Your kindergartener may come home talking about Reader’s Workshop and you may still be wondering what this time of our day looks and sounds like. Reader’s Workshop provides students the opportunity to practice reading skills and strategies through differentiated literacy centers and guided reading groups. Take a closer look at what some our literacy centers look like…
Sensory Center:
Each week students practice reading and making our kindergarten word wall words through a variety of sensory experiences. Below students are rolling out playdough to form the letters of the word wall words. We have also enjoyed using our fingers as pencils to “write” word wall words in shaving cream, sand, and salt. I think the students have enjoyed using the shaving cream the most!
Poetry Center:
Each week we learn a new poem during shared reading. The poems are written on large pieces of easel paper so we can all share the responsibility of reading the poem together. Often times the poems are directly to our curriculum and many word wall words and/or rhyming words can be found in our poems. After we learn our new poem as a class it becomes our poetry center for the following week. Students are responsible for reading the poem either by themselves or with a peer and drawing a picture to match the words in the poem before adding it to their poetry folder. Sometimes there are even words missing from their poem and students have to be word detectives to figure out what words are missing. Below are a couple of our latest poems. I hope you enjoy reading them with your kindergartener.
Wake Up, Spring!
Wake up, flowers.
Wake up, weeds.
Wake up, frogs.
Wake up, seeds.
Wake up, bears.
Wake up, bees.
Wake up spring-
Won’t you please?
Focus: This poem brought up meaningful conversations about the transition between winter and spring and what that means for our environment. We also noticed that our newest word wall word “you” can be found towards the end of the poem.
My Monster
She has 2 legs, just like me.
She has 2 arms, just like me.
She has 2 ears, just like me.
But, my monster has 3 eyes to see!
Focus: This poem helped us when we were learning about the “like”. It also helped us continue to practice previously learned word wall words- “me”, and “see”.
Independent Reading and Guided Reading:
Students are each matched up with books at their independent reading level or “just right” books. During this center students have the opportunity to practice reading strategies that they have learned when working in small groups during guided reading. The skills and strategies that are taught during guided reading are intentionally planned and match each group’s instructional needs to help every student progress as readers.
