Hello Kreative in Kinder folks! My name is Lori. I am the author of Conversations in Literacy blog. Crystal so kindly asked me to be guest blogger and I am so excited to do this! I love her blog and she has such great ideas to share with all of us! I really enjoy reading and sharing all these ideas through this wonderful place known as blog land. I hope you will take a moment to hop over to my blog too. I'd love to hear from you! ๐
One thing I really enjoy doing with my kindergartners is the morning message. They love it too! When they walk in the room and the message is up, they are immediately excited to see what it is about. They rush right on over to the rug and start trying to see what they can read! They are pointing at and touching words in the message. Some are so excited they want to stand instead of sit on our nice carpet. I hear things like “oh I can read” followed by the words they can read, “I see a question mark” (they know that means there is a question they will get to answer it on the chart), and many other excited comments about what they know. This picture shows the morning message that I had all prepared and ready for the students for Valentine's Day. But I'm in Missouri and we got snow Monday morning and wouldn't you know…school got canceled for Monday and Tuesday!! So this message will be waiting for them when we get back to school on Wednesday! I wish I could have shown you what it looks like after we have gone through and marked on it all the things we do, but the snow kind of put a kink in my plans! ๐
I don't usually get as fancy with the morning message as I did with this one, but hey, it's for Valentine's Day. So we had to be a little creative! Normally I write the message on white chart paper or on my wipe off easel. I've tried it on my Smartboard, but that doesn't seem to work as well for me. There are so many skills that can be taught in the morning message that makes it multi-level and differentiated. We always start off with what do you see that you know. If students are recognizing and reading words, they can point out words to read. But if they are still working on recognizing letters, they can identify a letter that they know. That way everyone can be successful! Here are just a few things you can use morning message to teach:
*left to right directionality
*sight words
*we count the number of words we know in message
*beginning or ending sounds
*syllables
*rhyming
*math, social studies and science concepts
Lastly, I just have to show our owls for Valentine's Day! We made our owls and talked about whooo we love. Lol! Parents, cousins, and pets were the popular answers. The kindergartners then wrote on their hearts who they loved and why. It was difficult for them to choose only one to write about- we had lots of love for everyone! But the hearts were small so we kept it to one and then why we loved them. Kindergartners are naturally loving people!!
Thank you, Crystal, for allowing me to guest post for you and everyone for reading it! It's been a lot of fun! I love sharing and learning about great ideas and would love to hear about the wonderful things you are doing!
Tammy says
Crystal, I think this is a cool idea – inviting a guest blogger to share. You picked well! Thanks to the two of you for sharing.
โ Tammy
Forever in First
laughinbrunette (Jennifer) says
I love those owls!!
Jennifer
First Grade Blue Skies
Lori says
Thank you Tammy and Jennifer! It was fun to do!
Busy Bees says
Thanks for the information…btw your owls are so cute!
Robynn
BusyBees
Lori says
Thank you Robynn!! ๐
Freckleteacher says
I do a Morning Message every day except Wednesdays when we have late start for collaboration. There just isn't enough time.
I teach so many concepts through Morning Message and my students love it! I write my message on paper and then the Helper of the Day gets to take it home. Great to see others using such a valuable tool. Love those owls too!
Lori says
I agree- never enough time for everything we need/want to do! I only see our struggling kinders for 30 min. a day and it isn't nearly enough. Thanks for commenting!
Lori