Daily 5 in Kindergarten Chapter 6 and an editable Pokey Pin freebie!

Word Work is so much fun to do!  I don't even know where to start because it is such a wide open arena for kindergarten teachers to provide a variety of instruction and to differentiate as well.  You will rarely have two students at the same exact level when it comes to playing with letters and sounds!
I am so excited about the newest way to encourage my students to learn their letters fluently and to learn them FAST.  Marsha from A Differentiated Kindergarten has just released her newest product and I felt like she created it just for my students because it features my favorite animal, my favorite fruit and just an all round fun way to monitor letter learning:  It's called Who Will Be a Top Banana? and its purpose is to motivate and celebrate students learning their letters.  How perfect is that?  She has it marked down to $3.50 for now, so I would get it while you can and make sure you grab all of her awesome freebies while you are there, too.  Click here to read more about how she uses this unit in her classroom or click on the picture to go buy it.

 If you have been following my blog, you know that one way to work on letters and words in my classroom is by Pokey Pinning.  I introduce Pokey Pinning every year with the students' first initial.  Here, I have created an editable, simple way for you to do it with me.  Just type in the first initial  of each of your students and print!  You can have the kiddos with fine motor difficulty just focus on the staying between the lines of the letters, children with adequate fine motor ability do that AND the borders, and children with excellent fine motor ability can do the outline of the letters.  If you do not have ABC print font on your computer, you may just have to use your own font of choice. 

I use a variety of Pokey Pins (letters, words, popcorn words, even numbers!) throughout the year in my word work centers.  It is a great way to practice letters, sounds and words, as well as to develop the students' fine motor strength and ability.

Here are some word work stations that are inviting, fun and versatile in their use:

To encourage interesting words, I use Fancy Nancy by Jane O'Connor.  We read the book and then start hearing and seeing "fancy" words everywhere. I have an awesome poster drawn by a former student's parent that we add words to as we find them.  I will have to take a picture of it and add it later for you to see.

Whenever the students  hear or see a "fancy" word, we
discuss the meaning and add it to the poster above on
post it sentence strips.

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