Community Helpers Unit

Candlelit (led candle)
restaurant with waiter and
customer play scripts. 

Fire engine: made with red tri-fold display
board and a large cardboard box.

Community Helpers hats and coats

Doctor's/Vet's Office: X-rays from
an animal book, vision chart, play script,
telephone, and play medical instruments.

We began the unit with a puppet show for the kids! I made sure to include several community helpers in the script (see below), but no more than two characters were needed at once, so myself and one of the Educational Assistants performed the show together. I also created a slide show with backgrounds that went with each scene and asked students to play different parts of the script. Kids took turns coming up to the board, acting and saying their lines.

Puppet Show Script:

Built-in Literacy Opportunities

Sentence Strips: Students are able to easily manipulate these sentences by moving the words and pictures around. They enjoyed practicing reading using a pointer. The strip chart was conveniently located in play area where kids feel most comfortable.

WH- Questions Flip Chart: I assigned different students to the Read with Teacher area where we practiced answering Who, What, and Where questions. For example: Who fights fires? What vehicle do policemen drive? and Where do  teachers work? etc. 

Word Wall: We tried to include photos of community helpers of different genders and ethnicities (except for the teacher, I used my photo for that one) 

Writing: Students used pretend registration sheets at the doctor's/vet office, they wrote patient names, their symptoms and other information. I modeled writing during circle and made sure to remind students that writing can look like squiggling or random letters, and not everyone is able to write like a "big kid. 

Goldilocks and the Three Bears Unit

February has been so much fun! We are focusing on Goldilocks and the Three Bears story. Our district requires that we collect AEPS data on all our students at least once per year and has recently adopted the AEPSi (online scoring and data system). So I try to incorporate some of the key skills from the test into my monthly units. Goldilocks unit seemed like the perfect way to practice sequencing and especially WH- questions with the kids. I have been using the WH- question book to help my students practice answering questions.http://youtu.be/aTWY5TZuBnI

 

I got the template from Boardmakershare.com, here is a video of a teacher using the book:

Here are a couple of other activities I created for this unit:

Tracing pages

Goldilocks and the Three Bears color book
(Parent volunteers underline color words using color pencils)
I try to make a couple of little sight word readers like this for every unit. Students learn various skills with the help of these including word-to-word correspondence, sight words, reading left to right, and many more. In addition, it helps students who are learning to communicate  practice using more words in every utterance.

WORD WALLS! I create one for every unit that I teach. Below is the small version of the Goldilocks unit word wall which is meant for the writing center. Word wall has many uses in my classroom. We usually go over the vocabulary words at the beginning of the unit and often go back to review. We also sort the words by beginning sounds and number of syllables.