Making Shapes, Words and Opinions

We are continuing on this amazing journey of literacy and growth!  Kindergarten is the perfect place to see my students begin to blossom like the flowers in my garden.  Each one, beautiful, amazing and in need of an extra bit of something from this crazy teacher.  It's a reminder of how blessed I am to have a God that is bigger than what I face each day.  Here's a glimpse into our "garden" over the last few weeks.

Hope you all have a great week!
Be sure to check out these awesome, new, math printables available in my TPT Store!

Be Blessed,

SHAPES

Hello Everyone!  I'm super excited that we are diving into our new Investigations Unit 5 on Shapes!  As I continue my GLAD journey, I am beginning to apply it to each subject in my classroom.  I put together this little number for my kids, and wanted to share it with you too!  I will be creating a large Process Grid, which we will be able to refer back to over the course of the unit.  I recently assessed my kids to see if there were any shapes that they were still struggling with within the WA state standards and will spend more time on those holes, but alas, that rectangle was a hard one.  You'd think it would be a sphere (super cute when they say it with loose teeth), but no...it was the rectangle.  Bizarre. But, that is easy to fix, right?  I love opening their eyes to the shapes all around them, and this clip art from Teacher Laura was a super fun way to help them start to see shapes.  Don't forget some of these literature shapes staples too!

Here's the FREEBIE I promised!

To Magic,

Penguins and PLANBOOK, with a New Year's FREEBIE!

Whew!  I cannot believe that it's been so long since I posted on here!  The time flew by in a whirlwind of activity that I'm sure most of you can relate to.  The holidays were filled with opportunities to connect with family and friends, although the loss of my Grandmother continues to be an up-hill climb.  I cannot begin to express the intense loss of her not being apart of Christmas this year.  I've greatly appreciated the rest I have been getting and am looking forward to hitting the ground running come Jan. 5th.  
I wanted to share of the new things I'm excited about!  
First,  is PLANBOOK!  I saw that one of my friends, Marsha McGuire from A Differentiated Kindergarten uses it and I wanted to check it out!  I cannot believe how much I LOVE this gem!  You can upload pdf. files, videos, links, and any other resources, as well as create templates and attach standards right to your plans.  When I needed Emergency Sub plans, almost everything was right there, all I had to do was tweak a few things for the day and BAM...ready to go!  We all know how valuable time is and I was able to purchase two years for $22.00!  

Here's a glimpse into a day of plans.  Click on the picture to download the plans for a closer look!

Second, I've also uploaded new Penguin Resources and a Data Tracker for Student Goal Setting with Rainbow Sight Words!  Be Sure to head over to my Teachers Pay Teachers Store to check them out!  I even have a bundles available to save you some money!  And who doesn't like to save money? You can click on the picture below to grab the Rainbow Sight Words FREEBIE!

I'm super excited to show their growth and bring more color into my classroom next week with this cute resource.  It's only been listed a short time and over 250 people grabbed it already! It's my New Year's Gift to you from There's No Place like Kindergarten!

Here's a glimpse at those Penguin Resources too!

Click on the link above and it will take you to my store!

Or you can Grab this AWESOME

PENGUIN BUNDLE!  

But, Wait!  There's also a New ARCTIC ANIMALS UNIT TOO!

Happy New Year, friends!

Be Blessed!

Peek at my Week of Turkeys!

This is the beginning of many days within the month of November that we have half days, conferences, or NO SCHOOL!  BOO!  We are beginning our GLAD unit on Turkeys and I want to teach!  Yesterday, we did our Inquiry Chart and read our Big Book: Let's Talk Turkeys. Our BIG CONCEPT is: The most important thing about turkeys is they come from North America. We also did an input chart about the parts of a turkey.  They LOVE the word and action for snood!  That piece of skin that wraps around the turkey's beak.  Did you know that?  Ha!
My Kinders were INCREDIBLE with how they are making connections to what we've already learned about living things and GLAD strategies.  We are also continuing to use basic Sentence Frames/Accountable talk frames to foster their acquisition of academic language:

A turkey has_______________________________.

A part of the turkey is__________________________.

The _______________________ and _____________ are similar because________________.

The _______________________ and _____________ are different because_______________.

I've also posted new printables in my TPT store!  Be sure to check them out.

Check out the other blogs who have linked up!

Be Blessed,

Peek At My Week 10

Here we are at a brand new week.  We had great success last week studying spiders.  I stand AMAZED at how effective GLAD strategies are for helping my Kinders acquire academic language.  They have already grabbed onto the BIG CONCEPT: The Most Important Thing About Spiders is they eat pests!  That same vocabulary from chants is transferring to their writing and the ideas they generate when given a sentence frame such as:

The little spider is___________________.

The moment when one of my boys stated "eating pests" I was a BELIEVER!  I'm super excited to join many other teachers in our district who have been selected to attend more GLAD BOOT CAMPS to go deeper with these incredible strategies.

This chants will also set up success with our Sentence Patterning Chart, and later be used for writing.

Chants are a golden way to teach academic vocabulary in a non-threatening and fun way!  We have chanted for anyone who happens to pop into the classroom!

Each GLAD unit has a social skill that you are working on the entire 6-8 weeks. We are working on Being Respectful.  Anytime I see a child or a group being respectful and doing what we've determined, then I will add points to my various tables.

 Here is a sentence frame: if the child gave me a verb it was written on white using green.  If it was a prepositional phrase, it was written in orange to be linked to our sentence patterning chart we'd create the next day.

 Our Input Chart: Each Category is "color chunked: to aid comprehension.

Spiders Syllables from A Differentiated Kindergarten

This week we will finish our Sentence Patterning Chart and begin a Comparison Inquiry Chart for two Books:

Just wait till you see how GLAD Compares two books!  I was floored by this new strategy, since it's usually a Venn Diagram used for comparisons.  Nope!  Stay tuned.  

Come link up to other great bloggers at Mrs. Willis' Kindergarten

or click here: http://www.mrswillskindergarten.com/

Have a wonderful week!

Be Blessed!

Peek at my Week #9

I'm super excited to start Week #9!  We will be spending the next several weeks studying spiders. I participated in a GLAD training last week and am excited to implement the new strategies I received.  
Here are my plans for the upcoming week and a FREEBIE book I made to facilitate learning. Enjoy your week!

Be sure to hop over to Mrs. Wills' Kindergarten and see other great bloggers.

Be Blessed!