how many letters?

We have been working with our names in different ways. For a "find your match" greeting children have walked carefully around the room, searching for their beginning letter tile. For our morning message, the children figured out how many sticky notes they would need to match the number of letters in their name. They wrote one letter on each sticky note and put the sticky notes in order, building their name on a name graph. We talked about a graph being another way to show information. We have been showing information about our names in different ways and a name graph is a tool for showing an audience how many letters in our names and comparing how many letters.

Once our graph was built, we looked at the information, noticing that Kayleigh has the most letters in her name and Sam has the least. We also noticed that many Kindergarten students have the same number of letters. One of our literacy essential standards is for children to identify all letters by name. We can practice this skill in meaningful ways, such as connecting the standard with knowing the letters in our names, connecting the standard to our morning greeting, and connecting our literacy standard to a math standard; counting and showing how many!

Our "find your match" greeting also supports children in knowing the layout of our classroom. When I say, "Did you look for your beginning letter on the math shelf?" I can check to see if a child knows where the math shelf is and how to access the math shelf. For children to build independence and take ownership of their learning, they need to know the layout of their classroom and where they can access different tools to support their work.