Fundations

Today we started our Fundations routine! We have been dabbling in word sorts and identifying letters and learning about each other's names and now we will start a five week unit of letters and sounds! This is the second year I will be coteaching this part of our day with Sarah Read (kindergarten teacher next door) and Heather Wood (kindergarten speech/language pathologist). This gives us a special opportunity to have three groups instead of two (creating smaller groups) and to be able to differentiate more within the groups.
For the next five weeks we will follow the same routine each week where we introduce letters with a card showing the letter/keyword/sound that help children see a picture that begins with the sound that letter makes and memorize the letter/keyword/sound to be able to quickly identify the sound a letter makes when both reading and writing. We will be skywriting letters to build handwriting skills, sorting pictures that begin with the letters we are learning that week and identifying the letters in a shared reading we practice throughout the week. We will add magnet letters to an alphabet board as we learn them and practice writing the letters on dry erase boards.
This week our letters are b, m, r, s and our shared reading is Gingerbread Man.  We are combining the Fundations program we use with some new ideas from the developmental approach used by the Words Their Way program.