Sunday, August 14, 2011

Teachers...Listen Up

If I were back in the classroom this year...this book would definitely spark a lesson plan week...maybe two...for me!

Get it! 

The children will loooove it! 

Download the song!

It's Pete the Cat!  Rockin' in my School Shoes and I Love my White Shoes.


The rhythm is so much fun!  You and your children will be singing it all the way to the playground.

It would be a great book the same week as Brown Bear Brown Bear by Eric Carle.



*You could talk about colors. Obviously.

*Draw and Paint and Write color words and use them as your color chart in the room!  (Don't buy the boring ole pre-made color templates...they will mean NOTHING to the children.  Especially, since the children have no ownership in the pre-made package color chart.)

*You could use a reading chart to follow up the book to hang around the room.  Use a key sentence from each scene.  For example:  I love my white shoes.  I love my red shoes.  I love my blue shoes.  I love my brown shoes. and so on.  You get the point.

*Allow the children to highlight the sight words: I, my(Monday), sh-blend and plural (shoe"s") Tuesday, Color Words (Wednesday), love (Thursday) big review and hang on the wall on Friday.  By the end of the week, the class will be able to read the chart to you without any assistance!  (Even if they have just memorized the words, at the beginning of reading the main goal is to encourage and create excitement and confidence towards reading!)  You can now add these words to your class word wall and individual word walls for their creative writing folder.

*For your bulletin board, take a picture of each child's shoes...just their feet in their shoes.  Then take a picture of their face.  "Can you guess my feet?" would be the name of the bulletin board.  Under each picture of shoes you would lift the flap to find which face goes with which shoes!  Interactive.  Let the children come up with clues that go out beside their name.  They could write their sentence on sentence strips with assistance during their writing center.  Hang their clue with their picture of feet.  For example:  I have freckles!  Can you guess my feet?  You could start talking about question marks and when to use them at the end of a sentence.  Just in casual conversation at the center.  The next day have the children cut up their sentence into words and puzzle it back together.  So it doesn't end up looking like this:
We don't want this:

"IhavefrecklesCanyouguessmyfeet?

We want this:
"I have freckles. Can you guess my feet?"





You want them to start recognizing one-to-one correspondence between words when we read.

Glue each word down on another strip of bright paper large enough for their sentence.

Bulletin board, Center, and One-on-One all rolled into one!

The children have ownership of the bulletin board.  They are able to show off their awesome writing to their peer classes.  The board is more meaningful to the children.  That's what bulletin boards are for anyway right?

The children...not the teachers!


*In my opinion, MOST (there are exceptions, of course) children should be able to read by mid year of Kindergarten.

*Pairs of shoes could start the conversation of counting by 2's during math time. 

*Aside from individual behavior charts, your class behavior chart could be a string floating from one side of the room to the other.  The "shoes" (just print off a picture of shoes) start on one wall and each time the entire class does something positive (for example:  whole class in and out of the bathroom in 5 minutes, everyone stays in a line going to the cafeteria, whole class lines up with bubbles (in their mouths) and fishtails (hands behind their back) without being asked more than once, everyone pushing their chairs up to the table before coming to the rug, lining up at recess the FIRST time the teacher calls, etc) the shoes get further and further down the line!  If the shoes reach the other wall the class gets a prize.  Prize Examples:  extra 10 minutes at recess, DEAR time (Drop Everything And Read), or playing a game on the e-beam.

Side Note:  DEAR time is WONDERFUL!  It was always one of our favorite times of the day.  You can crawl under a table, lay on top of a table, sit on the rug, sit in a friend's chair, find a snug corner and read your library book for the week.  The teacher even gets to read to!  EVERYONE MUST BE READING.  Also, the children must be spread out.  No clusters of little children.  Clusters of children=talking.  No talking...just reading.  The TEACHER must not use this time to look over homework, check folders, clean centers, etc.  The children get to see teachers reading adult thick books.  Many many children never see anyone read in a positive manner in their home environment.  What a great way to encourage reading through a fun time!

Anyway, just wanted to share with all you fellow teachers out there a fun book I found! 
YOU MUST DOWNLOAD THE SONG to go along with it! 
Your class will thank you!

We don't have the Rockin' School Shoes book yet.  I have only listened to it on the website.

We do have the I love my white shoes book...and we love it!

1 comment:

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