Calling all Kindergarten Teachers!!

Hey Everyone!

I am really excited to use this activity with my KK babies next year. As an instructional resource teacher that does pullout sometimes groups overlap. I have to come up with activities that even the lowest ability students can use. I made these clip cards for beginning consonant sounds. Here's a video preview of several slides.

This will be great for my KK babies next year. I think it will be great for your students too. Make the cards self-checking by putting a sticker on the back of the picture that is correct before you laminate. Students can practice their initial sound consonants or work with a partner. You can use for early finishers or use them in a Literacy Center.

I think your struggling firsties could use these and a great review for the beginning of the year.

Click the preview above to go to my TPT store to get this great product!!!

I am trying to give away a FREEBIE on my facebook page. If you have not like it go to my FACEBOOK page (click the words) and like it. When I get 100 likes I will be having a flash freebie. I've got another clip card product I just finished. I'm holding off because I think it would make a great FREEBIE! Who doesn't like a freebie?

What are you up to this summer?  So, any products you are just really needing or wanting? Leave me a comment. I can always use an idea or two!

Have a great day!

Dina

New Product -- Blend Clips

Hello,

I'm back! I just didn't have the creative energy this summer to make products. I thought I would get a lot done but I didn't in fact this was the first summer that I did hardly anything work related. So, I'm not mad about that. I, as well as most teachers I know, work way too much. So, it was a nice change.

I changed positions AGAIN this year, I am back to teaching special education. It's taken me this first semester to try and get my procedures and activities down. There have been many paperwork changes since I was in last in special education 4 years ago. But, I'm back and I've created a product for my students and decided it might be useful to others so you can find it in my TPT store.

First, I have some Kindergarten students in my resource class. Their time overlaps with 2nd graders so they have to do some activities alone. They are all at different levels. I have one that is close to grade level in phonics, one that knows letters sounds but not how to form words with them, and one that doesn't even know all his letters yet. So, I had a dilemma about what could they do independently that they would still be learning from??  I found some Uppercase letter and lowercase letter clip cards where the student had to put a clip on the matching lowercase letter. This were great. I put a sticker on back to show the right answer making them self-checking and they could do these independently even the student who was at the lowest level. So, I started thinking about what could I do with these?

Voila, Blend clips. I have them printed off and laminated and the kids love the colorful pictures. I'l have to get some pictures of them using them. They are engaged and they love checking their own work.  I have some math ones in works and you'll be seeing those in the store soon.

These are great for late year Kindergarteners, First Graders and struggling 2nd graders who need more phonics practice. There are 48 cards. There are at least 2 cards for each blend or diagraph.  Extension activities are included with the set. There are 2 cards per page which makes them a nice size for smaller hands to handle. You can get clothes pins at the Dollar Tree so this makes a very engaging yet affordable center or early finishers activity.

If you purchase this I would sure love to hear how it works out for you. If you have any suggestions for making this product better I sure would appreciate it.

Happy Teaching!!

Dina

I've got another new product in my TPT Store!!

Hello All,

I put a new product in my TPT Store.  Phonics are so important in K-2 classrooms.  Here's a fun sort activity that your students will enjoy.

Header cards to sort the pictures.  Then students record their words. You can remove the words if you want them to write them without help.  You can target specific blends and diagraphs by using only those that you want to target at the time.  There are several extension ideas included in the activity to make it more rigorous and challenging for your advanced students.  This activity can be used for your struggling students to your advanced students. All you have to do is print, laminate and copy.  Student directions, teacher's notes and recording sheet are all included.  I think you'll really get a lot of use out of this product. I plan to keep updating it as I find more clipart that applies I will add more to it.  It's a product that will keep on giving!

After I get a few more products uploaded I plan to give away a freebie.  Are you looking for anything specific?  Leave me a comment. I would love to know that I am making products that teachers want and need.  It is my goal to keep prices low and make products that you can actually use.

I would love for you to leave comments on my blog and/or on the TPT store so others can see how helpful the product is.

Have a great day!

Ms. Francisco

Chapter 6 Phonemic Awareness

Hello All,

I'm trying to get caught up here. So I'm posting about Chapter 6 Phonemic Awareness  now. This was another great chapter.  The lessons of course are more geared toward KK and 1st grade as you hope by 2nd grade that many of these skills are already developed or at least on their way. However, as we all know as teachers, this is not always the case. So, it's important information for 2nd grade teachers also.

What is Phonemic Awareness?  We often confuse and use phonemes and phonics interchangeably but they are different concepts.  They are both developmental and foundational to helping children learn to read. "Phonological awareness is an umbrella term that refers to an understanding of spoken words, and includes the awareness of words, syllables, rhymes, and individual sounds." Whereas a phoneme is the smallest unit of speech a word can be divided into.  Once a student has mastered rhyming they are able to then manipulate words down to the phoneme. In this description it appears that phonics mastery leads to phonemic awareness.  What do you think?

Given that rhyming is indicative of readiness for phonemic awareness she spends a section of the chapter on stages of rhyming.  There's a chart and an example of a folder in the book to be used to see where your students are in regards to rhyming.

Heidi has made up a sheet to be used in a binder and it's on her blog here:  Stages of Rhyming

She points out that students need to learn about these:

• phonological awareness, including listening, words and sentences, awareness of syllable, and playing with onset and rime (word families).
• concepts about print (read left to right; top to bottom, spaces between words, print has a message)
• letter names, shapes, sounds, and formation

Phonemic awareness is about the sounds. Phonemic awareness activities may include:

• sound matching
• sound isolation (initial, then final, then medial sounds)
• sound blending
• sound segmenting
• sound addition, deletion, substitution

Phonemic awareness activities should be playful and engaging not drills.  They should begin only with sounds with no letters. Overtime, print can be added to phonemic awareness activities.

Key point in this chapter to me is that ***Phonemic Awareness is the most potent predictor of success in learning to read (Stanovich 1986, 1994).  That's crucial to understand. So, if you have struggling readers in second grade, clearly, it's important to understand where they may be gaps in phonological and/or phonemic awareness. 

There's a 2 page spread on possible lesson topics and activities so you definitely will want to check those out (pages 94-95).  Possible phonological focuses include: rhyming, alliteration, sentence segmenting, syllable blending and segmenting. Possible phonemic awareness focuses could include:  onset-rime segmenting and blending, sound matching, counting phonemes in a word, blending phonemes to make a word, isolating beginning phoneme in a word, isolating the final phoneme in a word, isolating the medial phoneme in a word, segmenting phonemes in a word, and substituting one phoneme for another.

Much of your phonics and phonemic instruction can take place in whole group about 20 minutes 3 to 4 times a week.  Those that struggle with an aspect could benefit from small group help.  Small group is probably more helpful than one-on-one. She has a folder for the stages of Phonological Awareness. I made one  up that you could either put side by side in a binder or print out and glue in a folder. Click the picture. It actually has some clipart on it but I added it after the screen shot.  

She makes the point to state not to move on to phonemic awareness until children understand how to rhyme, segment sentences into words, and clap their names by syllables, and are beginning to be able to separate onsets from rimes. (Diller,  p. 96)  

Phonic and Phonemic instruction should be explicit. Therefore, like her other chapters, she gives you a chart about Prompts for Phonemic Awareness. Yes, I typed it up for you!

Click the preview!

The idea is to build "your students' sound base, one block at at time -- from words, to syllables, to onset and rime, to individual phonemes." (p. 112).

Another great chapter with many lesson plans for both phonological awarenes and phonemic awareness.  I have typed up the lesson plans. They are here but no preview!  

Phonological Awareness Lesson Plan     Phonemic Awareness Lesson Plan

I hope you have enjoyed the information in this post and the shares.  Still loving the book and all the great information!

I was surfing pinterest and came upon this FREEBIE! She has an assessment for all of the phonological awareness areas. If you don't have something you already use in your school/district this would be GREAT!! And did you read it's free???

Assessment FREEBIE

Thanks,

Dina