September in Kindergarten - Week 2 Round Up
We are in the second week of September!
Some years, Labor Day will fall this week, but I am including lessons for Monday as sometimes it does not.
You can use my lesson plans as a guide, but tailor them to fit your own needs and schedule.
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For a complete overview of the month of September and to print my free lesson plans, you can view my SEPTEMBER LESSON PLAN homepage or print the plans directly HERE
Let’s get started with the second week of September!
I have a fun new freebie to share with you this week using the book Ten Black Dots.
Depending on when you started school, you may be humming right along right now, or you may still be in survival mode.
Usually this is the start of our fourth week in school, so it is starting to get really fun.
Spending a ton of time upfront on rules, procedures and expectations will save you so much time in the long run.
So we still review these daily, but just for 2 minutes here or there.
One trick that works so well is I constantly thank students in front of everyone who are modeling desired behaviors.
For example, if the children are moving from their desks to the carpet, I act so happy and excited when I see students pushing in their chairs and walking to the carpet.
If I want to remind my students to raise their hand, all I do is compliment a child that is raising his or her hand. It is a gentle reminder, and also a way to recognize students who are following expectations/directions.
“WOW! Everyone look at Lamar. I love how he always raises his hand when he needs help or wants to share!”
This gets everyone’s attentions and without a single negative word the rest of my class will follow suit immediately.
Recognizing positive behavior, and complimenting students modeling the desired behavior, works much better than focusing on the children who are not following our expectations.
I do this all day long and it works like a charm.
I am also building rapport and relationships while doing this to.
Students will work 10x harder for you if they love and respect you, and if they know you love and respect them too.
Mornings
Mornings are busy in kindergarten… to say the least right? I really do believe the morning sets the tone for the rest of the day.
When I taught fifth grade, I always stood at my door and greeted every student personally.
I asked them to look me in the eye and at least smile if they didn’t want to say anything.
I am modeling and teaching social skills, plus I’m making a connection every morning with them.
I do this in kindergarten too, and it really doesn’t take any time out of our morning - it takes me about 2 seconds per child to set the tone for the day. I’ll do that!
Look them in the eye, say good morning and give them a personal compliment, “Wow, your shoes are so cool! I want a pair of those!” or “Yesterday, you worked so hard in math, Ryan, let’s do that again today!”
Build rapport and relations and set the tone for the day… this is literally money in the bank when it comes to management and rapport.
If you’re doing virtual learning, it is a great way to start your day while you’re waiting for students to join each morning.
Personal questions and connections go so far.
2023 Morning Work Update: FREE Spanish version + Google Slides
Students can become independent with morning work starting about this week.
They are understand the routine and activities now. Have you grabbed a free week yet?
CLICK HERE to purchase September.
If students finish early what can you have them do?
I have them draw on the back, or I copy fine motor activities on the backside.
If you let them “play” at centers when they are done, it creates distraction and some kids rush through.
If they aren’t quite done when it is time for calendar, that is okay too.
They can fill it in later, or I always go over the answers at the carpet.
Calendar
My calendar time is short and sweet, and we do a lot of dancing, singing and learning!
Students love the embedded sing along songs, daily jokes, morning meeting prompts and so much more.
I now used my new digital calendar kit - CLICK HERE to learn more!
Last week, I shared how much I love using Dr. Jean songs in my classroom.
If you need a quick link to a song you can play every morning, we always start with “Hello, Neighbor!”
Here is another favorite:
I do mini lessons at the carpet, and then every 5-10 minutes we get up, wiggle and sing.
Then I can get in another mini lesson.
The best way to get your kiddos to learn their letters and sounds quickly is singing the same song every day.
Find one you like and play it every day… two or even threes time for your kids. Let them get up and sing and move.
My favorite songs/videos are the ones that have a movement too.
This helps so many kinesthetic, auditory and visual learners because they:
see the letter
sing the name and sound
do a movement/sign language
This provides the perfect “hook” for kiddos to master letters and sounds quickly.
Here is a good one we love!
Instead of ASL, movements that go with the words often work better for four and five year olds.
Show this video to your kiddos daily, save your voice, learn letter names and sounds, get the wiggles out and HAVE FUN learning:
This is a fun one for brain breaks:
You do not just have to do this at calendar time.
When you need a minute to prepare something, or help an individual student, throw this video on and have the kids stand up and sing.
You can’t go wrong with Jack Hartmann!
Phonemic Awareness
I explained how I start the school year focusing on phonemic awareness in my small groups on last week’s blog post HERE.
I could truly talk about the importance of phonemic awareness all day.
Did you know…
Phonemic awareness is the #1 predictor of a student’s ability to become a fluent reader.
Yes, you read that correctly… and all of the scientific research behind reading instruction supports this (and has for YEARS!)
If you want your children to quickly understand and apply what you teach them in your phonics lessons, start with phonemic awareness skills.
Phonemic awareness and phonics go hand in hand!
Phonemic awareness is 100% auditory, so no letters are even involved.
Here is an example of a game we play to teach onset and rime (blending two sounds together to make a word.)
Learn more about phonemic awareness and print free sample lessons on THIS blog post.
Purchase my best selling phonemic awareness program HERE…. and read the reviews!
Phonics
We are diving into phonics this week.
We still focus on phonemic awareness activities every single day in small groups.
The ultimate goal is for students to read CVC words fluently by the middle or end of the year.
Did you give the first sounds pretest yet included in THIS UNIT?
I make it quick and easy, even a helper or aide can give these 1:1 with students.
They see the picture mat and you record directly on to their recording sheet.
This is helpful so you can see exactly where they are at, and then their growth at the end of the unit (there is a post test in this same format.)
We start with the letter Pp. If your kids know the tune from the Dr. Jean Alphardy song, sing that with them and practice his movement. Tie new material to known material as much as possible.
Today we just do the letter and picture cards.
I always play the same game with them:
I show the letter p card and put it in the pocket chart.
Then I choose a child to come up and flip over a picture card (three start with /p/ and three do not).
If it does, they put it in the pocket chart. If it doesn’t, they give it back to me.
I repeat this game all week with /p/, /s/, /m/ and /l/.
I always teach four letters at a time, because you’ll see that in my first sounds unit, all the activities target four specific sounds at a time.
Most of these we will do next week, but as you can see they all focus on these four letters.
Targeting specific letters that have very different, distinct sounds and formations makes it easier for students to learn letter names and sounds.
Seeing the same letters repeated over the course of many days is so helpful and builds their confidence quickly.
This same format repeated for the entire unit, so once they know the routine of these activities, it gets much quicker and easier!
These activities are all free to try HERE. If you like the setup of this unit, my entire first sounds unit can be found HERE.
We do the fill in the bubble one as a review at the end of this week.
Math
Last week we started with counting and cardinality, and this week we continue with this first math unit.
This week, our focus is on numbers 4-6:
recognizing the numerals
writing the numbers with correct directionality
showing on a number line and ten frame
1:1 correspondence (as we are counting they can move their finger ONLY when they say the next number when touching objects.
Here are the activities we are doing this week:
We use Unifix Cubes all year long.
This is perfect for coloring matching and 1:1 correspondence. We do number mats 4-6 this week and review 1-3 from last week.
The kids love all the different voices they get to be in this video.
We pretend to be monsters, soldiers, babies, etc. It is a great little moving brain break.
These work perfectly for exit tickets or wrap up review.
They could also work well for daily warm ups.
The half sheets labeled as exit tickets are used multiple times this month!
I use them a lot in week 4 as review and extra practice.
You can use the same activity a couple times… this is good! They know the format and what to do.
Ten Black Dots is a cute book to have out for your kids this time of year.
Some years I have done art projects where they pick their favorite number to show, or your can have each child makes a book about ten black dots.
It is a great way to have the kids get creative with what you can make with black dots. If you choose to do a book, you can have the kids complete a page each day, so by the time you learn numbers 1-10, they have a book to show for it.
I love seeing what different kids come up with! It is seriously adorable.
This book is so cute because it hits everything we are working on right now… rhyming, CAP skills, numeral recognition, counting, 1:1 correspondence and more!
Here is a fun freebie for you!
I recommend doing one page per day.
This hole punch work great for making the dots. Just use black paper!
This one is a 3/4” punch, but there are other options if you may want bigger or smaller dots.
Reading
Reading and writing go hand in hand, and this is how my Read and Write like a Rock Star program was born.
For the entire school year, my guided reading consists of the same three materials:
Comprehension and fluency passage
Mini book
Sentence builder
This week our theme is School Supplies!
The vocabulary and sight words, along with the theme, changes each week and the difficulty increases throughout the year.
Just like all of my resources, students love the routine and structure of my reading program.
I love that once I have them trained in how to use these resources, I do not waste precious time explaining directions and expectations.
I use these three resources throughout the week. Personally, I prefer this schedule:
Monday: introduce theme, vocabulary/sight words, I read the passage, we read it together
Tuesday: review words, we read together, they read on their own (whisper/buddy), answer comprehension questions
Wednesday: Sentence Builder
Thursday: Mini book, Review CAP skills - front cover, turning pages, holding a book properly, I read the book to them
Friday: We read the book together, buddy read, answer comprehension questions
I use these in my small groups, with all the reading levels!
The beautiful thing is that you can use the same materials, and just differentiate your instruction based on their reading level.
This allows me to spend more direct instruction time with my lower readers.
I recommend keeping guiding reading lessons short and sweet - 15 minutes or so per group per day.
To see how this works, you can print a free unit HERE
The month long unit is available HERE
It is tricky to start guided reading groups in September. What is the rest of your class doing?
To start the year, I would recommend having an aide run a whole group activity while you pull your small groups.
They can use a no prep activity (shown below) or even watch Dr. Jean or Jack Hartman songs/videos.
If you’re implementing distance learning, this learn at home pack makes it so easy.
If you’re in the classroom, this is an open and go program for warm up or review.
They can also be doing Boom Cards no prep centers (more on this below in this post.)
Your focus should be training your kiddos as to what guided reading looks like.
It is a lot of work upfront, but will pay off in the long run.
All About Apples Week 2
It is week 2 in our All About Apples unit!
Last week we learned all about the lifecycle of apples and we went over the apple life cycle slideshow.
This week we take a “field trip” to the apple orchard.
This book is beautifully written.
It is about a class that goes on a field trip to the apple orchard. Their teacher gives them a riddle to solve while they are there touring.
We learn about the different kinds of apples - red delicious, granny smith, etc. We also learn about how to make apple cider and treats that can be made using apples.
This video and book work really well to have students taste test different kinds of apples! Print this FREEBIE to help with this fun, hands-on activity.
Students taste all three colors of apples, and circle the thumbs up or thumbs down.
Then we graph the results! Each student colors a cut-out apple and we graph which apple students like the most.
And because the story showed students how an apple cider press works, we use this theme to practice sequencing and writing a sentence. These activities keep us busy and learning the rest of the week!
Centers
I use no prep activities for my centers for so many reasons.
I love being able to just print and teach.
Centers are so tricky at the beginning of the year, especially if you do not have help.
I would recommend doing these activities whole group at first if you do not have an aide.
These no prep activities are perfect for your students to do while you pull your guided reading groups (read and write like a rock star program.)
You can use these no prep activities really in any order you wish, so do not worry about the order I show on my lesson plans.
I sometimes switch them up. They can just be used throughout the month as centers, for fast finishers, sub tubs, etc.
I love how versatile these printables are!
I also use Boom Cards in my no prep centers. These are perfect for homeschool, the classroom or distance learning.
Each month, I target specific skills we are working on in math and reading.
Boom Cards are self checking, and I love that kids can be independent with them. Many decks have audio and give instant feedback. This time of year we are practicing letter names, sounds, rhyming, onset and rime, sight words, numbers, counting, shapes and more!
They can be played on tablets, computers and parents can even download the free app on their phone!
This deck shown here is FREE CLICK HERE
My September Boom Bundle is available HERE or save even more with my growing year-long bundle HERE
Writing
We are working on handwriting and labeling this week.
We start with lesson 11 this week with bunny jumps! We learn how to pick up our pencil and “jump” to a new place.
So many letters have bunny jumps and I use this terminology pretty much all year.
For more information on teaching handwriting CLICK HERE or purchase my handwriting curriculum HERE
I cannot stress the importance of teaching handwriting!
We do the mini reader labeling books!
Now that children know that words represent specific things, they can draw lines to the correct objects.
Encourage students to look at the first letter in each word, and ask them what sound it makes.
What do you think it should point to? What word would make sense here? Reading is constructing mean, not just decoding.
We also continue to label pictures.
I absolutely love using sticker labels the first few weeks of school. This cuts out all the cutting and glueing. See more info HERE
We often do the same picture two days in a row.
The first day, the students match the picture words, and the next day the label the same picture… but on their own.
This practices so many skills. I want my students to know that letters have to be put in a specific order for the words to make sense. Repetition provides so many benefits!
New to labeling? Grab a FREE activity HERE.
I just updated all of my writing units in July 2023!
All student activities now also come in Spanish, plus I added so many new activities.
By the end of this first week in September, your kids will learn to look at the first letter of each word to begin to make meaning from reading.
They will understand that letters must be put in a specific order to form words and that each word has a specific meaning.
I hope these teaching tips make your week go smoother!
My goal is to share ideas and tips every week on a blog post for the week coming up.
This will hopefully take some stress off of your plate.
Did you miss last week? To read about what we do the first week of September, please go HERE
