In this lesson, students write to friends and family asking them to send postcards. This activity provides motivation for writing and reading and provides a wonderful opportunity to learn about maps as students discover where their family members and friends live.

ABCya! presents its fifth children's storybook for the classroom. It's called Marvin Makes Music, an original work by Michelle Tocci. The story is about a frog that is sad because he cannot sing like his friends, until one day when he gets a new musical instrument. This is a great storybook to share with kids using an interactive whiteboard.

*This storybook has narration! Students can click the speaker button to have the story read to them.

This document provides a description of what each standard means a student will know, understand and be able to do. The "unpacking" of the standards done in this document is an effort to answer a simple question, "What does this standard mean that a student must know and be able to do?" and to ensure the description is helpful, specific and comprehensive for educators.

In this lesson, the teacher will show a variety of activities related to note writing that can be incorporated into the classroom throughout the year to promote authentic writing among students. Model note writing in context by taking advantage of opportunities that come up in the classroom both to read actual notes and to think aloud while writing them. Read books featuring notes, discuss why the notes were written, and copy the notes for classroom display. Enlist families in the fun by asking students to collect notes from home to share with the class.

In this lesson, students become familiar with the short /u/ sound as they listen to Taro Yashima’s Caldecott Honor-winning book, Umbrella. Prereading activities build vocabulary and comprehension skills, a read-aloud introduces students to the sounds of the story, and concluding exercises allow students to apply their understanding of phonic elements in other contexts.

In this lesson, a combination of children's literature, learning centers, and activities focus on learning about the letter m. Students will learn about phonics by participating in an integrated array of activities, including reading, writing, mathematics, music, art, and technology.

In this lesson, students will read Chrysanthemum to introduce the topic of names. Students make Name Bingo cards by writing the name of each classmate in a different square of a blank Bingo board. Next, students brainstorm personal questions designed to get to know one another. To play the game, the teacher randomly calls out a name, and students cover that name on their board with a marker. In this twist of the traditional bingo game, after each name is chosen, the student responds by answering one of the questions designed to help students learn more about one another.

The NC Office of Early Learning strongly encourages incorporating play into the daily routine of each classroom.
Children grow and learn in all developmental domains through their engagement in centers; cognitive, physical, social, and emotional. Authentic learning and meaningful connections are made when a teacher intentionally weaves standards and supports development throughout children’s play. PlaytoLearn Center Posters provide information about common areas of development supported during play centers along with prompts connected to kindergarten standards and NC ELI dimensions.

PlaytoLearn Planning Guides (also shared on #GoOpenNC) provide information on why each center is important to children's development, tips for setting up centers, sugessted materials, actions of an intentional teacher, and common connections children make to content. Although these resources are specifically written for kindergarten, teaching and learning strategies can be applied to many grade levels.

The NC Office of Early Learning strongly encourages incorporating play into the daily routine of each classroom.
Children grow and learn in all developmental domains through their engagement in centers; cognitive, physical, social, and emotional. Authentic learning and meaningful connections are made when a teacher intentionally weaves standards and supports development throughout children’s play. PlaytoLearn Planning Guides provide information on why each center is important to children's development, tips for setting up centers, sugessted materials, actions of an intentional teacher, and common connections children make to content. Prompts connected to kindergarten standards and NC ELI dimensions can be found on PlaytoLearn Center Posters which are also shared on #GoOpenNC. Although these resources are specifically written for kindergarten, teaching and learning strategies can be applied to many grade levels.

In this lesson, students will use a weekly poem to explore meaning, sentence structure, rhyming words, sight words, vocabulary, and print concepts. After studying the poem, students are given a copy of the poem to illustrate and share their understanding. All of the poems explored are then compiled into a poetry portfolio for students to take home and share with their families. To further connect home to school, a family poetry project is suggested.

In this lesson, students make the connection that the words sung in a song are part of a book that can be read. They explore this connection through children's song storybooks and interactive websites. Students complete a project by writing new lyrics to a familiar song and creating illustrations related to the lyrics. During the lesson students engage in various levels of reading and writing activities.

This unit was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for Kindergarten ELA.

Students will be able to identify and act out common synonyms that convey shades of meaning.

In this lesson, inspired by the book 'It Begins with an A', this minilesson invites kindergartners to combine their experiences with familiar objects and descriptive writing by making a class book. First, during a reading of It Begins with an A, students discuss descriptive works, number words, size words, and other words that describe objects in the book. Next, students practice by giving three clues that describe familiar objects named by the teacher. Students are encouraged to develop more specific and descriptive clues. Then, each student thinks of an object and draws it on the back of a sheet of paper. On the front of the paper, they write three clues that describe the object. Finally, the completed pages are combined to create a book that can be shared with family members and peers before adding it to their classroom library.

In this lesson, students will read the folk tale Jack and the Beanstalk and discuss the word giant and its beginning sound. Students then create their own lists of words that begin with the same sound. Then, students are introduced to words with the soft g sound and create a new list of words with this beginning sound. As a culminating activity, students work individually or in groups to categorize animal names into groups according to their beginning g sound.

In this lesson, students will use their knowledge of letters and sounds to make an alphabet book that focuses on a specific letter. After the teacher models the given letter sound, each student, in turn, repeats the sound and names a word beginning with that letter sound. The teacher pronounces each word, encouraging students to tell the sounds they hear. The teacher writes the word on chart paper or the board, and then repeats these steps for each student. The sentence, "This is a _____.", is written on each page of the book. Each student draws the word they named beginning with the targeted letter and labels it on the line provided. The pages are then combined into a classroom book.

In this lesson, the teacher reveals the first letter of the name, having students whose name start with that letter stand. More letters are revealed and students sit down as their name is ruled out. Once the helper is selected, students read the helper's name, count the letters in the name, clap the syllables, spell the name aloud, add the name to the word wall, and make observations about it. Using magnetic letters, students can create words that rhyme with the helper's name. Many additional ideas for playing with the letters of students' names are also presented here.

In this lesson, letter-sound correspondences are taught within a meaningful context in an explicit, systematic, and extensive manner. This lesson uses onset-rime analogy to present word families and spelling patterns. An onset is the consonant letter before the vowel in a given word or syllable, and a rime is the vowel and consonants that follow the vowel in a given word or syllable. Thus, in the word bill, the onset is the letter b and the rime is the letters ill. Furthermore, this lesson supports cooperative and integrative learning where students and teacher learn together and carry out tasks collaboratively.