Kindergarten & First Grade Activities
Similarities exist between kindergarten and first-grade activities. These similarities allow students to follow through with an effective education plan. That plan uses a continuous core knowledge sequence that ensures the successful assimilation of skills and information in the classroom. Teachers can use the core knowledge sequence to create specific lesson plans and content so that students end the year with appropriate content and skills mastery.
Other People Are Reading
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Circle Time
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Many kindergarten and first-grade students have very low reading skills and so teachers frequently read poems and stories to them. According to the Core Knowledge sequence for kindergarten and first grade, nursery rhymes, Aesop's fables, fairy tales and well-known American tall tales provide suitable material for this requirement.
Teachers may invite students to sit in a circle while the tales and rhymes are told so that students can see the pictures and follow the story. The stories and rhymes used help the students learn story sequencing so they have the skills necessary when they begin to write their own narratives. Sequencing skill activities may include retelling the story and placing pictures depicting story events in the correct order.
Class Rules
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Students in kindergarten and first grade learn to participate in class discussions and follow the rules of proper discussion protocol. They learn to raise a hand to answer or ask a question. They learn not to speak when others are speaking and to listen politely.
Other class rules that students may practice could include staying in the chairs during instruction and seatwork, forming and walking in a line from place to place and using proper tone and volume in the classroom. Teachers may also reinforce rules on cleaning up after activities, behaving in a non-violent manner and extending courtesy to others.
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Handwriting
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Kindergarten and first grade students work on letter recognition and writing. They identify and print all 26 upper and lowercase letters. They print their name legibly. They write all 10 Arabic numerals. They may use similar activity sheets and handwriting pads to learn these basic skills. The students might illustrate their writing with drawings, stickers and other pictorial representations of words they have not yet learned to write.
Phonics
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Students begin to learn phonics decoding in kindergarten and continue the process in first grade. Phonics helps the students sound out words so they can learn to read and spell. Teachers may choose several sounds to work on and incorporate words with those phonetic sounds in the vocabulary/spelling lists for the week. Other activities may include matching the phonetic sound to words on an activity sheet and saying the words aloud as the teacher points to them on the blackboard or interactive white board.
Math Activities
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Math activities used in both grades may include organizing items into groups, recognizing patterns and classifications, reading a clock, identifying geometric shapes and learning to add and subtract single digit numbers. Math manipulatives may assist the students to understand concepts and achieve mastery.
Learning Centers
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Teachers of kindergarten and first-grade students may use learning centers to encourage students to engage in independent learning. The learning centers hold various activities students can work with alone and in small groups. The learning center activities not only teach academic content, they reinforce cooperative social skills.
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References
- Photo Credit children image by Marzanna Syncerz from Fotolia.com
