Cute and Colorful (Common Core, Too!) Ms. Scaccia's Kindergarten Blog: Keeping the "Fun" in the Fundamental Learning Years

I have a feeling this is going to be a recurring topic, because I feel strongly that kids should have some fun in their days. I love trying to incorporate the holidays and fun seasonal things, but I must say, it is getting harder and harder. I usually do a lot of it through my literacy centers, and most recently, as an activity to do when independent work is finished. I call it "Differentiated Sight Word Read the Room" to administrators if they ask, to my kids it is simply "read the room" or "the clipboard activity" :). It is an activity where words are placed around the room and the students copy the words onto their clipboards. We work hard on differentiating at my school, and while I have seen items like this, I had not seen any that had the differentiation built in. I just started this at Halloween time when I found something online. I put it out even though it wasn't differentiated (Shhh! Don't tell!). After seeing how much my kids loved it, I knew I had to start my own and get that differentiation built in. I started with the Thanksgiving pack, and then began a gingerbread one. Needless to say, the gingerbread never got finished, but I do have a winter penguin one that I made (working on that resolution...) and since I will be doing "All Things New Years" when we get back, of course I created this FREEBIE New Years pack (because who as money after the holidays and time off from work?). You will see pages from this below. What I really like, is that the directions stay the same. Only the words and pictures change so I don't have to spend a lot of time explaining. I have started incorporating blank cards so teachers can customize to their students' needs. Having the blank cards allows for a whole other level of differentiation. You can write words on the blank ones in different colors and tell certain groups they have to do the words in a particular color, focusing on the needs of that group. Then you can put out one or options of sheets to use. There is a lot of flexibility... which I feel is important when truly differentiating based on your kids. I have not used different words yet, but I can show how I use the different sheets with one set of cards:

Thankfully, I am not teaching first grade reading this year, but I do have students who leave and come back to me so that they get that instruction. Sometimes we are not quite finished with our groups when they return. Those two students know that they can grab a clipboard when they get back as one of their choices. I have my clipboards color coded so they know which ones they can do. The kids who know the words that are out still benefit from practicing forming letters correctly, creating sentences, using spaces, etc. I know some people have "Read the Room" as a literacy center. I did years ago... This will fit right in with that. I hope you will grab the FREEBIE and give it a try! Let me know what you think.

These are the packs that were mentioned above.