Monthly Archives: March 2012
IREADK
In addition to the Common Core Standards, Indiana has unveiled a new test that will be taken by all K-3 grade students (IREADK, IREAD1, IREAD2, and IREAD3). We will be taking this test for the first time later in the school year and it tests for pre and early literacy skill development. In order to continue to get my students ready for this assessment, I have created my IREADK crate. You may remember these activities I created last year for Literacy Skills (These are all stored in a crate with hanging folders by topic {letters, sounds, vowels, rhyming, etc.}). This one is the same idea. All the pages and activities came from the Florida Center for Reading Research. Their activities complemented the IREADK assessment almost perfectly.
I created the tabs with my label maker and then filed the activities in the appropriate folder. 🙂
Kristen 🙂
Common Core Standards
I’ve had lots of questions since I last posted about the order of the Common Core Standards. I’m not sure if Indiana set them in this order or not, this is just the order we were instructed to teach them in.
If you visit the Indiana DOE’s Learning Connection site, you can find the Common Core standards under “Learning Standards”. Just find Kindergarten after that and you can see our scope and sequence for the year.
Kristen 🙂
New Math Work Stations
Here are some more pictures of our newest Math Work Stations. We’ve moved on to the 3rd quarter Math Common Core Standards (mainly addition and subtraction and 3D shapes). I’ve introduced a new puzzle that helps with addition and subtraction, some games about weight (heaviest/lightest), and a dramatic version of 5 Green and Speckled frogs to help with the idea of subtraction.
Kristen 🙂
My New Bookcase!
Okay, so the bookcase itself isn’t new and neither are the books on it, but the way it is set up sure is! My school is currently an IB (International Baccalaureate) candidate school, so we think in terms of the six IB themes instead of our old themes. I used to have them filed by topic alphabetically, but decided in the interest of finding all the books I needed to pull, it would make more sense to organize them this way:
I labeled each shelf with the name of the IB theme and then put a colored sticky dot next to the label. Then, each of the boxes that pertain to that unit were also labeled with the same colored sticky dot so they get put back quickly on the right shelf. When I started this idea, I looked at each box that I currently had, decided if it was going to apply to a unit. If it did, I labeled it with the appropriate sticker. If it did not, some of the books went out for the children to use and some were filed in my filing cabinet that holds my “other assorted books” collection–in all four drawers! 🙂
Here is a closer look at the two bottom shelves.
Kristen 🙂
Kristen's Kindergarten 