Rapid Pace Recognition and Reading Kindergarten Games in English and Spanish

Rapid Pace Recognition Games

Students learn best when they are having fun! Play these awesome games, they are better than boring old flashcards! This will improve their AIMSweb scores and their fluency in reading. 

Crash! Spanish and English Letter Name and Spanish 

Cut cars into cards, test the student on the letter names or sounds, the ones they get correct, they get to keep in their hands. The ones they get wrong you put on the side and review after the game. The point is to go as fast as you can, when students see the word "Crash!", they yell "Crash!". 

 Go to Crash! Spanish and English Letter Name and Sound game in order to take a better look! 

Crash! Reading Street series kindergarten sight words

Cut cars into cards, test the student on the sight words, the ones they get correct, they get to keep in their hands. The ones they get wrong you put on the side and review after the game. The point is to go as fast as you can, when students see the word "Crash!", they yell "Crash!". 

Find the game at: Reading Street Sight Word CRASH! Game 

Crash! Spanish Syllables

In Spanish, students read by syllables rather than isolated letter sounds. Cut cars into cards, test the student on the syllables, the ones they get correct, they get to keep in their hands. The ones they get wrong you put on the side and review after the game. The point is to go as fast as you can, when students see the word "Crash!", they yell "Crash!". 

Find the game at: Spanish Syllables Crash! Game

 Grinch! Rapid Pace Christmas Theme Game CVC words, letter names, letter sounds, and sight words in English and Spanish

The goal is for students  to complete a tree. If the  the "Grinch"  card appears or if they say a word or a letter incorrect, they have to start at the beginning again. 

Find Games at: My Store

CVC Matching Game Literacy Center

Students match the similar words, then have to write down the matches they get. 

Find games at: Thanksgiving CVC Game  and Christmas CVC Game

Thanksgiving CVC matching game 

Christmas CVC matching Game:

Word Family Literacy Center, Thanksgiving Themed

ELL students learn to read best through word families. Students match the baby turkeys with the correct Mom Turkey. Then fill out the worksheets that are differentiated to different levels of students.

Find this Game at Turkey Word Family Game   

Gobble, Gobble Sight Words. Gobble, Gobble Letter Name and Letter Sound Game in Spanish and English. 

This is a rapid pace recognition game. The game is played by the teacher keeps the cards in her hand, she puts one at a time down, the student that says the letter name and/or letter sound first, gets to keep the card. The student with the most cards at the end of the game wins. You can play two ways: if the "gobble, gobble" card appears the game stops and the game starts over. Or what I found is that children just like shouting "gobble, gobble!" and you can continue until you get through the whole pile. 

Another way is for students to slap the “gobble, gobble” and say “gobble, gobble”. The student that slaps the “gobble, gobble” card first gets to keep it. Or you can play like Slap Jack and have the whole group say each letter and/or sound in chorus and create a pile. The student who slaps the “gobble, gobble” card first, gets to keep the pile. Some students get too focused on slapping the card, so if you think students cannot handle playing this way, then just have them shout “gobble, gobble”.

Find Games at Gobble, Gobble letter Game and Gobble, Gobble Sight Word Game

Make Your Heart Grow, Grinch Theme Week Activities

Make Your Heart Grow: Grinch Theme Week Activities

This week, we read The Grinch Who Stole Christmas By Dr. Seuss. As I read the story:

• We talked about whether the story is reality or fantasy and how do we know it is fantasy
• The students came up with possible reasons why he did not like Christmas
• We talk about what it means when Dr. Seuss "maybe Christmas means something a little bit more" and how you do not need presents and decorations to celebrate Christmas. 
• We talked about how his heart grew, then we brainstormed as a class what makes their hearts grow

In order to prepare for the writing section of the kindergarten ACCESS test, the students had to write three things that happened in the story. 

I also differentiated for my students who struggle with writing (my beginning and entering students). They just had to draw and label 3 parts of the story. 

We also played a rapid pace game that was grinch themed. See my either of my stores on directions on how to play and purchase the game. Miss Jenny's Teachers Pay Teacher Story The students loved it especially after we read the story. 

In order to prepare for the listening section for the kindergarten ACCESS test, we made a Grinch that involved students following multiple step directions. 

The best part of this project is that students who struggle with fine motor skills still can rock this project. It does NOT have to be perfect, every Grinch should look different. The kids loved this and loved it did not have to be perfect. They also loved having freedom to make it how they want. 

1. Cut red triangles for hats

2. Draw 3 clouds on white paper,  outline in black, 2 for the hat and 1 for the neck, then copy it on White paper

3. Draw a circle head, outline in black marker and then copy it on green paper

4. Do ovals on yellow paper for eyes

5. Then cut small black and red 2 inch squares, let the students cut the pupils and nose however they want. 

Seeds Reading Street Unit 3 Week 5

Seeds Reading Street Unit 3 Week 5 ELL strategies

I introduce the amazing words by having the student match up pictures I printed out with the vocabulary words. I do this every week with the amazing words so the students can see the visuals of the vocabulary words being used in the story. 

I read the following informational text with my ELL students

Seed to Plant/ De Semilla a Planta By Gilda Berger

Now I know Seeds By Gilda Berger

 I am a Seed by Jean Marzollo and Judith Moffatt 

We also read The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss, we did a sequencing activity. Where the students put the story in order and then sounded out key words from the story next to each picture for example, we wrote the words seeds, water, weeds and carrot. 

                                                               

We did a "parking lot activity" answering the question of the week. The students each got a post and wrote a word using brave spelling and draw a plant, fruit flower or vegetable that grows from a seed.

We compared and contrasted Pumpkins and Apples

Bilingual

We read Las Flores from Calle lectura Series. We also reread the story Seed to Plant/ De Semilla a Planta book

We played a matching Spanish/English game with the following words:

plant planta

Seeds semillas

flower flor

Root raíz

pit pipo

fruit fruto 

color color

Little Panda Reading Street Unit 3 Week 1 ELL strategies

Little Panda, La Pequeña Panda

With my Kindergarten EL students I read Kindergarten Panda by: Joanne Ryder and Katherine Feng.

We did a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast what the Pandas did in kindergarten and what we do in kindergarten as a whole class

Then the students wrote sentences: I can see the panda...

Bilingual: 

We read La Pequeña Panda (The Little panda in Spanish). 

We talked about cognates:

Panda: Panda

Explore: explorar

Curious: curioso

Bamboo: bambú

We talked about how the letter "n" and "b" make the same sounds in Spanish and English and we talked about words that begin with "b" and "n" in English and Spanish. 

About Me... Todo acerca de mi....

Miss Jenny's ELL and Bilingual Resources

Hi! My name is Jenny and I taught bilingual kindergarten for two years. Now, I am a pull out ELL/bilingual teacher for an early childhood school where I work with kindergarteners and preschoolers. I also just returned from a mission trip to South Africa where I trained teachers in early literacy strategies and SIOP strategies. 

As an ELL teacher, I know it is hard to find resources especially for English language learners in kindergarten and preschool. 

The school district I teach in, uses the Reading Street series. I teach the big question, vocabulary words and story a week ahead of the regular education classroom teacher. That way when they arrive to class on the following of Monday they have been exposed to the amazing words and big ideas and can confidently participate in class. 

You can get great resources for ELL students and all students at my shops at either: