Week 2 in November - FREE Lesson Plans
November is a wonderful time of year to be in the classroom!
I have so much pride in my sweet students as they have already come so far since August.
All that hard work of teaching them rules, procedures and routines has paid off and we now can focus on learning the standards and having fun.
Students also now understand the format of my curriculum, so I am not constantly explaining directions for activities and centers. My focus is on teaching them, and not the management aspect.
That is actually a huge reason I started originally creating my own materials.
I realized consistency was so important, or you’ll waste so much time trying to explain to five and six year olds what they should be doing with an activity.
My activities follow the same/similar format and it all builds on each other.
Kids love when they feel successful and can be (somewhat) independent.
If you’re new here, welcome! I share my lesson plans for free HERE
Please note that they are intended to be a guide only. If you’re required to use a specific curriculum, you can choose to add resources in or skip what you can’t fit in. My weekly blog posts are also to help you see how I teach with these resources.
You can visit my November lesson planning homepage HERE and there you will find an overview of what I teach this month along with the links to the other weekly blog posts.
This page contains affiliate links. Read Full Disclosure
Let’s get started!
If you haven’t started yet, now is the time to get going on this adorable Turkey Trouble unit!
This is one of our favorite units this time of year, and the kids think it is absolutely hilarious.
CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE + FREEBIES
We absolutely love calendar time!
My new digital calendar and morning meeting kit makes it so interactive for students, and they love the songs that are embedded on each slide.
You can watch this video preview to see what is included, or learn more on my calendar homepage.
Along with my digital calendar, we use daily calendar notebooks to help students become independent with filling in their calendar and writing the days of the week.
Morning Work
Having self starters, or “bell ringers” on student desks starts my day off on the right foot.
If you already using my morning work, then you know that students can mostly be independent with these.
My morning work is actually one of the very first resources I ever created.
I probably tried about 20 different “morning work” packs, and the problem was that my students couldn’t actually be independent, the skills jumped around and didn’t fit the standards.
These target the exact skills my students are learning, but can also be independent with.
In the classroom, I have a million morning jobs to get through myself. I also like to focus my time on individually greeting every single child. This sets the tone for the day, and I know that every student of mine has made eye contact with me, and they feel acknowledged, seen and appreciated. I always tell them that I am so glad they are here today.
The best classroom management tip you’ll ever receive: build rapport with your students. If they know you love them, and they love you back, they will work ten times harder for you because they won’t want to disappoint you. Take the time each morning to greet them individually and ask them a specific question or give a specific compliment.
A lot of times, I will say something like, “Yesterday, you could tell me all the first sounds of the words. Today, I bet you’ll be able to tell me the last sounds you hear in words!” I give a compliment and “set a goal” with them.
So while you’re doing making connections with students and competing your morning tasks like attendance, students are independently working on standards based skills using THIS morning work. Print an entire week for free from every single month to see how the skills progress.
Each month also now is compatible with Google Slides if you’re teaching virtually! This comes in each pack as a free upgrade.
DIGITAL TASK CARDS
Whether you’re in the classroom, homeschool or teaching virtually, another fabulous resource to help kindergarten kiddos be more independent is Boom Cards™.
“This is awesome for morning work and stations now that we are more socially distant.”
I generally do not have children move to “play” stations when they complete their morning work because it is just so distracting for other children. But if you’re a 1:1 school or have iPads, it could be an incentive to work through their morning work to move on to their assigned Boom Cards.
They can put on their headphones and get right to work. You can assign them cards with the exact literacy or math skill they need more help with.
Just like the morning work, I target the exact skills we are working on this month. The audio provides scaffolding so students can be truly independent.
Tip: I often have children repeat the same deck multiple times. You can check the data and see how they are doing!
If you don’t have time to do this in the mornings, you can use Boom Cards whole group, assign them on SeeSaw and Google Classroom, and parents even can put the app on their phone.
One of my favorite things is that students get instant feedback so they know right away if the got the answer correct.
Visit my monthly Boom Card homepage to see all the decks for each month or SAVE BIG with the growing year long bundle!
What are Boom cards? They are digital task cards played on the Boom Learning website! They can be played on tablets, smart phones or computers! CLICK HERE to visit my FAQ
PHONICS
We have put in all the hard work of mastering first sounds, and now this week we are finally moving on to last sounds in CVC words.
All the “playing with words” - stretching them out using slinkies, segmenting the sounds using Elkonin Boxes, substituting sounds orally… all that hard word building phonemic awareness (hearing sounds in words) will make this unit even easier to teach!
I start by giving the last sounds pretest.
I like to know exactly where they are at and then after giving the post test at the end of the unit it is incredible to see their growth.
Getting started with the unit:
Have you been using Elkonin Boxes?
In the phonics last sound unit, you’ll see these picture pages. Cut out the elkonin boxes and laminate if you prefer.
I use these boxes all the time, and they are amazing for visual learners (I am!)
I use elkonin boxes in both our whole group warm up and in our small groups. Some children will need their own set and I literally pick up their finger and touch each box as we say the sounds together.
If you have a student struggling with segmenting and blending CVC words, this will help them so much. My own daughter caught on so quick and she can segment CVC words fluently now.
These are our activities for the week! You’ll notice how my format from previous units stays the same… so this will save you so much time in teaching expectations. Students love that they recognize what to do and will get started right away.
For more information on how I teach phonics, please visit my phonics homepage HERE
MATH THIS WEEK - GEOMETRY
We started geometry at the beginning of November.
I start my math units by sending home unit standards checklists to keep parents involved and in the loop, and I give a unit pre test. I was always required to document student data and growth, so giving pretests and posttests helped me do this.
Teaching geometry is so much more than having children memorize the name of shapes. It is really about spatial reasoning, problem solving and recognizing patterns.
It is easy to spend the least amount of time on this math unit, but research suggests that these skills of understanding symmetry, perspective, mental rotation, use of scale, and basic navigation skills are incredibly important for a strong foundation in math and problem solving skills.
Here are some of the activities we are doing this week:
I want children to be able to recognize and name the basic shapes, as well as being to recognize them in the world around us.
One standard is to know each shape regardless of orientation or size.
I mix it up between hands-on manipulatives, activities and worksheets.
These activities can be used in small groups, whole group and rotating centers. What I love about them is we play them many times throughout the unit.
We love building shape houses! You can practice with pattern blocks first so students get the idea of creating real-life pictures composed of many small shapes.
To save on time, you can also send this home to have students complete and then bring them back to share.
I love how they all turn out so different.
Read my full blog post about geometry HERE to learn more.
READING
I love guided reading time! I do this in small groups, and this is truly where the magic happens.
You can give 1:1 attention, move quickly or slowly and really “move” kids in small groups.
I would teach in small groups all day if I could. It is so easy to keep them engaged and make connections with each child.
We warm up by reviewing sight word flash cards and then read two sight word fluency pages that we are working on.
If you have five kids in each small group, just make five fluency passage folders. I just slip each passage into a page protector and this makes it so quick and easy to read each day.
I use these three pronged folders and page protectors.
You can do the same thing with your guided reading fluency passages as well.
We follow the same routine each week with guided reading using the same three materials: fluency and comprehension passage, mini reader and sentence builder.
The theme changes each week and the difficulty increases each week, but the routine stays the same. I love that my kids are in a routine and it saves me so much energy not having to explain what to do. All of our instructional time is spent on learning.
I outline my guided reading routine HERE on our rock star reader homepage.
I love thematic teaching, and this is the second week of all about fall.
This is how I incorporate our favorite read aloud books, reading, writing, art, science and social studies.
This week we love using leaves.
This is a super fun book about leaves and imagination, and it is a much lighter read than our story from last week Awesome Autumn.
We look at and discuss how leaves are the same and how leaves are so different.
We look at the shapes and colors of leaves and how when you put them together they look like different things… including a little leaf man.
This book is the perfect introduction into our study about leaves this week!
Kiddos love this leaf sorting activity, and it is trickier for them than it looks. It helps to do the color version first (whole group or in a center) and then they can cut and paste the black and white version.
This week we also do leaf patterns (two version included) plus a cut and paste “build a sentence” activity. Students cut out the words and match/paste them in the correct spot. Then they can write the sentence on their own and illustrate a picture to match.
These fall themed sentence builders are so helpful for students to learn how to write a complete sentence. All seven are included! I usually can fit in one a week… sometimes two!
If we have time, we end the week with leaf art (students can build their own leaf man/creature) and leaf coloring.
Also included is a leaf rubbing page which can be super fun.
There is an adorable cut and paste leaf activity that you can print on the blog post for free!
NO PREP ACTIVITIES
I use these activities as my “centers” in the classroom. This year I am using them just as supplemental activities here and there with my daughter for homeschooling.
You can use these activities in any order you wish and they are all standards based. They are so versatile! These are the ones I plan on using this week (show above.)
I ditched all the cute centers that took a ton of ink and lamination, and instead I just “print and teach” with these activities. The kids recognize the format of many of these now and they require very little direction.
They are perfect for “sub tubs” or for fast finishers too.
We are starting narrative writing!
This is so exciting, because we are starting to learn how to write complete sentences.
It is truly not overwhelming if you provide students with structure, support and scaffolding.
I always being by using sentence starters. Students use have to fill in the last word in their mini book.
Students must complete the sentence “I like…” using a word from the word bank.
They also check their conventions and can check if they used a capital, finger spaces and punctuation. Then they rewrite the sentence on their own on the second line.
Each page in the book follows this same format.
Kids love then sharing their little books with each other. Believe it or not- this is the beginning of writing a personal narrative!
My students are used to using picture word banks, so I go over this narrative word bank with them. You can have them simply finish the sentence starter “One time I ….” and they choose a box to help them complete the sentence. Or you can also try to have them add one detail the on their own.
This is so exciting to see how far they have come with reading and writing just since August. These activities along with our handwriting lessons will take up our writing block this week.
I use narrative writing Boom Cards to help students practice writing a sentence, put events in order and add details.
I created this program last spring when schools went remote for virtual learning. It makes it so easy for parents to see what students need to work on each day.
It brings consistent, standards-based activities that students feel confident completing each day.
In the classroom, these make perfect daily warm ups for language arts and math time. They also can be used for a daily end of the day review.
I use them at home with my daughter each day - I just copy the math and language arts page back to back each day for her. I love how she can be almost totally independent with them!
Learn more and print a free week from every single month HERE
