breaking handwriting down

Training up writers that can write not only fluently, but with fluid hand motions is something I gave thought to this year. Last school year was the first time I worked with the Common Core Standards and a mid-year expectation is that kinders will master:

• K.L.1.a-3. Print all uppercase letters.
• K.L.1.a-4. Print all lowercase letters.

At first, I'll admit, I was frustrated by having to put this into place. I've always focused on handwriting and forming letters (I had a principal that felt handwriting was very important). However, I took my time teaching letter formation. This year, I see the benefits of increasing the intensity with which we practiced, but also increasing the frequency of smart practice.

By increasing the intensity and amount of practice in smart ways, I do see less hesitation in general from my writers and I do less re-teaching in this area overall. Why? Because they haven't had time to develop incorrect habits.


We started teaching a letter a day to our students and part of my main focus was how to form the letter. We skywrite with our fingers, noses, toes... anything to keep us moving those first days of school! We always followed up the morning after by practicing the letter with our "rainbow books" that my favorite teacher down the hall made for us. (And boy do some learn their color words from this!)

Teaching a sing-songy way to form it while describing the strokes really helped set the stage.


We do have a handwriting curriculum book that does get used (ah hem), but it lacks showing the connection between the strokes I knew my students picked up from our sing-songy practice and the letters that actually use those strokes.

So I made three simple sheets to practice in small groups. The top portion practices the simple stroke and the bottom is the letters that I think help practice the stroke the best. At the bottom, my kinders had to change crayon colors when writing each letter. This was almost mean, but it works. They have to almost hit the "reset" button in their brains to think, "What kind of stroke was I making?" when putting their new crayon to the paper. If they simply use the same color, they begin to go on autopilot and focus less on what their hand is actually doing.

We didn't just practice on these sheets that went home. We practiced in our small groups on whiteboards, in paint bags, with playdough and I assessed along the way...

What didn't work...

My desire to have students practice just the letters they needed to form correctly was very tricky to keep track of and communicate progress to each student on an on-going basis. I could keep track in my binder, but how could I let the kinders get excited over their own growth, even if it was just one new letter they figured out? And how can I show them which letters they should be practicing individually over and over right now?

I made an alphabet chart for each student and we marked off each letter they mastered. This was way too tricky to keep up with. The format was just too cumbersome and flipping to a different student's page to mark off their letters while others needed to see their page so they could see what to work on just didn't work logistically.

What did work...

Note cards. I actually made these to focus the practice my kinders were doing on producing their letter sounds. Only the letters sounds they needed were written on their own personal card. They had to cover up each letter written on their card with a bingo chip three times at the beginning of a group lesson before completing the whole alphabet chart with sounds. When a student could produce each sound without the chart, we marked it off and celebrated!

So, I flipped over their card and drew a pencil icon at the top to signify these were for handwriting to my emerging readers. I wrote their letters to still master underneath, grouped by upper and lowercase. As pictured above, you can see that this student had quite a few to practice right after our first quarter assessments based on the number of letters written on the card. You can also see that we can easily cross things off as they are mastered, giving a sense of accomplishment!

Same routine... they get their individual card (which are easily stored by groups) and practice writing each letter three times. I did incentivize them for their hard work the first few times (a smelly spot works wonders), but now they want the privilege to do the whole chart and strut their stuff after practicing their focus letters! This also gives me the luxury of being able to give each kinder my attention since they all finish at different times, yet have an additional thing to do. These sheets were created this year after I made my starting dot handwriting font and they are laminated with uppercase on one side, lowercase on the other.

While all of that is in small group, remember I said that we started out our year teaching a letter a day? We moved to focusing on vowels and then began hitting a letter formation pattern as a focus during a whole group work time. Well, I figured if using an alphabet and sight word chart work... why not a handwriting chart?

{Free Handwriting Strokes Posters}

So I made a few handwriting posters (giant sized) and we used one of the four (seen on the right) as a focus for a week. Again we used skywriting with fingers, noses and toes to feel the formation of the letters and even went on a hunt around the classroom for letters with the pattern.

This helped keep the sing-songy strokes as something that connected the whole class and gave us all "one language" to speak.

We are getting very close to all traditional students being at 100% and I am seeing huge gains in both writing sight words and writing in general.

More Handwriting

> Get the handwriting font (free)
> Download beginning strokes sheets  (free)
> Download handwriting posters/workmats (free)

Related Product 

> Playdough Word Work Pack

So, with some focused practice which I felt was smarter than I've done before, I am one happy teacher to celebrate the little moments of mastery with my kinders! If you like what I do here on KindergartenWorks, then be sure to subscribe today. I look forward to sharing ideas with you weekly.
- Leslie

*Free downloadable Thank You Gift included when you subscribe via email or RSS.

learning teen numbers in kindergarten

Are you beginning to get your school "groove" for the year? Right around day 20-25 is when I think that students really begin to hear your voice. Clarification, they have heard your voice enough over that time period that it can begin to pierce their little current train of thought and you can more easily and quickly gain their attention. It took me a couple of years to learn this, but its almost like magic when it takes hold! We are in our fifties at this point in the school year and have come such a long way!


In math, I really feel like we are making great strides and have found the routine and groove for making it all happen! The last three times I met with my math groups our main focus was on answering the question, "Why do teens have a 1?"

The first day was almost brutal as we started with a discussion and didn't get very far. We used some manipulatives and made some teen numbers to try and find out why, but nothing really seemed to stick by the end of our exploration. We used a decomposing statement to write down what we made and boy did I make a big deal out of this number one that we saw!

We've seen this statement every day since the beginning of school as part of our calendar routine, but now we took our fingers and rainbow slid the number from the statement to the correct place value in the first box.

I don't want to say that I expected it, but I figured we'd need a few times of hitting this to really get the concept. Oh boy. Some of them may have appeared more confused than anything. Would we really be able to learn our teens better by understanding why 13 looks the way it does? This is my hope.

The second time we met, they looked like deer in the headlights as I re-asked the question, "Why do teens have a 1?"

But would you know it that almost one in each group was able to communicate enough to share that they had gotten it... just when I thought no one had connected the dots.

But, that's just 1 out of 6 in a group! So, we began exploring again...

Using ten frame foam mats and bingo chips as counters, we made teen numbers and explored numbers larger (depending upon the group) to see why they don't have a one. Well, this began to grow some excitement. Their eyes lit up in three out of four groups to begin to see that they could form larger numbers in counting by tens and then switching to ones.

Using our clapping and snapping they wanted to put their counters and a partner's counters together. Then they wanted to put them together with another, and then combine them all! Over the duration of one additional lesson, we had enough time and practice to start small and work up to big numbers (up to 91), all the while writing our decomposing statement as we went that many of them are really figuring it out!

Things are really beginning to click and they are seeing the why behind this portion of our calendar time, more than just the routine of doing it everyday. So now, they smile when I ask, "Why do teens have a one?" because we are proud to feel like we've cracked the code as we are learning more about these numbers!

I am looking forward to the next weeks climbing into December to work on solidifying, working through misconceptions as they come and continuing to excite them about those big numbers and using what they are learning about counting by tens and ones to put it all together! I share this since its something different I am trying this year instead of first learning what each numeral looks like (I know how much we kinder teachers love 11, 12, 13 and 15 ;) and then learning how to make it, we are relying on our rote counting and 1:1 counting skills to make it first and then determine why it looks the way it does.

By trying it this way we are hitting all of these Common Core Standards:

• K.NBT.1.a Compose numbers from 11-19 from a group of ten ones and additional ones using objects.
• K.NBT.1.b Decompose numbers from 11-19 into a group of 10 ones and additional ones using objects.
• K.CC.3.c. Print numbers from 0-20 when prompted 
• K.CC.3.d. Recognize numbers from 11-20 out of sequence.
• K.CC.5.a. Count up to 20 objects that are in an order by answering the question “how many”.

More Math

Download a free decomposing sheet (as seen above). Great for laminating and using in groups.
Teach how to draw a ten frame
Describe 2D shapes
Exploring Decomposing and Composing Numbers with Equations
A Decomposition/Composition Sample Lesson Plan
Decomposing Teen Numbers Game

More K.NBT

why does 50+7=57? working with accelerated kindergartners

tips for working on decomposing and composing numbers in kindergarten - Part 2

Decomposing Numbers - Part 1
why does 10+6=16?

Let me remember this the next time I want to try something new and it feels like I'm trying to herd a group of cats up Mount Sinai... that with a question and guided exploration we can make it click!

 If you like what I do here on KindergartenWorks, then be sure to subscribe today. I look forward to sharing ideas with you weekly.
- Leslie

*Free downloadable Thank You Gift included when you subscribe via email or RSS.

describing 2D shapes (K.G.4)

Part of our morning math mini-lessons at the beginning of this quarter were focused on describing shapes by their sides and vertices.

{Okay, confession... I will no longer teach "corners." The moment I used the word vertices, I had their attention like no other since they had never heard that word before... corners...they tuned out and I worked twice as hard.}

We originally learned that vocabulary the third week of school when we were talking about sorting by the number of vertices.

I drew a large shape on a piece of paper, labeled it with the name (which we mastered identifying last quarter) and then used a different color marker to highlight the number of sides and vertices. For a few of the shapes, I showed a snippet of the 2D shapes video by Harry Kindergarten.

Since the standard K.G.4.a says that my kinders should "Describe two-dimensional shapes to identify their various attributes, including vertices, sides, corners, and length of sides" then this is where we are headed. What's a fun way to then get them practicing the verbal description part? During a math lesson in small groups this week, we played "What's Hiding Under the Rug?"

It was great for me to use as an informal pre-assessment of where they are at in their describing abilities and really gave us a reason for learning how to describe a square different from a rectangle.

How do you play? Under a large surface (cloth, 11x17 paper, folder, etc.) hide the 2D shapes. I highly recommend using foam shapes or manipulative ones versus paper so that kinders can "feel" the sides and vertices. One player describes the shapes with the number of sides and vertices, without naming it. The other player reaches under and feels for the correct shape based on that description. If they pull out the right shape and name it, they get to keep the card and shape as their "point."

That's it! Super simple, but it gets them talking and describing!

Describing 2D Shapes Game

More on Shapes

• Free 2D Shape Downloads
• 10 Activities for Describing 3D Shapes (K.G.3)

I hope these tips will help your kinders better describe their 2D shapes! If you like what I do here on KindergartenWorks, then be sure to subscribe today. I look forward to sharing ideas with you weekly.
- Leslie 

*Free downloadable Thank You Gift included when you subscribe via email or RSS.