Stamp-A-Word

This Stamp-A-Word center was just the thing to encourage my future writers to interact with print.  Provided at the center are:

• sentence strips with the words 'I see a ________' printed on them
• lower-case letter stamps
• stamp pad (with many dire verbal warnings from me that the ink won't come off little fingers!!)
• Halloween words and pictures that the children can use as a model.  These were placed in pocket charts so that the students could take them out and have them closer to where they were stamping.  It's really hard for four and five-year olds to look up at something stapled on the wall... they need a closer proximity to maximize their success.
• pencil crayons to make illustrations with

Because I wanted the children to take their time and value the work that they did I established some criteria for this center:

• Only 2 students at a time.
• Each student must make 3 sentence strips with 3 different Halloween words.
• Once the stamping was done we would staple a cover on the front and turn the 3 sentences strips into a mini-book.
• Once the student has a mini-book they can read it to a friend or the whole class (everyone wanted to read it to the whole class).
• Every successful author received a Halloween ring (I love the dollar store).

Get The Message

Morning Message activities are a staple in many Kindergarten literacy programs.  Each morning my students participate in the shared reading of the message on our interactive SMARTboard.  Before we begin, I have a few students predict what the text may say by checking out clues they see.  Clues may include the picture or known high-frequency words in the text.  We then read the message together paying particular attention to matching our voices to the words being pointed at.

Four key components to the Morning Message I provide for my students are:

• "Popcorn Words" (words that keep popping up in reading and writing... otherwise known as high-frequency words) at the top of the message.  These words are up there for my students to refer to as they circle words they know. 
• A picture.  After all, most children in Kindergarten are non-readers for much of the school year.  Visual support in the form of an illustration is completely appropriate.
• A familiar structure with controlled vocabulary.  Every one of my messages, from the first day of school to the last day of school, features the date, a greeting to either the Busy Bees or girls and boys, and identification of what day it is.  The only sentence that really changes is the third one which is usually connected to something we are doing in class that day, the state of the weather, or some other exciting news (such as a countdown to a field trip or an announcement of someone's birthday).
• A mystery sound box.  As we read the message the children predict what the missing word may be in the context of what would make sense.  Each empty box is a phonemic sound.  I limit these missing words to just one per message.

Once we've read the message a couple of times students are invited to come up and circle words and punctuation they know.  Here is what our Morning Message looked like after our 30 minute shared reading session:

The product looks messy but the process helps my students to look more deeply at text and become stronger independent readers as they inch their way to Grade One.  

Please check back for interesting details regarding the way I connect "Popcorn Words" to an interactive bingo game and some silly hats.