Small Skills Based Reading Group Lesson Planner

I'm back! 👋

Blogging is hard. I wish I was consistent, but hey...life. 

Something you don't know about me...but should...I am a SUCKER for a good planner. I have been making my own annual lesson planner for myself and my Kindergarten team not since 2015. There is NO WAY I can afford a $60+ fancy teacher planner each year that isn't even exactly what I need. I WANT to be organized and so each year, I make my tweaks and promise myself I will use it.

This year, we were given paraprofessionals in our kindergarten classrooms during intervention time. In our district, we are required to work with our tier 3 babies during this time but fortunately, I have the best para who is amazing at working with my tier 1 and 2 students! Since our schedule changed, I needed a good way to ensure those students were getting what they needed even if it was with someone else, so I created a skills based small reading group lesson planner so I could quickly check off and plan what I needed her to work on with them on. I added a space at the bottom for her observations so I could quickly check back and see what she was noticing. The good, the bad, the ugly.

Let me just tell you....she is killing it! A born teacher. I am loving seeing her notes and input to help guide our ever changing groups. "So-and-so" is still struggling with rhyming. "Little Darling" finally got _____ skill. While I am always utilizing my ESGI subscription, her added input is invaluable.

Today I'm stoked to share my small group planner with you too. It has been a life saver to ensure my students get what they need, especially when juggling multiple groups. I like to bind these at the top for an easy flip book. I am fortunate enough to have a spiral binder in my classroom. I'll share how I make mine with chipboard and custom printed vinyl in another post so you can realize how easy and cost effective (in the long run) it is to make your own planners.

The main component of my planner is the lesson planner. It is structured but open ended so you can plug in whatever your students need and utilize whatever curriculum you have!

In the back, I like to the print the reference pages on card stock and laminate them so they are easy to flip to. I typed out two (half) pages that give her an example of what each phonological awareness skill sounds like. She looks at which box I she has it in case she needs a reminder of what that skill is called. Then, I added word lists because sometimes we all need some ideas. I have included lists of words that rhyme, words that don't, multi-syllable words, CVC words, CVCe words, beginning and ending digraphs, beginning and ending blends, diphthongs, r-controlled vowels and vowel teams. 

Another component I added for those who don't use ESGI (if you don't know what that is...another game changer...checkout www.esgisoftware.com...I am not an affiliate, just a true believer) is a data tracking tool for building groups. Simply check off mastered skills to help guide your group building. 

If you want to start making your own planners, this is the binder machine I use below!

I plan to add more listings in various colors, because, who doesn't love a good theme?! 

Is there anything you would like to see added? 

Check it out today!

Skills Based Small Reading Group Lesson Planner on TPT

Meet Gwendolyn!

Well here we are, one day before school begins in my district. This is the first year in five that I actually feel ready for the children to come! And when I say ready, I mean planning two weeks ahead of time rather than shoving the last of everything in cabinets thirty minutes before Meet the Teacher. Life is good...

I am so excited for many things, one of which is moving to a new school (still teaching kinderbabies of course). But there is something very special to me about this school. This is the school I attended K-5 and where I fell in LOVE with school. I knew in kindergarten I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. But enough of the sappy stuff...

Something else I am so excited about this year is our giraffe, Gwendolyn.

She had some other possibilities (Genevieve, Guinevere...) but I decided that would just be too cruel to my sweet kinders.

I had toyed with the idea of a send home buddy for quite some time, forgot...thought about it again...and...forgot. Well, after a conversation with a retired QUEEN of K (this woman is so knowledgeable!) I remembered that it was something I wanted to do. So Travels with Gwendolyn was born.

You could of course choose any animal that you wanted! My room is decorated in mostly animal print so I found it only fitting to choose an African animal...and more fittingly, a giraffe. I like that she is washable, small enough to tote in a bag, but big enough that she will be a little harder to misplace. Gwendolyn will have a special bag that carries both her and the binder containing the letter, previous adventures, and blank writing paper to record the new adventure. I bought "Gwendolyn" from Amazon because it was quick and easy for me using my Prime account and exactly what I wanted.

This special task has so many benefits! Academically, the children are given an added opportunity to write and share their writing. It allows the students to write at the level they are best able. But not only does Gwendolyn provide this writing opportunity to the day's line leader, she teaches the children something even more valuable. Responsibility.

Do I think something may eventually happen to Gwendolyn? Absolutely.
She may get lost, eaten by a pet, etc. but Gwendolyn can be replaced.
It will be the reaction and the consequence that will be the real lesson. Not only will it be sad that Gwendolyn is gone, but it will be even more disappointing that you didn't get to share what you and Gwen did together. And it will be ok to feel that feeling of sadness and disappointment. It is good to experience this at a young age where the consequences aren't severe.  Sound Love and Logic-y? I sure hope so!

But ultimately I hope Gwendolyn always returns each morning, unscathed with a fantastic story to tell. And the responsibility lesson will hopefully be, "I took good care of her and now she gets to go home with someone else." I can't wait to see the children's writing grow as the year goes on and the stories they can come up with.

I struggled a little at first deciding what to write in the letter, but this is what I came up with. If you like the idea of using Gwendolyn the Giraffe in your classroom, visit my TPT store for this including differentiated writing pages to go along with it.

Do you have a special buddy that you like to send home? Do you send it daily? Weekly?
Happy teaching!

Gingerbread Week

This blogging thing sure is hard! I never imagined how difficult it would be to get started and keep up! But here it is, a day late (ok, month) and a dollar short but here are some of the activities we did for our always fun and always enjoyable Gingerbread week!

Of course we completed our semantic feature chart comparing several gingerbread stories including The Gingerbread Man, The Gingerbread Girl (my personal favorite) and The Gingerbread Baby. Something else I like to include around this time is a listening comprehension activity The Cookie Girl by David Novak.  You can purchase this MP3 from Amazon or here is a YouTube video of him reciting this story at an elementary school in San Diego.  But that is another day and another post.

We also sampled gingerbread men to build that ever-so-important background knowledge of what exactly gingerbread is and what is more fun than snack turned into a math activity? (Well, I can think of a few things actually, one of which I will show you further down!) Here is our chart. One of our daily routines for snack is “Wait for your friends!” I simply told the children to take one bite from their gingerbread man and then put him back down.  Then I revealed the graph and the children placed a sticky note with their name on the corresponding column. We ate our cookies and compared our data. I have seen many teachers distinguish on the graph right leg, left leg, right hand, left hand, etc. but I like to keep it a little more basic so there is more but less data to compare…if that makes any sense. 

Since we were getting closer and closer to winter break, I wanted to make sure the last day before the last week was super fun and exciting to draw them back that Monday before break. Here is where the real fun began.

I first posed the question, “Why didn’t the gingerbread man jump into the river?” I allowed the students to make and record their predictions. Then, we retold the gingerbread man story together but when the gingerbread man encountered the river, I plopped a real gingerbread man into my fish tank. If you did this experiment, of course you could use any bucket or tub you had on hand. Treasure #2 sadly passed away last year and so this is what I had handy. I like using something clear so the students can really see what is going on. This could also be incorporated into a science lab for the week and the students could complete this in small groups or however you see fit!  We then let Gingy sit in the tank while we worked on some other activities and kept a watchful eye over him. After some time, Gingy appeared to be floating along just fine until I reached my hand in to help Gingy out of the “river.” MUSH! The children then recorded what really happened. This illustration cracked me up!

Finally, it was time to break out the best activity of the week. I gave my first crack at a S.T.E.M activity (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) and created my Gingerbread STEM Activity. 

We wrote down the problem the gingerbread man was facing. Then it was time to learn what materials would be available. Groups were made and the students discussed their different ideas to develop a plan. They were allowed to “shop” for materials (straws, tape, tin foil, and cups) as I had limits on certain ones. For example, they were not allowed to request more than two cups. They got to work and once they were finished with the vessel as a team, we tested its ability to float and once that task passed inspection, we allowed a new Gingy to board.

Some worked the first try.

And some of the other Gingys weren’t so lucky. Life sure is rough when you are a gingerbread man (ok, sugar cookie).

Teams who were successful got a small prize (a sugar cookie version of a gingerbread man to eat) and teams who were not were given a chance to revise and rebuild. Ultimately everyone got to eat a sugar cookie Gingy and fun was had by all. It was so exciting to see the groups of students working so hard and getting along together in their cooperative groups!

We came back together, shared our results, and recorded our data. I was really impressed with some of the boats and am excited to complete more S.T.E.M. activities in the future!

What are your favorite activities to do for the Gingerbread Man?

Here goes nothing!

Well...so it begins! I have thought about blogging for quite a while now, but always put it off. Between beginning teaching, planning a wedding, having a baby, as well as all the other wonderful things that come along with life, I never thought I had time. Well things have settled down and I am thinking, "Hey...why not give it a shot?"

I love teaching and I feel so fortunate to get to go to work each day and perform a job that I am so passionate about! Life in Kindergarten really is good.

Over the past few years, I have used others' blogs and more than anything, Teachers Pay Teachers. Our county had no true curriculum for the past two years and it made life so difficult. In the years before we were required to use a curriculum that rhymes with "Save the Day". o_O

I really enjoyed the freedom of the past two years, however the resources we were given for reading were a joke and I felt like there was so much "stuff" that I was leaving out. Yes, I had the standards, but it was so overwhelming planning every single activity from scratch, I was ready to pull my hair out.

I have also incorporated a lot of Whole Brain Teaching after being fortunate enough to have been able to attend the huge summer conference in Louisiana a couple of years back. This summer a co-worker and I were sent to Copper Mountain, Colorado for the three day Love and Logic Summer Conference as well. These are things that I truly believe in, have seen in action, and experienced many successes.

All in all, I've discovered that I have a knack for making things look cute, but more importantly useful. I can't wait to share with you things I have created, inspire you (as well as get inspiration from you) and I look forward to some great discussions about Love and Logic, Whole Brain Teaching, as well as things you also find useful and do in your own classroom!

Here goes nothing!