Jen's Notebook

Every year I seem to change how I do the daily news. When I moved into Kindergarten from First grade six years ago, I had the kids tell me a narrative that I would write up for them as the daily news. I noticed this was a great way to teach narrative and small moment but my students didn’t seem to be able to grab on to the concepts that are the mechanics of writing. I know, I know those dreaded capital letters, periods, etc… Developmentally that seemed so hard for them. So through the years I have been trying to find a happy balance to introduce them both to new writing genres and the mechanics of writing.  This year I have added sounds and a hand motion for punctuation when we reread. I have also changed what we o with the daily news piece each morning when we finish it. Here are a few examples of ideas I have used during Daily news.

In this example from the  beginning of the school year. We work on beginning sounds and the letters they make the sound. I randomly pick letters to underline and make the sound with them from the Daily news each morning. We also talk about the number of the day, which is always the day part of the date.

The second example begins during the second quarter of the school year. I circle ten or so sight words that we have bee working on and then we read then as a whole group. I always include the date as well.

The Third example begins third quarter ( do you see my pattern here. haha) I have the helper each morning pick ten students one at a  time. The student that is picked reads a sight word off of the daily news. The helper then finds the word on the page and circles it.

The fourth example, fourth quarter of course, becomes a team effort to write the daily news. I write part of the words with my color of marker and the helper of the day writes their part with another color. I try not to have as long of sentences this time of year because it takes the students longer to write their part. I say the sentence we are going to write out loud, count the number of words we will be writing on our fingers and then go over it with the whole group before we start each sentence.

At the end of every daily news,  we always reread the entire page as a whole group. And we include the sound and hand motion for each different part of the punctuation in the piece.

I would love to hear from all of you! I love getting new ideas on how to make the daily news a more effective teaching moment. Please share your ideas!!! Have a great Saturday!!!

Every month I change the decorations on my classroom door to match something that is going on that month. I usually use holidays or seasons and always the kids names. But for the last month this year I am going to try something new. I went to the dollar store and bought all kinds of hats, glasses, etc. to dress-up with. I am planning to have each of my kids dress up how ever they want, hold a sign up that states what they want to be when they grow up and take their picture. I am going to hang their pictures on the door under the statement “Class of 2026!” I am so excited to see it, yet dismayed that the year 2026 seems like forever! And I got a shopping trip to the dollar store out of this new idea, which always makes for a great day! Have a wonderful Saturday!!! 🙂 (Here are some of my dollar store finds!)