrens ability to read letters quickly and place them in alphabetical order quickly is tied to their reading success.

tip: the first book is for K-2,  their is an older version written for 3rd-5th graders that focuses on preffixes and suffixes.