Tomorrow morning I am starting my small group rotations in senior kindergarten. I do something different in each of the three classes, but it basically boils down to pulling leveled groups into the hall for various reading and math activities. For my very first rotation, I'm planning to do something simple that will give me a quick baseline look at the students' reading abilities.
Fun fact about me: I love to play bingo. I will create a bingo game for any skill, and I think I'm pretty good at making the game a little more challenging than just finding a number and trying to get five chips in a row. Later in the year I'll pull out my old standbys--Time Bingo and Money Bingo--but for now I'm sticking with simple sight words.
I thought this would be a good time to share one of my favorite online resources: http://www.print-bingo.com/
This site lets you create custom bingo cards for any skill! Click on the link on the homepage that says "I've read enough. Let me generate bingo cards!" Then click "Custom bingo cards with your own word or phrase list." (There are templates you can search through, but I've never looked at them.) You can design every aspect of your game: whether there's a free space in the middle, the text inside the free space... you can even change the top of the card so it says something other than "bingo." (My money bingo game says "money" at the top!) The bingo cards are uploaded to your computer as a five-page PDF, with two cards per page. If you need more than ten cards, just close the PDF, click the "create cards" button again, and it will generate ten totally different cards using the same word list. So easy!
I have so many ideas for Bingo games that are just waiting to be made! You could do states and capitals bingo, where you call out the state and the students have to find the capital on their cards (or vice-versa); vocabulary bingo (call out the definition, they look for the word); maybe even periodic table bingo (not that we have a need for that in early childhood!)
I'll share my time and money bingo cards once I figure out how to post PDF files on my blog!
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