Sunday, October 28, 2012

Technology for the Classroom

Today I have a great BIG thanks to shout out! I am so appreciative to the COACH Foundation. Just Friday I learned Coach donated $500 to my classroom for additional technology! Here are the items I was able to select:
RM Epad
This slate and stylus is amazing and was made with the classroom and students in mind! To see how it works click on the picture and watch the video!
rm-epad
Hot Dots
We’ve all heard of Hot Dots! A fun educational way to support student learning without using pencil and paper! Thanks to Coach Foundation, my students will be having fun learning the alphabet, phonics, numbers, counting, and shapes!
HOT DOTS PIC 2
Thanks COACH Foundation for supporting kids with generous donations!
Terena
If you found this information interesting and would like to know how to receive generous funding too, please consider joining my blog as a member and following along on Pinterest!
I’ll be back with the answer to helpful funding THIS week!!! Be sure to check back.
OR
to purchase, click below.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Kitchen Menus & Writing

My Kindergarteners love playing in the kitchen dramatic play center. And, although I believe it is appropriate for them to focus on playing together, sharing, and their language, it’s also important to make this station common core friendly.
It’s not often my students get to play in this station but when they do they are responsible for the following:
1.  Set the table for 2 (or 3, 4, 5, or 6 – depending upon the number we’re working on)
2.  Role play – Students choose what role they would like to play such as chef, dishwasher, customers, waiter/waitress, cashier, hostess.
3.  Share – Sharing is important so students know they need to take on a different role each time they are learning at this station.
4.  Organize – Students also know while they are playing and when they clean up where all the items are to be placed. I took pictures of the items in my play kitchen and then taped them to the areas where the items are to be placed.
5.  Menus – Last of all, students have menus to play with. You can download them today for FREE. The “customers” read the menu with the words printed on it. AND, the waiter/waitresses write on the menus with the missing beginning sounds or missing words. Just laminate and you’re ready to go!
Click on EACH picture below to get your FREE menus. 
kitchen menu
kitchen menu order pad 1
kitchen menu order pad 2
Hope you enjoy these menus and especially your students too!
Terena
I hope you are enjoying all of the FREE downloads I post. If so, please look in the sidebar and become a member of my blog and follow my Pinterest pages.
There’s lots more FREE items to come! Thank you!

Teaching Numbers 1 to 5

With the new Common Core Math Standards, our Kindergarten class is now focusing on numbers one to five the first trimester. Here are a few anchor charts we made each week we studied a new number. We color coded them so all the concepts on each one are the same color. The students love them!
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Sunday, October 21, 2012

Going Batty!

This week we are continuing to work on bats that we began last week. Here are a few free items you may wish to download. Just click on EACH picture.
bat circle map
1.  Vocabulary cards with pictures. I placed Velcro on the circle map above with the matching Velcro on the vocabulary word. Students can now use this as a portable word wall or to sort and discuss.
Slide1
2. Bats Are Sleeping Song
Slide1
3. This Old Bat Song
I’ll be posting more tomorrow!
Terena

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Pumpkin Freebies

Grab theses freebies today by clicking on the pictures below.
Beginning Sounds & Sequence of Lifecycle
pumpkin lifecycle
Pumpkin Vocabulary
pumpkin vocab
Hope you find these helpful.
Terena

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium

Have you heard of Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, also known as SBAC?

SBAC

 

“The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (Smarter Balanced) is a state-led consortium working to develop next-generation assessments that accurately measure student progress toward college- and career-readiness. Smarter Balanced is one of two multistate consortia awarded funding from the U.S. Department of Education in 2010 to develop an assessment system aligned to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) by the 2014-15 school year.” (SBAC)

“Smarter Balanced member states educate more than 19 million of the nation’s public K to 12 students. These states share a commitment to developing a next-generation assessment system aligned to the Common Core State Standards that provide educators with meaningful feedback and actionable data.” (SBAC)
These states include Alabama, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
SBAC 2
And although Kindergarten and first grades will not be taking these tests, we should be preparing our students ahead of time using these new formats that will be implemented in all other formal assessment grades.
Our district has done just that in the area of language arts writing!
Teachers from every grade level collaborated on this project. First, we were educated all about SBAC. Next, we developed the same formats for every grade level as SBAC for our trimester benchmark assessments. Then, we followed our adopted curriculum, back mapped the school year, scoured over the common core standards, and finally came up with new trimester benchmark assessments, rubrics, and revising / editing checklists for grades K through eighth.
These new benchmarks cover the three writing genres: informative / explanatory, narrative, and opinion. Adopted materials used were science texts for informative / explanatory writing, language arts for narrative writing, and social studies texts for opinion pieces.
k science  treasures te
It has been extremely time consuming and will continue to be as we are still trying to perfect our art. However, it will surely be worthy of the efforts as our students will be better prepared for the 2014-15 school year.
Below, you will be able to download an editable version of a revising / editing picture checklist for Kindergarten in 2 writing genres:  informative and narrative. I plan to edit the “topic” pictures each time we write upon a new topic. In addition, since conventions will change over the school year, it will be easy to change this picture each trimester too.
To receive your 2 free downloadable AND editable documents, please click on EACH picture below! These are separate documents.
Informative Writing Document:
informative checklist
Narrative Writing Document:
narrative checklist
I hope you find these helpful! AND, they are editable so you can change them the way you like.
Terena
If you found this post and printable resource helpful, please leave a comment! AND, to receive more FREE items about SBAC, please join up as a member. THANKS!