4 Must-Have Tools for Kindergarten Small Group Reading Instruction
Small group reading instruction can be both exciting and daunting for teachers. With the right tools, this task transforms into a seamless and enriching experience for teachers and students. In this blog post, I share essential tools every educator should have for kindergarten small group reading instruction. Whether you’re a seasoned teacher or just starting your teaching adventure, these tools will empower you to confidently and efficiently engage, assess, and nurture your students’ reading skills.
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Favorite Literacy Manipulatives for Kindergarten
Literacy
1. Magnetic Letters
We use magnetic letters all year in our class. The magnetic letters I have are from Lakeshore Learning. My students have access to them during free-choice time using a magnetic board. I often see them spelling their name or word they are trying to spell phonetically. During our small group instruction, I use them for word building.
If you are short on funds to purchase magnetic letters, you can always print letters out to make a personal word-building kit. This is what we did during COVID when we were unable to share supplies.
2. Dry-Erase Pockets
Dry-erase pockets are used daily in my small groups. It is easy to put papers in them for your students to write on and then erase, yet it saves on copying a class set of papers. We use a sound mapping paper almost daily in our small group. You can grab this free resource here for your small-group instruction.
3. Dry-erase Pens and Boards
Dry-erase pens are useful in the classroom due to their ease of use. They allow for quick and frequent changes on whiteboards. An easy eraser and storage solution for dry-erase pens is toddler socks. We keep one pen in each sock. When students need a pen, they grab a sock with a pen inside.
Last year, I discovered small whiteboards from Really Good Stuff that are perfect for kindergarten. They measure 9 X 6 inches. One side is blank, the other side has large lines for new writers. You can see the size comparison to a typical size whiteboard in the picture below.
4. Transparent Bingo Chips
Transparent bingo chips, or we call them sound chips are a great tool for word mapping. Word mapping is the process of saying a word, breaking the word into phonemes (sounds), writing the letter combination that makes each phoneme, and writing the word.
We use the sound chips to help us break the word down into phonemes. We put a sound chip in each box that we hear a sound in the word we are breaking down. This multisensory approach helps students solidify their understanding of words.
During small group instruction, we map out four words. Next, I dictate a sentence to write using one or more of the words we mapped. This provides practice with letter formation, word spacing, and punctuation.
You can download the word mapping and sentence writing paper here.
Sometimes, I will add fun tools like Play-Doh, Pop-Its, etc. But the items listed in this post are my essentials. What are your favorite tools for kindergarten small group reading instruction?