SC Kindergarten Teachers Conference

Earlier this month, I went to the SC Kindergarten Teachers Conference presented by SDE. This is the first year I have been to the conference in 5 years because our district has not allowed teachers to travel for professional development unless they initiate the professional development. I was so excited to find out that I could attend. As in previous years, this was a wonderful conference that had so many wonderful presenters. 

I got to meet the fabulous Dr. Jean. She was the keynote speaker on the first day of the conference so she started all of us out by singing and dancing. It was lots of fun. I also went to 2 of her workshops. She gave some great ideas for teaching sight words to our kinders. One of my favorite ideas she gave was to write the sight words on paper plates as a different way to review sight words. The circle shapes draw the students' eyes to the middle of the circle which keeps their focus better than a square or rectangle shape. 

I decided to recreate her idea and make the circles on my computer. I made a set of sight word circles for the Journeys reading series sight words and my kinders are loving them. They think it is special to get to read the sight words from the circles.

 On the second day, I met the wonderful Heidi Butkus of Heidi's Songs. She was another great presenter. She led us in the singing of some of her songs and gave ideas for teaching CVC words and word families to our students. She also gave ideas for working with the struggling readers/learners in our classroom. 

I will be sharing more ideas from the conference in the upcoming weeks so stay tuned!