On Sunday, September 18th I posted a FB Live video all about my plans for fall week with my Kindergarten student. They were lovely plans, full of hope and high expectations. However, things did not go that way due to this, that, and the other thing. So I thought I'd pop-in and share what actually happened during our Fall Vocabulary Weeks (because we stretched it through 2 weeks)!
Monday 9/19 - Today went as planned. I started by introducing the vocabulary words for the week. My student already knew 2 of the 6 words (apple and pumpkin), which was good to build his confidence, and give him a point of reference. We practiced saying the words with him repeating them after me three times.
Tuesday 9/20 - Another day as planned. We started by reviewing our words (3 times again) and then we moved to the table to trace and match our words. At first this was more difficult for him than I anticipated, even with the pocket chart right there to reference. About half-way through though he figured out the expectation and did very well.
We then moved back to our mat to read the Apple Tree poem. He thought this was a lot of fun. Especially when we pretended to pick one of the apples and eat it! We moved back to the table one more time and he was able to color in his own copy of the poem. We discussed the colors of an apple tree.
Wednesday 9/21 - We started our time together just as any other day, by reviewing our words three times. Today was the day he produced the third word independently (rakes). We read our easy reader by him repeating me. However he did practice pointing to each word. Then we did a picture sort of 'Things you see in fall; Things you do not see in fall". I wish I knew where this activity was from, but I do not. I downloaded it (I think) from a blog post years ago, and I can not find it again.
Thursday 9/22 - We started again by reviewing our words. Then I read the book Fall Leaves Fall by Zoe Hall. This was an interactive read-aloud, and we stopped to talk about the pictures and text frequently. Then we went to the table and I introduced the writing task. I showed him the pictures from the book again of all the things to do with fall leaves. His favorite was to make a monster, and so he drew a leaf and made it a monster! It was a super cute picture. I wrote his sentence. He started to trace it, but we ran out of time to finish.
Friday 9/23 - Our group was cancelled due to a scheduling conflict with school pictures and library time.
Monday 9/26 - Once again we reviewed the words. I re-read Fall Leaves Fall and we traced and colored fall leaves using this freebie from KidSparkz. He really enjoyed matching the leaves in his book to the shapes of the leaves in the read-aloud. He colored his pages to match the leaves in the book.
Tuesday 9/27 - We reviewed the words to start our time and he was able to recognize apple, pumpkin, rakes and leaf independently. I wanted to do some speaking practice so we sequenced the steps of making a jack-o-lantern. I printed off the colored copy and student cut and glue page from this free pack by S is for Sarah. We did the colored one together then talked through it. I'd point to one of the pictures and he'd say what he saw, then I would turn that into a full sentence for him to repeat. For example the 4th picture was drawing a face on the pumpkin. My student said "face", I gave the sentence "Draw a face on the pumpkin" then he repeated it. Then I gave him the student activity sheet and he cut out and glued the steps in order. I explained that the first picture was of a pumpkin, and at the end it was a jack-o-lantern with a face.
Wednesday 9/28 - I was unable to be in school. :(
Thursday 9/29 - When we reviewed the words this day he knew all but sweater independently. I decided to focus the day on apples and do some letter recognition practice, and sight word practice. We re-read our apple poem. Then I gave him this tree to color the apples either red, yellow, or green depending on the letter I'd put in them.
Then we read the sight word sentence at the top, which featured the week's focus words. Then I used the "I like..." flip book from Lavinia Pop's Fall Sight Word Fluency Flip Books. He really liked this book.
Friday 9/30 - The plan for today was to glue our fall words into his picture dictionary, however it hadn't come back from our printer yet. So we reviewed our words and played memory. We needed the pocket chart to make sure the words matched with the pictures. I was really happy with his recall of what each picture was. I didn't expect him to actually read the words independently at this point, but he learned the routine of the game and strategies to figure out the words by checking in the pocket chart. I sent home the activity pages we'd finished along with some fall books from Reading A-Z today too!
So, all in all, things did not go completely as planned, but I think they went even better. We did a lot of listening, speaking, reading and writing practice. I was very happy with the progress my student made in recognizing and using the vocabulary. The majority of our activities from the first week of our fall unit can be found in my Fall Vocabulary Unit in my TPT store. We will spend the next few weeks focusing on school vocabulary: People, Places, Supplies and Things We Do at School.
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