Work Station Wheel

This is my literacy work station wheel. I plan to create one like it for math stations this year. After a few weeks of using it, the kids don't even have to look where they go. The stations usually last about 12-15 minutes (usually when I am done with my small group). I ring my bell and have a 1 minute clean-up time, then I ring it again and they can go to their next station.We do 2-3 stations per day usually. The work station labels are velcro-ed on so that I can interchange some of my stations throughout the year. I change the partners out every 9 weeks.

Playing with Water

Matching words- I put this activity at the word study work station towards the end of the year. (I don't think they could handle it without making a mess in the beginning of the year.) I got the little bath toy animals at Dollar Tree and wrote words on the bottom of them with Sharpie. I had cards with the same words. Use a tub and fill it slightly with water so the toys can float.

For the game- Kids draw 1 card and get a chance to pick 1 of the toys to see it has the matching word. If it does, they keep the match. If not, they put the card and toy back and it's their partners turn. Player at end with most matches, wins!

Period or Question Mark?

Make sentences without the punctuation marks and kids have to decide whether it needs a question mark or period.

Hopscotch

Make a hopscotch and use a little manipulatives for children to jump with.

Make it a game-
In this picture, (it was towards the end of the year) we were doing vowel sounds in the middle of words. For example, I held up a picture of a pot and kids would have to jump to the "o" spot.

Variations: beginning sounds, sums for addition problems, numbers, ending sounds. shapes, etc.

Making Words

We practice sounding out words using these letter vests. I printed the letters out from Dr. Jean's website, cut them out, glued them to file folders, then used yarn to attach the front and back-uppercase/lowercase. I took pictures of a whole bunch of words using all my children in my class and posted them to my class website. They could practice reading the words at home with their parents (and it was fun seeing their friends and themselves!)

They LOVE making words with "Sneaky E" in it. The sneaky e gets to "pinch" the vowel when its their turn to say their sound which makes the vowel say it's name. Then when it's the e's turn to say it's sound it puts his/her hand over mouth and doesn't make a sound because it is sneaky! :)