Books and Activities for Kindergarteners

Books for Kindergarteners:

1. "A Bad Case of the Stripes" by David Shannon
2. "Alexander and the Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" by Judith Viorst
3. "Pancakes for Breakfast" by Tomie DePaola

I chose these books because at the kindergarten level is is important to have wordless picture books as well as books with printed text. Compared to the books used at the preschool level, books selected for a kindergarteners should have a more complex story plot and more text on each page. Supportive, complementary illustrations that enhance children's comprehension of the story or nonfiction content are still essential.

Activities for Kindergarteners:

1. Story reenactment: Children's language competencies are enhanced by opportunities to reenact a familiar story through dramatization. This may take several forms. The teacher may begin by reading the story and having children act out different events nonverbally. Gradually, children's verbal participation can be increased to include unison responses, dialogue segments, or whole conversational interactions.

2. Creating morning messages: Using a "morning message" activity provides opportunities to focus on both oral and written language. This activity is based in a letter you would write to your students each day about the upcoming events in your classroom, the weather, school events, or an experience you have had. This letter provides the basis for focusing on the sounds of words as well as the way words are written.

3. Story-telling through dictated writing: Opportunities to dictate stories encourage children to use their oral language competencies in creating a text. Because children are not constrained by the writing process, their stories have more elaboration and structure than their stories would if they were writing them down themselves. As the children dictate a story, the teacher writes it on a chart paper or on chalkboard. Each child contributes a sentence or a thought. The teacher is careful to preserve the sentence structure or dialect of each child. After the story is completed, the teacher reads it back to the students, pointing to each word as it is read. Then the story is read a second time, with the children encouraged to join in unison or by reading their own sentences.