Mt. Pleasant Elementary School

Literacy Activities in Kindergarten

Literacy activities give students a chance to work independently, reinforcing a number of literacy skills and fostering good work habits.  Sometimes children work on their own, sometimes in pairs, and sometimes in small groups.  Different centers are introduced throughout the year.  As the kindergarten year progresses, literacy activities give the students many ways to practice new skills and show growing independence.

Some of the literacy activities include:

Working in Journals:  Students add stories and illustrations to their personal journals.  These journals go home at the end of the year.

Poetry Folders:  Students add a new poem to their collection.  They look for and underline words they know, and decorate the poem with appropriate details.  Poetry Folders will go home at the end of kindergarten.

Word Work Sorts:  Students sort pictures, letters or words to sort onto a sorting sheet.  Once they sort the pieces, they organize them onto a sheet.  This word work can reinforce beginning sounds work, rhyming words or other word study areas. 

Games:  Students play games such as Beginning Sounds Bingo, Sight Word Lotto or Rhyme Time.  

Whiteboards:  Students practice writing familiar poems, words, names, letters and numbers on their whiteboards.  Sometimes the students generate their own writing, and sometimes they copy or write along as we compose a class sentence or message.  

Read Around the Room:  Students travel around the room with a clipboard and a piece of paper in search of words they know.  As they find the words, they write them down.  Sometimes, the children are asked to find words that follow rules, which makes them look more closely at their word choices.  For example, children may be asked to "Read Around the Room" and find only words that have 3 letters. 

Sticker Story:  Students affix stickers to a paper and create a scene, which they then write about.