Hello Kinder Friends,
Wow! We have been so busy and time is just flying by. As I was preparing my lesson plan several weeks ago, I was glancing through my objectives and deciding what my focus lessons would be. I came across this objective:
Reading/Vocabulary Development
Students understand new vocabulary and use it correctly when reading and writing.
Students are expected to:
Identify and sort pictures of objects into conceptual categories and
Use a picture dictionary to find words.
As I was searching through my available resources for these lessons I knew I had a few things to support sorting pictures into conceptual categories. In fact, the dictionaries that I have in my classroom are organized in conceptual categories instead of alphabetical order. I have searched for a long time to find affordable picture dictionaries to buy a class set and I have never been able to find what I really wanted. In the past, I would have loved to have found something that I would be able to also send home with the children to use when they are writing at home. In my search I kept running into dead ends. Recently, I was fortunate to be able to find a teacher made product that fit my needs and I could hardly contain my excitement!
Words really just can't describe how excited I was. I felt like I had found hidden treasure. Finally, finally I had a picture dictionary I could afford for my entire class AND I could send one home AND I could print it in color or black and white! Just brilliant, wonder why I never thought of that? As soon as I grabbed those hot papers off my printer, I sent those little dictionaries to the copy room and in a flash I had a set of dictionaries for each child for home and school! All I had to do is download, print, copy, cut in half and staple. About 40 dictionaries took less than 20 minutes of preparation. And all I can say as it was time well spent.
As an introduction we spent a lot of time looking through our new dictionaries. As I walked around the room I could hear the children as they discovered pictures and words that were relevant in their lives and I knew would be relevant in their own writing. I just can't express how happy I was. And as the week progressed, I noticed that reading our picture dictionaries was a very popular choice for Read to Self and Read to Someone.
I gathered the children together to discuss what they noticed about their new dictionaries. My first three responses were letters, pictures and words! BINGO! And then I asked if they found any words that they had been needing in their writing and they quickly came up with a list that we recorded together. I was able to jump right in and talk about how helpful a picture dictionary is as a writing tool.
The dictionaries inspired some great stories and helped to generate some new ideas for writing. The addition of the dictionaries added a spark of excitement as the children planned for writing this week. As I was conferencing with the children, I could hear the children talking about what their next story would be about because they found the picture in the dictionary and they knew they could write the word! How exciting for a young writers and a teacher!
I noticed a lot of emerging non fiction stories and I was so excited! The children had just discovered caterpillars in our garden and remembered that the word butterfly was in the picture dictionary and just like that a new story was born, a non fiction writer was discovered and the science teacher in me was happy, just so happy. I can't wait to see how this story develops.
If you are looking for a picture dictionary for young children and are interested in this wonderful teacher made product please click on the dictionary pages above and this will take you to the
Teachers pay Teachers store for A Teeny Tiny Teacher. You really can download this product and have it ready by Monday in a flash and you too will have some excited and energized writers that have a new writing tool in their hands and maybe a new writing tool to take home!
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