Counting Down to Kindergarten Countdown

Hello friends! It's Breanna from A Pinch of Primary and this post is all about Kindergarten Countdown.

No, this is not me counting down the days to another year of kindergarten. I love my job and my kinder babies, but summer is my JAM right now! :) If you're anything like anyone I talk to, you probably have this confused look on your face and you're saying what is that? I know I did the first time I heard about it.

Kindergarten Countdown is a program my county and surrounding counties do (not sure how widespread this program is) where 20 students are invited by each school in the different districts to get a little head start or a preview of what kindergarten looks, feels, sounds, smells, and tastes like. The United Way funds this program in our schools and it is AMAZING. It is like a little summer camp for our 4-5-6 year olds. We complete round-up and screening and determine many different factors for inviting students to this program. These factors range from letter ID to number ID to social-emotional adjustment.

Here are some of the amazing highlights and information of this program:

• The program goes through the entire month of July.
• It is only a half day, which is great for the little ones (and teachers haha).
• Transportation is provided to and from school.
• Students receive a healthy snack each day.
• The program requires 2 teachers, which is FABULOUS considering we do not have that luxury during the school year. 
• Teachers get to go shopping for our classroom supplies to fit the current needs of our students! :) Obviously just another reason to go to Target, right?! ;)
• The kids get to see the building and get to know the areas before other kids (Hello, first week of school helpers and good examples!) 
• We invite around 25 anticipating that families will take vacations or are just not interested in sending their child, so we always end up with 20 students. 
• ...And my favorite perk of the program...Each child receives one book each day. YES, EACH DAY!!! By the end of the program they will have 20 books to take home with them. 

HALF of the Kindergarten Countdown books! My themes are ABC's, colors, and numbers!

I just get excited typing about the program!! The beauty of this is that we are not under the gun for testing and standards. It is simply planning based upon what those kids need at that moment. We know we will need to hit letter ID and number ID hard and also how to sit on the carpet, but it's much different than our typical planning. Some of our students have never been to school before and we need to prepare them for what that will feel like--College and Career Ready Standards can't do that. We plan themes for the four weeks. Our themes are ABC's/colors, numbers, social, and getting ready for kindergarten. During this time, we also send out newsletters to the parents so they have an idea what their child is working on. I have seen this program work before my very eyes. The kids who have been involved benefit greatly and I am so thankful for such a giving program for these kids! :) 

Do you have anything similar to this program at your school or in your community? 

Effective Grouping for Guided Reading

Hello Kinder Tribe friends!  Heather here from Learning with Mrs. Langley with some tips on effective grouping for guided reading! Enjoy! 

Guided Reading instruction is a powerful way to improve students' reading level and comprehension at the primary level.  Establishing and maintaining groups can be a struggle and while research supports this as an effective practice often teachers are left without any guidance on how to set this up in the classroom.  Here are some guidelines for establishing and maintaining such groups.  

  

#1 Assessment

At the beginning of the year it is part of the regular classroom routine to assess students to find their individual instructional level.  You may have a system already in place (my district uses DIBELS) or you could be on your own.  I use my DIBELS reports to help me make these decisions early on but we only test 3 times a year and we move forward at a much faster pace in Kindergarten.  This leaves me with a lot of assessment on my own.  Here is how I break it down. 

• Letter Naming- Letter naming is not a required to skill to read however it is an early literacy skill. Students may start reading without being able to quickly identify all the letters in the alphabet however it is a good skill to have when it comes to reading and writing down the road. My lowest reading group includes all of the students that have not yet mastered this skill.  Our goal is to read 45-55 letter names in one minute.  Once they are doing this I am comfortable moving them on. 

View more about Letter Naming Intervention HERE

• Phoneme Segmentation- This is a skill that students will FLY through.  Phoneme Segmentation is the ability to break words down into their individual sounds.  If I say "cat" you say /c/a/t/. Many times this skill can be overlooked and it can be a true roadblock to reading for many.  In my experience it is essential that students master this skill before they move on to any other skills in reading.  These students are also grouped into my lowest reading group for individual practice on this skill.

View more about Phoneme Segmentation Intervention HERE

• CVC Words- Our next step is to move on to reading the sounds in words.  If students are ready to start saying letter sounds for every letter they make up the majority of my class groups in the "middle" range.  Through the year this middle range group works on reading each letter in the word to blending the words. 

• Blending and Beyond- My high groups are students that are blending those CVC words (without sounding them out first) and these students are ready to move on to new skills like digraphs, vowel combinations, and long vowels.  These skills are not taught within our regular kindergarten curriculum so this differentiation is essential to keep these students challenged.   

View more about CVC Word Intervention HERE.

#2 Establishing a Routine

Once you have establish your groups then you can decide when to meet.  For me it works best to meet first thing in the morning when my students are fresh and everyone is engaged in independent word work centers.  I have 45 minutes of small group instruction time which gives me time to meet with 3 groups a day.  Students in your low and low medium groups need to meet more often (every day) while the higher groups can meet just two or three times each week.  Here is one way to schedule groups. 

Low Groups 5 times a week, Low to Med 4 times a week and High Groups 2 times a week.  

This schedule stays in the front of my notebook with a plan for each day and each group. 

I use this form to plan out my week and list all of the materials I will need to teach each group.  It really helps your routine if you know what you need when those little faces show up at your small group table!  

You can get your free editable copy HERE. 

 #3 Be Flexible! 

Groups will change from day to day sometimes.  As soon as a student has made that jump to the next level it is ok to move them on.  If a student is struggling and the rest of the group is making good progress it is also a good time to move them back to a different group.  Of course my students never know what group I'm working with so there is no stigma attached to being "moved back".  It is important to have students working within their own level to be truly effective. 

Thank you for joining me today here at the Kinder Tribe!  Do you have any tips for effective grouping during Guided Reading?  If so leave your ideas in the comments below!  Thanks friends! 

Alphabet Small Group Intervention Tools

Hi friends! This is Yukari from A Pinch of Kinder and I have been thinking long and hard for what to share with you for my featured post! 

Today I'm posting about something that is very important to my planning and that is interventions. We are very data driven at our school for both language and math. But what do we do with all of that data we collect? Here is what I do for language at the beginning of the year. 

First I assess all students on their letter identification and sound production and record the data.  Here are the sheets that I use. Click on the image below to download them for free!

Since I teach JK/SK (or Pre-K/K) we only perform letter interventions at the beginning of the year for our SK's.  So I look through the SK assessment sheets and write down the students name for each letter they still need to learn the letter name or sound for.

It looks like this:

I used fake names to show you what it might look like!

Do you know what TV show they are from? :P

Then I get to grouping my students for interventions.

I teach my intervention groups in McCracken letter order.  I'm sure you can do it in any order but this is what has worked well for me.  The McCracken letter order is:

M, S, F, B, T

C, A, R, L, P

O, D, G, N, W

I, H, J, K, V

Q, Y, U, Z, X

I can usually get through 3-4 letters a week.

So for the first week I might plan:

Monday: Meet with M group #1: Morgan, Mindy and Danny

Tuesday: Meet with M group #2: Jeremy, Beverly and Tamra

Wednesday: Meet with S group #1: Danny, Morgan

Thursday: Meet with S group #2: Tamra, Jeremy

Friday: Meet with F group #1: Morgan, Jeremy, Mindy, Beverly and Tamra (I will only meet with 2-3 kids but I write all of their names down so that I make enough copies for everyone who needs an F book.  Then I will meet with the second group on the following Monday.)

Here is what my intervention basket looks like:

It includes: Whiteboards, The Alphabet QR Books, Alphabet Linking Charts, Verbal Path for the Formation of Letters Sheet, Crayons, Markers, Expo Markers, Date Stamper and the Letter Booklets. And pencils/erasers. But they are missing from the picture because someone took my pencil bin when I wasn't looking and now I can't find it... #reallife

For the actual intervention lesson we:

1. Recite the alphabet linking chart (mine is from the LLI kit, there are lots of free ones if you search on TPT!) or read our QR Code Alphabet Book.

(You can read more about the QR Code Alphabet Book by clicking here.)

2. Write our name on our letter booklet and talk about the letter and letter sound we will be learning today.

3. Learn the path of motion (I use the "Verbal Path for the Formation of Letters" sheet from the LLI kit as a guide but you can make up your own wording too) for the uppercase and lowercase letter and practice printing them.

For example for A you might say

"Slant, slant, across"

and for a you might say

"Make a c and pull down"

4. Read the mini book portion together.  Students take turns answering what the picture on each page is using the initial sound.  Then I read the sentence and model pointing at each word as I read.  Finally the students read.

5. Have students color the circles with the focus letter in it.

6.  I start pulling 1 student at a time to do the last page with me while the others are working on step 5.  I have the student say the word for the picture and circle the picture if it has the focus letter at the beginning and put an X if it does not.  I like to do this 1 on 1 so I get a quick assessment on their beginning sound identification each time we meet.

Once they are done their booklet it goes in their book boxes and they have a book they can read independently at independent reading time.  At the end of the week they take the books home to share with their family :)

We also send home these personalized alphabet books.  I use the data I gain from our September alphabet assessment to put these books together.  

This post is already getting super long so if you want to learn more about the personalized alphabet books you can read more about that here.

And as a thank you for reading this long post I am giving you a free week of alphabet intervention booklets! It includes the letters M, S and F.  Click on the image below to download the booklets!

I will also leave all of my intervention resources 20% off until Wednesday! Click on the image below if you would like to check them out.

I hope that this is useful for those of you who are new to Kindergarten! 

Thank you for reading!