Groovy Sight Word Fluency and Math Fluency Too

Welcome back to another day of Groovy Cat Week were I am collaborating with Vanessa from Pre-K Pages!  During December we presented at the Atlanta Conference for Kindergarten Teachers by SDE (Staff Development for Educators).  Eric Litwin was the keynote speaker.  I was right up front singing, "I love my white shoes. I love my white shoes." Yes, I had to have a photo op in there too.

I also waited in line to get 3 books autographed for my 2 grandsons and my future granddaughter.  Since I wasn't 100% percent for sure on what her name would be, I just had Eric put this:

Yes, I am "Nana K" to my grandchildren. Our new granddaughter, McKenzie, should be arriving in 2 weeks and this "Nana K" can't wait to start reading to her!

Here are some ideas that I use for working with math fluency facts to 5.  I love Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons.  I made a Pete the Cat and put magnetic tape on the back of laminated construction paper and the buttons too.  I used circle magnets for the back of the buttons.  Then I put Pete on a cookie sheet.

We act out the story and children take turns taking off the buttons.  Once introduced in group time, this becomes a center.  You can differentiate this activity by working with 5 and 10 frames too.  Click HERE to get my FREE Flip the 5 and 10 Frames Button Set.

You can also sing the words below to "Pop Goes the Weasel" and differentiate the numbers for your students moving from the 4 buttons to work with 5 and 10 frames.

If you want to see part of the story on YouTube Harper Collins has given you a great sample to provide a "hook" for your students.

Let's switch gears to reading fluency and support children to read emerging texts and favorite stories.  I'm going to show you how I work with my students on building sight word fluency to support emergent readers.  I program a 5 x 5 chart with words from the story.  Choose 5 words for each chart and record them in random order.  Students can practice reading these fluency sheets during guided reading, just-right reading, or as homework.  I made some sight word fluency sheets to go with I Love My White Shoes.

You can get them HERE on from my Google Docs.  This is what they look like.  Quick, easy, and effective!  There are 5 sheets to help support reading this story.  Of course you will not always be able to cover all of the words in the book.  You want to provide enough support so the reader can use other strategies to figure out unknown words too.  This book is perfect because it has picture clues, and they children get lots of reading fluency practice by singing the song.
I can't believe it is Thursday!  One more day . . . and many more tips to give.

You might be interested in the other Groovy Cat ideas from Monday-Wednesday this week.  Click on the links below.

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

And don't forget to drop by Pre-K Pages blog for more ideas on using Pete the Cat books with your students.  It's all good!