Guest Blogger: Miss Kindergarten!

Hi everyone! I'm Hadar, the blogger behind Miss Kindergarten and I'm so excited to be guest blogging on Mrs. Wheeler's blog today! I have loved her for a long time and we've become such wonderful friends over the years :) Today I am going to share with you how I teach one of my favorite subjects, reading!

The reading improvement that you see as a kindergarten and first grade teacher is just amazing! Our reading program focuses on decoding, high frequency words and sight words. I use the terms high-frequency words and sight words interchangeably, but I recently discovered that there is a difference! {It takes me a little while sometimes! lol} High-frequency words are words that you see frequently in text {makes sense!}. They're not necessarily difficult to decode, but they should be automatic since they are seen so often. Sight words are words that children need to know by sight because they don't match the phonics rules. There's usually a "tricky part" in these words. The kinder team at my first school also referred to them as brain words which I think is just so cute!

I created some fun sight word {and high frequency word} writing practice to use with the 18 words introduced in Houghton Mifflin. Each week I would introduce a new word and we study the tricky remembering part of the word. Here is a sample of the cards I use with the "tricky part" highlighted. 

I present our new sight word on my handy dandy sign on the first day I teach it:

Graphics by 3am Teacher {love her!} Another one of my teaching partners would teach the sight words by giving verbal clues for each words. For example, for the word "I" the tricky part is that it's always a capital, so she would say something like "I have to remember its a capital I" or for the word "see", "I have to remember the extra e". It was quick and catchy and the kiddos really got it! We then would review the flashcards several times on day one.

On day two, we review the new word and the tricky parts and then practice writing them:

On the third day we use the word in a scrambled sentence.

The students cut on the blue line and then cut the words apart. Then they unscramble the words and put them in the correct order using the capital letter and periods as clues. Once it's in the correct order, they read the sentence. 

Then they make a silly sentence by scrambling the words again. They read their silly sentence and point to each word as they read it. This is a great way to practice reading the actual words and not relying on the clues from the sentence to help decode.

Then they unscramble the sentence again, this time gluing it on the bottom of the page in order.

Finally, they would write the sentence on the line and draw a picture to match. So much learning in one little sheet! My favorite thing about Houghton Mifflin is that they teach the sight words so that they build on each other. So when we're teaching the word "my" we're also practicing using "I" and "see". Love it!

We also use our sight words in journal writing on Thursdays and usually review all of our sight words on Fridays. I recently updated the sight word pack to add my more practice pages. It now includes read it , find it, write it, stamp it and spin & write.

You can find all of these activities in the sight word packs below!