I am in my second data collection cycle with my students. This cycle is supposed to be done by Dec. 15. You can the growth the students have made in just a few months in letter recognition and sounds. At this time of year we are checking for upper and lowercase recognition as well as the consonant sounds and vowel sounds and high frequency word recognition. If a student identifies less than 20 uppercase letters and 12 letter sounds we are suppose to admininster the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Assessment. As you can see, none of my students fall into this category. However, I like to give each student this quick assessment at this time of year to see how they are doing and to see what areas of the "listening" games he/she needs to work on. But this is NOT a requirement of our new Kindergarten Assessment Program unless the above criteria is met.  In addition we are supposed to administer the F&P BAS for  students who know all letters (upper and lower-case) and letter sounds plus 6-10 high frequency words. I have only a few students who know more than 6 sight words right now so I have administered the F&P, but they are scoring at Level A instructional. So I am going to wait and do the F&P closer the the Dec. 15 date to see if their F&P goes up to a higher level and to independent. Plus we will have learned more than 6 sight words by mid December so more students will then be ready for the F&P assessments. 

Even though play is not my goal for this year, I tried storytelling this morning. I had Sadie tell me a story. I wrote it down and then we acted it out. The kids were very shy at first because it was their first time doing it. But I think the more I do it, the more they will 'let loose' and get into it. Afterwards I asked them if they enjoyed the activity and they all agreed that it was fun! 

Since this storytelling with Sadie's story, I have tried it again and the kids are really enjoying it. I am trying it twice a week with different children telling us stories. Their stories are very interesting!

In Kindergarten we play all the time. We sing with reading and phonics. We use games for learning during our morning meeting with responsive classroom. In writing we are using toys for our show and tell unit. Kindergarten is all about playing with a purpose!