Ways to Successfully Implement Centers at the Beginning of Kindergarten

Have you been wanting to implement centers in your classroom, but aren't sure where to start? With just a few steps, you can have your kindergarten kiddos successfully participating in small group center activities within the first two weeks of school!

Six years of teaching kindergarten has taught me the importance of implementing centers in the classroom. They help encourage student independence, motivation, and work ethic. They allow students to feel successful by completing an activity by themselves. And most importantly, they can be FUN! Every year, my students beg and plead for center time to arrive during the day. Taking the time to implement a few important routines and procedures at the beginning of the year can set the stage for successful small group center activities all year long.

Let's flash back to my first year of teaching. I had no idea how challenging teaching kindergarten was going to be, especially at the beginning of the school year. I very quickly learned the hard way what happens if you don't explain every detail to your students. And I mean E V E R Y detail. Because 5-year-olds will continue to find new ways to surprise you with a "Why would you ever think that was a good idea?!" moment. That brings me to Tip #1:

Teach your routines and don't leave out any details. Sit your students down and explain to them what center time is and what they will be doing during this time. When I first start explaining my center routines, I let them know that they are going to be with a small group of their friends that are going to stay together the whole time to complete different learning tasks (of course, I put it in kid-friendly speak, but you get the idea!). I let my students know that they are to stay at their center the entire time until it is time to switch. Letting students know this expectation will help reduce the amount of students that wander around to other centers bothering other kids.

This is also the time to introduce what transitions they should listen for so that they know when it is time to either switch centers or clean up for the next activity. The transition I like to use most during center time is the clap and response: I clap a beat and the students stop what they are doing to repeat the claps back to me. I like using this as an effective attention-getter because it requires my students to actually stop, respond, interact, and listen for my next instructions. They know that when they hear "The Quiet Clap", that they are to stop, clap, look, and listen. It's a quick and easy way to let my students know what they will be doing next. You can also do a speak and respond attention getter: You say a statement, and they respond with the rest of the phrase back to you.

Attention getters like "1,2,3 Eyes on Me!" and "Class, Yes!" are simple transition responses you can use that are easy for kids to remember. You can pretty much make up whatever phrase you want - the options are limitless!

Tip #2: Practice, Practice, Practice. I can't stress this step enough. If there is one thing you will want to do to prepare your kindergarteners for the routine of centers, it is to have them practice being at centers! You don't even have to have real centers for them to do when you get to this step. I tell my students to pretend they are working hard at centers - they love this part - and to listen for my attention getter to know when they are to stop, look, and listen. They pretend to write with their pencils or cut an invisible piece of paper and they think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread! I let them go on for about a minute and then use the Clap and Respond strategy, they clap it back to me, and then I have each group practice moving together to the next table as if they were going to the next center activity. We go through that again and again until they return to their own table seats.

Why is this important? 

Well, now your students have actually experienced what it is like to stay at one center for a specific amount of time and switch to the next one after that. Beginning of the year kindergarten students need those tangible experiences to really understand what it is you want them to do. It isn't enough just to tell them, you have to show and do.

Tip #3: Press the "Easy" button. The beginning of kindergarten is already stressful enough, so why add more to it? Another way to successfully implement centers at the beginning of kinder is to make your life easier by using simple centers for the first go-around. Use center activities that students can do independently so that you are not running around the classroom putting out fires every day. Here are some ideas for simple centers you can use:

Shapes, pattern blocks, play-doh, stamps, roll and cover games, sight word tracing, alphabet arcs, and easy cut & glue activities are all wonderful choices for your first rotation of centers at the beginning of the year. These are all simple, yet academic, centers that your students should be able to do independently, for the most part. Pressing the easy button with your first few rotations of centers will allow you to help students in small groups, complete assessments, and make yourself more available to all of your kindergarteners.

Tip #4: Don't Rush. It's okay if you need to do these simpler centers for the first couple of weeks of kindergarten. You will know when your students are ready for more rigorous activities. As the weeks continue, you can keep some of these activities the same and slowly add in 1-2 more difficult centers until they get the routines down.

Need some ready made activities for your beginning of the year centers?

Letter sorts are a perfect activity for the beginning of the year. These printables help students work on letter identification, formation and distinguishing between uppercase and lowercase letters. They are a super easy task for kindergarteners to complete at center time all while helping them practice letter concepts.

You can find these printables in my "I Can Sort My ABCs!" packs in my TPT store. There are two different sets: Uppercase/Lowercase Letters and Mixed-Up Letters. Click on the pictures below to check out both packs; and make sure you download the preview on each one - there's a freebie for you to try out to see if you like it!

Pocket chart centers and predictable sight word practice pages can also be an easy activity for the beginning of the year. My Time for School {Predictable Sentence Builders for Little Learners} pack is filled with activities to help your students practice and grow their skills in sentence structure, writing concepts, punctuation, sight words, and reading/tracking print. Predictable sentences are repetitive and help students recognize words and structure.

It has differentiated activities to fit your students' needs including multiple recording sheets to choose from; Read, Write, Build, Draw printables, pocket chart activities, and more. Click on the preview picture below to take a closer look!

Hopefully some of these tips and tricks will help you pull a little less hair out during the first few weeks of school. Would you add any more tips to this list? I'd love to hear of everyone's strategies for center success!

SaveSave

Sight Words Galore! Navigating Our Way Through a Lengthy List

My blog has been a bit dusty and cobwebby since the beginning of December, hasn't it? Life during the holidays always gets crazy and my poor blog has been neglected... till now!

The start of December brought some new challenges for my students trying to master all of their sight words. This is when our reading curriculum begins introducing 6 new sight words a week. They were doing wonderfully with their sight word fluency when there were only 1-2 words per week; as we could really dive in and do a lot of different activities focusing on those couple of words. But I have to say, 6 sight words a week is a lot for kindergarten students to master all at once - especially when many of the words are some of the more difficult sight words to read. By the time we finish introducing the six new words, finding time to only dive in with specific activities for a couple of the words before week's end, there is a whole new group of words to introduce and teach the following Monday. It's easy for past words to get lost in the shuffle when you are busy trying to learn all new ones.

To help combat the massive sight word list, my kindergarten team began sending sight word flash cards home - a new set every Monday - with the hopes that parents would help supplement and support their reading at home. I'm happy to say, the majority of families seem to have jumped on board. To help with accountability, we added a box to our daily responsibility sheet for the parents to check off if they practiced their sight words at home each night.

We have noticed such a big difference in sight word reading fluency from this year to last just by implementing this simple change. The great thing is, the kids love showing their families all the words they know how to read, so it doesn't feel like extra work to them at all!

Whether or not you have to teach your kids 1, 2, or 10 sight words a week, there are a lot of quick and easy ways to provide engaging instruction to help your little learners practice and learn these words. One thing I absolutely love to get my students involved with is shared writing. It is SUCH an important strategy for beginning readers and writers. By "sharing the pen", it gives your students practice in writing, spelling, sentence building concepts such as spaces and punctuation, and more. I've also noticed that it gives them tons of confidence! While doing a shared writing activity with my students earlier in the week, I had just introduced their 6 new words for the week and asked them to come up with sentences using our new words. The picture below shows our very first day of creating sentences using our brand new words, and they totally blew me away! They came up with sentences that made sense and used the words correctly. I wrote all of our new words at the top of my board as a sort of word bank. Then, each time we used one of the words in a sentence, we crossed it out to remind us that we had already used it. If a word the student used was a sight word we had learned during the year, I simply wrote a blank line. If I came to a word that was not a sight word, I wrote it out myself (kind, train, going, etc.). I then pulled popsicle sticks with students' names on them and they came up to the board and filled in the blanks with the sight words. This activity took us all of 10 minutes during carpet time, with no prep involved whatsoever!

I love using whiteboards for sight word activities. It keeps the students engaged and requires every student to participate in reading and writing the words. Sometimes I'll call the entire class up for a chance to write on my "big white board" (which they freak out about, by the way):

But my favorite go to resource during whole group instruction is individual whiteboards. The possibilities are endless as to ways you can have your students practice writing their words or using them in a sentence. Here are a few quick and fun activities that you can implement in your classroom:

1. Window Notes

Your students can create their own graphic organizers to practice multiple sight words at once. Have them draw two crossed lines to create four windows. Then, call out one word at a time for your students to write. They write the word in the first window note, then practice spelling and reading the word aloud. Then, have them turn to a neighbor and read the word to them. Continue with 3 more new words until the window notes have been filled.

2. "Your Turn, My Turn"

I created the game "Your Turn, My Turn" off the top of my head one day when I needed something more engaging for my class to do on a particularly wiggly day for them. On a side note, do you ever notice that some of the best lesson plans and teaching moments come totally on the fly? I know it can't just be me! Sometimes the best laid plans just don't work out and you need to switch it up a bit. I'm grateful for that happening on this day, because my students absolutely loved playing it so much that they didn't even realize they were doing some great learning!

Here's how to play: Have students get into groups of two, each one with an individual whiteboard. Give each student a different sight word and have them write it on their board. Assign each student in the groups to be either partner #1 or partner #2. Partner #1 will hold up their whiteboard to their partner, then each partner will take turns saying a letter from the word. Example: For the word "many", Partner #1 says "m", then Partner #2 says "a", then Partner #1 says "n", then Partner #2 says "y". This is where the "Your Turn, My Turn" title comes into it! After a partner has said the last letter in the word, then they both read the entire word together. "Many!" They continued this game back and forth with various sight words we had learned.

After we played a few partner rounds, I had every student stand with their word board around the carpet; then took turns having each student hold their board in the air. Whichever word was in the air, that's the one they had to read out loud. 

3. Create-a-Sentence

Give your students a sight word and have them write it in the corner of their whiteboard. Then, have them create or copy a sentence using the word, making sure to emphasize using capital letters, finger spaces, and a period at the end. Challenge them to underline the sight word they used to make sure they didn't forget it. After they write it, students can use pointers to track print and read their sentence aloud to practice fluency.

Besides whiteboards, there are other fun ways to get your kids to practice reading and writing their words all throughout the year. You can use interactive notebook activities, such as these super simple print-and-go words:

Find this activity here: Kindergarten Journeys Unit 2 Interactive Notebooks for Leveled Readers

Or make a fun monthly themed center activity, like a Sight Word Pumpkin Patch (my teammate's marvelous idea):

Or use wearable sight words, such as these Sight Word Watches from The Moffatt Girls!

We also started having our students do "High Five Sight Words" before they are allowed to enter or exit our classrooms. They have to high five the handprint and read the word aloud or they have to go back to the end of the line and try again! This has helped them so much! We change out the words every week!

My good friend and kinder teammate, Talia, has an entire set pre-made in her TPT store! Just print, slap up outside your door, and boom! Easy sight word assessment/practice for your little guys. Check it out in her TPT store by clicking on the picture below; and give her a follow while you're there to support her new shop!

With the introduction of a new reading curriculum, HM Journeys, last year was the first year we had to teach so many sight words to our students. I was struggling to find any resources that went with the words we needed, so I decided to create my own. Thus, my Sight Word Sentence Builders monthly packs were born! Using the packs, my students got meaningful independent practice with building mixed-up sentences:

This set can be found in my Spooky Sentence Building FREEBIE - try it out here!

This set can be found in March into Sight Words {Sentence Building Activities for March}

This set can be found in Snow Many Sentences {Sentence Building Activities for January}

This set can be found in Time for School {Predictable Sentence Builders for Little Learners}

Each mixed-up sentence set comes with a recording sheet for your students to write the sentences they create, such as these:

Each pack comes with 3-4 different sets of mixed-up sentences to build - perfect for using during an entire month! There are also sets of predictable sentence activities:

As well as a Read It! Write It! Build It! Draw It! activity page for EVERY sentence used in the monthly pack! This has over 20 different versions in every set!

Spooky Sentence Building {October}

Snow Many Sentences

These activities have helped my kiddos SO much with sight words, tracking print, building sentences, sentence structure, and reading fluency. They love completing these activities during centers! They always cheer when I tell them we are doing another set for a center - that's always a good sign! Haha! Underneath each picture, I included a link to my TPT store to go directly to each product, if you think these are activities that will work well in your classroom. If you like what you see, you might want to think about grabbing the entire year long BUNDLE! It's an $8.00 savings over buying each pack separately - it's like getting an entire pack for free... plus 2 bonus dollars! Can't beat that! Click on the picture below to check it out - you'll find links to each separate monthly pack on this page as well to see all of the previews in greater detail!

I hope you were able to take away some easy, fun, engaging ideas that you can implement in your classrooms right away!

Revisiting Kindergarten Journeys with TONS of freebies!

Excuse me while I dust the cobwebs off of my little corner of the internet... I haven't updated my poor, neglected blog in so long! I can't remember a year where I've been busier, so my blog kept moving further down the "to-do" list!

I've had a few readers e-mail me recently asking if I had any new resources to go with the Kindergarten HM Journeys curriculum, and the answer is YES! There are also a few freebies to download, so keep reading all the way till the end!

The first activity comes from Unit 1, Lesson 2 - and I've actually blogged about this before, when I first got the reading series a year ago. However, I never shared the freebie... better late than never! We read the story, How Do Dinosaurs Go to School? As we were reading, we of course were SHOCKED at how these dinosaurs were behaving at school... and promptly decided that we would never be like them! After reading the story, I displayed the four retelling pictures from the big flip book that comes with the series.

  

We talked about identifying main events in a story and talked about the four events in the pictures shown. Then the kids used the sentence strip to present the question we asked to help us retell - How do dinosaurs go to school? The students then had to identify and retell one of the main events from the story by drawing the setting and gluing the character into the picture to show one of the things it did at school.

The thing that I love about this activity is that it combines so many different skills: sentence structure, questioning, identifying main events, identifying main characters, setting, and using details.

Click on the picture below to download the FREEBIE of this activity!

The next activity comes from one of the stories in Unit 1, Lesson 4: The Elves and the Shoemaker. In this short fable, the Elves secretly help the kind Shoemaker at night by making shoes for him. Since it's a pretty short story, I wanted to come up with a quick, low-prep activity that the students could complete fairly independently. We use interactive notebooks in my classroom, so a quick journal prompt was the perfect way to go. I came up with these sentence strips for the kids to glue in their notebooks so that they could respond to the comprehension question by illustrating. I absolutely LOVE the way their illustrations turned out! How cute are the two shoemakers peeking around the corner in the first picture?! We used our "special crayon box" (AKA: a big kid skinny 24-pack) so they really took their time adding in tons of details.

Now we've reached Freebie Number 2! Click on the picture below to download!

The last story activity comes from a book in Unit 2: Amelia's Show and Tell Fiesta. My students had such a successful time with the previous journal prompt entry that I wanted to create one to use with this story as well. With this story, we focused on the main character and identifying character traits. However, I didn't feel like my group of kiddos had a very good grasp on what a character was, so the day before I read the book, I taught a little character mini-lesson using some of our very favorite book characters: David, Pigeon, Froggy, and Clifford!

I chose these four books because they are all characters that my students know and love and I knew it would be easy for them to identify things about each of them. I gave each student a whiteboard and we drew lines so that it would create four window notes on the board. I held up each book and asked them to identify each main character; then they drew a picture of each one in the four different windows.

              

After we identified all of the main characters, we went through each one one at a time and I asked the kids to describe things about each one. For example they said, "David is naughty" and "Clifford is big and red" and "Froggy likes to plop...plop...plop". Super easy, quick, and fun mini-lesson on characters!

The next day, we read Amelia's Show and Tell Fiesta. As we were reading, we discussed the main character (Amelia) and how she changed from the beginning of the story to the end. We used our interactive notebooks again to create two window notes for each question.

 

Freebie Number Three! Yes! Click below to download the Amelia's Show and Tell Fiesta prompts.

If you enjoy using these story prompt strips, check out my bundle for Units 1-6 of Kindergarten Journeys! There are multiple story response strips for every read aloud story in the reading series! Just click on the picture below to check it out!

Switching gears a bit here.. are you still with me? Good! When my kinder team and I looked over the new reading series last year, one of the things our eyes bugged out about was the sheer amount of sight words our students were required to learn. Of course, learning more sight words is never a bad thing, but later on in Journeys it introduces SIX sight words a week to our little guys! That's a lot to learn in a week and it's tough for all of them to stick without being able to dive in deep with word work activities for each one. I wanted to come up with an activity that would help them read, write, and build sentences using their sight words so that they could continue to see and review previously learned words and keep them fresh in their minds. Enter... my monthly sentence building packs! These packs include tons of themed sight word sentence building activities that fit exactly with the Journeys sight word list for each Unit! In each pack, you'll find build-a-sentence literacy stations, predictable sentence activities, differentiated printables, and read/write/build/draw printables for every sentence used in each set. Here are some of the activities in action... my students absolutely love them:

You can find every monthly pack in a discounted bundle in my TPT shop by clicking on the picture below:

You can also find each individual pack sold in my TPT store if you're not sure you want to commit to a whole bundle before trying it!

However.... I have more good news... a fourth freebie! And it's a Halloween-themed set of my sentence building activities to give you a sneak peek! You can download Spooky Sentence Building {Freebie} for FREE by clicking on the picture below. It has an entire set of mixed-up sentences + a printable!

If you find it works well for your students, you can grab the full October pack here, which is 68 pages chock full of sight word sentence fun:

Phew! If you are still reading all of this, go get yourself a cookie. Or a dessert. Or whatever floats your boat. A sticker, perhaps? You win.