Sight Word Fun * With LOTS of pics*

We have been having so much fun in kindergarten.  I am so excited about the progress my kids are making.  We have been working really hard on learning our sight words.  I thought I would share some of the fun things that we have been doing.

  One of my teammates told me about this awesome activity!  She gives one kid a new name per day.  Their new name is a sight word.  All the kids have to call them by that name for the entire day.  Today I tried it.  This little guy was named "with" all day.  The kids had SO MUCH FUN!  At the end of the day...this sweetie came up to me and said, "Thanks for making learning in our class so much fun!"  This is EXACTLY what I needed to hear today.  I try to make my kids have fun while they are learning every.single.day.

With permission from a parent of one of my students I am going to share the next activity that we just finished in our class.  I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE getting new ideas from teachers, blogs, FB, Instagram and from friends.  I truly believe that social media has changed who I am as a teacher because so many wonderful people that I have never met are willing to share their fantastic ideas.  This sweet little girl's mom emailed me with THE best idea ever.  Our PLC goal is to have our kids learn all 50 of their sight words by the end of the year.  I was scared about this in the beginning of the year.  Most of my kids came in knowing 0 words, and about half of their letters and sounds.  I am happy to say that in November about 10 of my kids know 40 sight words already.  About 10 of them know 28-39 words.  We have been working hard.  They should be so proud of themselves.  The idea below is from a wonderful parent in my class.  I took it one step further thanks to the help from one of our Digital Learning Coaches.

My parent showed me a picture that she found of each kid holding up a sight word.  Originally I took a picture of each kid holding our sight words on a big piece of construction paper.  I am going to print these off and hang them in our room.

After talking to our DLC, she was so awesome and helped me create a book with pictures of the kids holding the words on our iPads.   I am going to walk through the steps of the process that we used in case you want to try it.   We used the Book Creator app.

 1.  First you will select that you are going to create a new book.  You pick the size that you want.  I have been using the landscape size with all the books that I have created so far.

2.  You will then see a + sign in the upper right hand corner.  I clicked on this.

3.  I was then able to add text for my title.  (I forgot to take a picture of this screen).  You will then click on the arrow on the right hand side of the screen to get a new, blank page.  You will then click on the + sign in the upper right hand corner again.  I then selected the camera picture.

4.  Our DLC took a picture with the iPads with the kids holding a sight word.  She clicked on the arrow and then a new page came up.  She repeated these steps 50 times so that there was a new picture with a new word on each page.

5.  Once the pictures were in the book, she shared it with all of my iPads so that all of the kids could see the book.  I then had my kids go into Google Drive and open their book.  They went to the first page and saw the first word.

6.  Once they saw the word (and I verbally told them what it was if they didn't know it) they recorded their voice saying the word.  To do this, they clicked on the + sign in the top right hand corner.  They then selected add sound.

7.  Once they saw the round button, they clicked it.

8.  When they saw the box, they recorded their voice saying the word.

 9.  After saying the word, they immediately clicked the box so the circle came back.  They selected YES...saying they wanted to use their sound.

10.  A little sound icon came on their screen,  They were able to move it to a place on the screen and were able to listen to their voice saying the word.

Here we are doing this process as a large group.  Each pair of kids had their iPad.  They put the screens down on their laps as they listened to the word as I said it.  When it was time for them to record their word, they flipped their iPad up and recorded the word and then flipped their screen down until they heard the next word.

 1.  They found the word that I had displayed on the Smart board.

After making sure they had the same word on their iPad, they recorded the word.  They selected, add sound.

They hit the record button.

When they saw the box, they recorded their word and then hit the box again.  Once they saw the circle, they knew they were done recording.

They clicked YES to keep the sound.

They then saw a little icon on the screen and were able to play the word back.  It was a long process but now they have a book with their pictures of them holding the sight words with their recorded voices saying the words.

In the afternoon we did center rotations with mostly sight word activities.

Our iPad books were in one of the rotations.  The kids opened the book and listened to each of the sight words that they recorded.

Kids love doing our HOT DOT center.  They are able to take a wand and select their answer.  It tells them if they are right or wrong.

We practiced writing our sight words with marker on mats that I laminated.

 We used Wiki Sticks to make our sight words.

 We also used beads and used fine motor tongs to make our sight words.

 We constructed letters out of wood pieces.

 This is one of my new favorite activities.  I found these little pouches at Companies to Classrooms.  It's a place that allows teachers to pick out free things for their classrooms. All the things at Companies to Classrooms have been donated by businesses for teachers.

I put our sight words into the clear pocket on the front.  Inside the Velcro pouch I put some letter tiles.  The kids had to spell their word with the tiles and write it on their paper.  On the back side of the pouch there is a pencil holder.  The kids take their paper and pouch and walk around the room and find their word on the walls or in books.  Each time they find the word, they make a tally mark.

At another center we have SNAPWORD cards.  I have already said how much my kids love these cards in a previous post.  It's amazing how fast they learn these words.

Finally, I have these Differentiation Cubes.  I want more of them!  They are so fun to use.  I put sight words in each one.  The kids will roll the dice and tally how many times they rolled each word.

I'd love to hear your wonderful ideas of things that you do in your classroom to practice sight words.

Sara

Sight Word Fun

I hope you are all having a great Thanksgiving break.  I can't believe we only have 3 more weeks of school until Winter Break.  Yikes!  Time is flying so fast this year.

We have been really working hard to learn our sight words in kindergarten.  Our kids have to know 50 words by the end of the year.  To be honest, this scared me a lot.  After working with my kids and doing some Pinterest and blog searching, I found lots of ideas to try.  I found out about SnapWords and am so happy I did!  My kids know around 35-40 of their words already and it's not even Christmas!!  I was so happy with the sight word cards, I ordered the ABC ones to see if I could help a couple of my kids that are struggling to learn their letters and sounds.  The data below was after 1 week of using them.  We are now at week 4.  

I try to do some kind of activity every day with my kids.  I am loving the sight word books that Maria from Kinder-Craze does.  My kids LOVE them.  You can check out her books HERE.  I found a mini book for each of the sight words that we have to teach and bought them.  My kids do so well with them.  It takes about 15 minutes to do a book.  

I just completed my Bubble Gum Sight Word pack.  I have 50 words added to it right now...but will be adding 50+ more to the pack.  They will be 50% off through Sunday.  Then they will be marked 28% off for the TPT sale.  You can find it HERE.  These are samples of what you will find in the pack.  

I hope you enjoy the rest of the weekend,  

Sara

Five for Friday Linky party *November 7*

Hi!  I hope you are all having a fantastic week!  

This year has been so crazy, busy for me!  We just ended my son's football season.  As fun as it was to watch him play, we are happy to have our weekends and 3 nights a week free again.  I am also adjusting to my new teaching position in kindergarten! I love it!  The last part of our classroom was finished today.  We now have blinds! Whew!  As if my life wasn't busy enough I started taking the last classes I needed to make some lane changes.   

To procrastinate a little more from doing report cards and from preparing for our upcoming conferences. I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for her 5 for Friday linky party.  

1.  We ended the week by doing our "Coffee and the Newspaper" activity.  I told my kinder kids that they are learning to read this year and that this is a skill they will need for the rest of their lives.  We talked about all the places we'd need to read or that we would see words.  I told them that their parents probably read the newspaper in the morning.  We were going to pretend that we were adults and read the newspaper.  They had to look for the sight words that they have learned so far this year in the newspaper, cut them out and glue them to a sheet of paper.  To make it more fun, we were going to have "coffee" and donuts.  I brewed a pot of "coffee" in my coffee pot and put *hot chocolate* in cups.  They really thought they were drinking coffee.  Some caught on to me but played along.  :)  We also had donuts.  After about 30 minutes we cleaned up and the kids shared the words they found in the paper.  They were amazed that they knew some words.  

2.   Voting was a huge hit in our classroom this week.  The kids thought I was crazy when I asked what their name was and where they lived when they were checking in to get their ballot.  Oreo cookies and outside recess won in our election.

3.  I am sooooo in love with these SnapWord cards.  I can't believe I haven't heard about them prior to this year.  My kids are doing AMAZING with them.  We have only been using them for two weeks.  Most of my kinder kids know 15 words already!  AFTER ONE WEEK!!!  You can find out more about them HERE.  They are the best thing for my kiddos.  I have purchased set A and B and will get the rest when I can.

4.  I have been procrastinating in getting my work done for my classes.  It'll have to get done before the 30th.  I hope my kids and I are done getting sick.  I can't put this off any longer.  I read one book this week.  :)

5.  I finally have an Isokinetic disc for EVERY one of my kids.  I have had some sweet parents purchase some for my class and I finally splurged and got the rest.  You can find them here.


The kids sit on these and can wiggle in their seats.  They love them and I love them!!

I hope you have a great weekend!
Sara