Small Group Literacy Activities

Hi there!  This is Deedee from Mrs. Wills Kindergarten.  Here is a little repost from a few weeks back.  Hopefully, you will find something you can use!

We only have about 6 weeks of school left, so now is not the time to coast to the end!

First off... I want my students to be a little more fearless when it comes to using context clues to identify unknown words in a sentence.

We want students to use context clues to figure out unknown words.  One strategy they can use is to skip the word and think about what makes sense.  These sentence strips can be used in a variety of ways.  

Students can simply skip the covered word and think about what makes sense, or if you want them to look through the word to “check their guess,” you may ask them to:  

1)  guess the word 

2) write the sounds they hear in that word

3) look through the word to see if their guess might be correct.

 Then we check!

I am not suggesting you conduct spelling tests, but we know the skill of reading a word is a bit easier than spelling the word without a model.  

  In this activity, I  prepared words and placed them in the basket.  I pulled one word out at a time and read it to the students. 

I made these cards editable, so you can add your own words.

 They are challenged to “picture the way the word looks” and spell it correctly.   

Then we check it!  They LOVED this!

I got a 4 pack of Meridian LED push lights at my local Wal-Mart for under $4.00… these are MAGICAL!!!!

Students push a button for each sound they hear.

 Then they write the sounds.

 They check to see if they were right!

  

For CVCe words, I took the batteries out of the light and wrote an “e” on the light with a dry erase marker.  This is to remind them that the e does not make a sound.

We worked on segmenting words into syllables.

Level 1:  Students push a light for each syllable they hear.

  Level 2:  Students push a light for each syllable they hear.  Teach your students that each syllable must have a vowel.

Although this may not lead to the traditional spelling, you will encourage your students to hear more sounds! 

We also played a fun version of bingo with rhyming words!

 and a little word family fun!  

This activity has so many levels of differentiation, my entire class benefits from it.

My students love ANYTHING that feels like a game.  They are alert and poised to new learning!  This makes my job 10 times easier.