Reading Centers

We OFFICIALLY started our reading centers this week.  My kiddo's had been doing reading centers but at  their tables with a group of 4.  Now that we are officially on our way to reading (I have taught all single letter phonograms and majority of my kiddo's are onto cvc words) we also had to be on our way to independent reading centers.  

I broke my kiddo's up into groups of 2 or 3 that involved partners of different reading levels (one high, one low and one medium if need be).  I then have a SmartBoard screen (sorry I forgot to take a shot of it on our school computers since my home computer does not have Smart-Notebook) that has the kiddo's names/grouping and a picture of the two centers they will be going to (each lasting about 8-12 minutes). That way they know where they are going to go 1st and 2nd.  They go to all the stations before we rotate through them again.  Right now there are 8 different centers.  

I put a lot of my centers in cute bags:

That way my kiddo's just grab their bag and find a spot in the classroom to do the activity. It makes for easy clean up and the ability for me to switch out centers easily.  

(I found all the bags in the dollar section of Target last spring.)

Here are the centers my kiddo's are working on currently:

Magnet Board

At this center the kiddo's make the sight words we have been working on.  When they make the sight words with their magnet letters they have to say the word to their partner.  

Letter Matching/ Phonogram Sounds

At this center the kiddo's have to match the capitals on the clothes pins to the lower case on the sentence strips.  When they find a match they have to say the phonogram(s) sound to their partner.

Reading

At this center they can read together or independently books we have previously read during story time.  (My kiddo's LOVE to re-read stories I have read to them.)

Sight Words

At this center the kiddo's each get their own "sight word quilt" and with markers they can write any of the sight words from the sight word wall.  Once they have filled out their whole sheet they can go back with crayons and color the words as they read them.

Bookworm

At this center they keep the "worms" in the the bag.  The kiddo's take turns pulling out a worm and saying the phonogram sound.  If they say it correctly they keep the worm and if not they put it back in the bag.  If they get a worm that says "Book Worm!" they have to put all their worms back in. 

CVC Words

At this center the kiddo's can read CVC words together or independently.  The beginning sound can be changed to make a new word or the blue books have the ability to change any of the 3 sounds (I tell them how some words are nonsense and we just blend the phonograms to see if the word is real or not).

Listening Center

The kiddo's listen to a book on tape (as simple as it comes!).

Memory

At this center the kiddos turn the dinosaurs onto their white sides.  Then they take turns flipping 2 dinosaurs over and reading the sight words that are on them.  If they match they keep them and if not they turn them back over for the other player.

As you can see my kiddos are really focusing on the skills of phonogram sounds, sight words, cvc words, and reading familiar stories. 

Happy Teaching!
 

Gumball Math

My kiddos and I have been decomposing numbers 1-10 for a while now as well as finding two amounts that put together make 10.  

(K.OA.3-decompose numbers less tan or equal to 10 into pairs in more than one way AND K.OA.4-for any number from 1 to 9, find the number that makes 10 when added to the given number)  

We have not been using equations with with + and = signs but we have been using the formula 

____ red  and ____ yellow make 10 (or whatever the said amount is).  

My kiddo's had been working on this standard for about a week so I decided to find a way to make it a little more creative.  Plus we needed to revamp our hallway board.  

Here is what we made:

Gumball Math!

**this activity did take a little over 30 minutes... plan accordingly!**

First my kiddos found five different ways to make 10.  

Then they chose the one way they wanted to show in the gumball machine.

Once decided we put that to the side and made our gumball machine.

Here the site I got it from:

http://mrstsfirstgradeclass-jill.blogspot.ca/2012/02/wayne-thiebaud-style-gumball-math.html

scroll down and click on the "gumball machine pattern"

Mrs. T used this as a way to show equations of 10 but since we were not ready for that yet I modified.

I printed one master copy of the pattern and then traced the top and bottom onto red construction paper before copying enough to make for the whole class.  I also traced the square onto brown paper and the main circle as well as the gumballs onto white construction paper.  This way my kiddo's would only have to color their gumballs and not the rest *time saved I promise!!

They cut the pieces out and glued the gumball machine together before doing the gumball part.  

(I modeled how to put the pieces together correctly before they got started.)

Once they had the gumball machine ready we went back to our chosen way to make 10 and colored the amount of each gumballs accordingly.

They glued their gumballs onto their machine as well as their number sentence.

Here is their adorable work!

And here is how our outside board tuned out!!

Kinder-Math be Poppin'!

*just in time for parent-teacher conferences*

As you can see we also put up our other work on how we have been making 10.

Happy Teaching!!