Valentine Recap and Two Little Cuties!!

Boy, do kids love Valentine's Day!  My two valentines are 12 and 2.  They are my pride and joy:)  Of course, I also have a ton of love for my hubby as well.  But look how adorable they are!  I could just eat them up.

Today my daughter totally blew me away by writing a short story that was amazing.  She totally just wrote it for fun because she was inspired by a song.  Where does she get this gift?  I have NO idea!  Definitely not from me.  I am so proud to be her mom.  On the other hand, my son is sleeping in his own bed for the second night in a row with no tears.  I may be on a roll!

So here is a little recap on my valentine comprehension activities.  In all honesty, I was totally blown away by my students.  I could not have asked them to perform any better.  There are a few tweaks that I would still like to make........I always feel like I could make things better.  I am not sure if that is a blessing or a curse.  

I am so tickled!  These are examples of two students who worked accurately and fairly independent!  Always a bonus:

Here are examples of my kindergarten comprehension assessments.  I did them "one on one" only because I wanted to know what they knew without any influence of their peers.  I was super happy with the results.  The little guy that I am concerned about did great with the visual supports and is beginning to understand the meaning of story grammar independently.  Yay!

Thanks for taking the time to stop by:)  I would love to hear your your thoughts and comments!

Hearts, Candy, & Valentine Comprehension

 I have a student this year that needs to learn story vocabulary like characters, setting, beginning, middle, and end, etc.  but requires visual supports to aide in this learning process.  It is not always easy to find story grammar with visual cues unless of course you use a board maker program.  I wanted something a little more fun to work on this skill with my kiddos so I decided to create a valentine "mystery" for the students.  This allows me to also discuss another genre with the kids, which is a total BONUS.  Of course we started today out by connecting to the students prior knowledge about Valentine's Day!  I could almost see the sugar glaze in their eyes when they talked about the treats, cards, party, etc.

My main focus with the book is to work on comprehension skills like discussing characters, setting, problem, solution.  I also want the students to sequence story events visually in the correct order of beginning, middle, and end.  To target all of these skills, I created visual supports that accompanied the story.   Today, I discussed not only the genre with the students but the story vocabulary as well before reading the book.

 The students and I then read the book chorally.   Of course some groups required a little more support than other but all groups were able to answer the questions relating to the book especially with the visual supports.  Goal for tomorrow is to reread the book and answer comprehension questions about the story.
 

 I am hoping that the kids are successful with the following activities.  I am hoping that they are able to complete the a visual story event sequence independently (which is at times difficult when working with at risk students).  I made two versions for the students.  One version only has three events and the other has 4 story events.

I also want to check whether the students understand the meaning of vocabulary-- characters, setting, problem, and solution so I wrote questions for the students to respond to related to the for concepts I am targeting.   My major goal was to be able to check comprehension of the students who were not quite writing yet fluently.  So I came up with comprehension questions with visual responses.  I am very excited to try them out with my kinders tomorrow.

 Thanks for taking the time to check out my post.  I would love to hear your ideas and thoughts on using visuals or teaching comprehension.  The first FIVE people to comment can have my book, 22 visuals, and comprehension questions for free.