Wow! How has it been nearly five years since my last blog post?!
Well, the world is definitely a different place now than it was back then. Other than the obvious (quarantine, remote learning, life in general), what have I been up to? Well, I went back to school to earn a Master's degree in school administration. Between teaching kindergarten, moving rooms and schools several times, being a mom to two wonderful girls, and a wife to a supportive husband, I had little time to work on anything TPT or blog related while in grad school.
My district has been in person since August. I had to rethink how to do EVERYTHING to maintain social distancing, teach using a blended sychonous learning platform (think: teaching in person AND on Zoom), all the while making kindergarten fun. It has taken three-quarters of the year, but I think we have come up with a pretty smooth routine that maintains safety and health while learning and having fun.
I have always loved literacy stations while I work with a guided reading group. However, my aide and I did not want to spend countless hours sanitizing materials or remaking materials so each student could have their own set. There had to be a better way to implement literacy stations with targeted skills, all the while saying safe and socially distanced. And I found it! Seesaw. It has been a life saver! Less prep work for us, assignments going to my remote students AND in person students at the same time. I started converting all of my literacy stations to Seesaw. The newest update to Seesaw to add voice recordings to each slide and individual photos has been a game changer! I love that students can now hear me tell them the name of the picture on the app, rather than sitting with hands up or interrupting my guided reading groups.
I recently added a 4th quarter literacy activity to Seesaw and TPT. For a limited time, it will be on sale. Head over to TPT and check it out. As always, if you are happy with it, leaving a review on TPT would be greatly appreciated!
Scrambled sentences are a great way to practice sight words, writing mechanics such as capital letter for the first word and punctuation, and reding fluency. (They can record themselves reading on Seesaw!)
This activity works on identifying the beginning blends in words.
Students move cards on the slides to make rhyming pairs. With the new updates to Seesaw, I was able to record the name of each picture. So, no more students interrupting my guided reading groups to ask what a picture is! Yay!
There are long vowel and a short vowel activities for students to listen for and identify the vowel sound in words.
There are also CVC spelling, beginning, beginning/ending, and ending sounds activities.
Well, I have to say, it feels good to be back after an extended break!
