Get Ready for First Grade-Essential Tips for a Smooth Transition

0:00 Well, hello, it's Robin Wilson and I am your host today on the Education Connection and I want to talk today about a big transition, helping kindergartners get ready for first grade, but can I just stop a minute and say, you guys, 25 episodes today. This is a celebration night for me, 25 episodes and if you've been here for every one of them, I just want to say thank you and give you a little shout out today. But whether you're a parent or a teacher, I'm going to be sharing some practical tips tonight to make this transition smoother, especially in math and reading. So let's jump in. Tonight, I'm going to be talking about helping those kindergartners get ready for first grade. Now, I'm a first grade teacher and I've recently met with a few parents of sweet, sweet babies that are not quite ready for next year. They're not quite ready for second grade. Now, tonight I'm talking about getting ready for first grade, but I know our friendly kindergarten teachers are talking to the same kind of parents, the same type of children that are given just a little bit of struggling right now and they are having a little bit of a hard time. And so it's definitely

1:34 something that needs to be discussed. It needs to be something that we are addressing if our little one is struggling and I'm just here to help you with that. So why readiness for first grade matters? First grade is a big step and that's the grade that I teach. So it actually starts bringing more structure, longer learning periods and higher expectations. So with the right support, though, kids can enter first grade feeling confident and excited to learn. And you might want to ask, well, why are you talking about this in the middle of the year? It is because I just had those conferences with some parents and it's just time to start looking at that. And we still have some time in this year to keep going and to get ready for the next year. And so right now is the right time to start really, really focusing in on those reading and math skills to help your little one get ready for the next year. You know, there's time right now. There's still some time. And so that's why it's so important to start now. Here's something you can do to get ready for first grade. Now, actually, a lot of these will fit for all three grades. If you're getting ready for kindergarten, getting ready for first grade and getting ready for second grade.

2:56 Last week I did kindergarten. Today I'm doing first grade and next week I'll be talking about getting ready for second grade. But this is some something you can do with all three grades. Read daily. I'm going to tell you read to your kids set a bedtime routine or maybe it's just as soon as you get home from school, they get a snack and a little break and then you read to them. But have them also read words. And if they're in kindergarten, they might not be reading books just yet, but they might be reading some small words. And then if they're reading some of the earliest book or books or the colors were kind of books, you know, the ones that you can get from the library, you turn the page and one page says blue and it has a lot of blue things, a blue crayon, blue paint, blue car. And then you turn the page and it's called, you know, red on the next page. So those are some of the very most simplest books that you can read for kindergarten. But you know, your kindergartner might be starting to read a little bit. And getting them ready for first grade is what you can do is to help them read, read with them. So one of the things we teachers do is read to them, read with them and let them read to you. So it's three different types of reading that you can do with your child. When you're asking questions, so don't just read the words. We talked about that in some of my earlier episodes. If you're just reading

4:30 the words, your hyperlexia and that does not necessarily mean that you understand what you're reading. So it's really important to stop and talk about each page and ask things like, well, what do you think's going to happen next? I love to ask that question when we are finished with the book. And there are no more words. And you know, the story has ended and then we might say, well, what do you think's going to happen next? Excuse me. Why do you think the character did that? And who was the main character? Who is the one we talked about the most? So asking those questions and what's going on here on this page, letting them talk about the book is very important to help comprehension. You know, I'm big on comprehension. I love me some comprehension skills. Number two, letters, sounds and sight words. And I know, I know a lot of parents will say, my child can say their alphabet or my child knows their sounds. They might know them in isolation or in, in the alphabet when you're looking at the alphabet, like what is our say, or what does S say?

5:49 S, but when they are mixing those in to make words, sometimes even my first graders forget that Y says, yeah, they want to say that Y says, what, even though we go over that daily. And so the reason they might say Y says, what is because when you say the letter Y, you're putting your lips together like the sound for Y. And so that's a very, very common mistake. So just going over some of those letters, going over them again, practice them daily, that will surely help them. Practice writing and spelling. Now last week I talked about I'm getting ready for kindergarten or kindergarten and having them learn how to write their name.

6:38 That's really important. Continue writing their name. I do have sometimes a first grader that will come to school and cannot write their name. And so we're going to help them with that, of course, but that's something you can do at home to have them ready to go. Use flashcards, use games or apps to make it more fun. So you might put some three by five cards down with just the letters on them and you're going to just say the sound. So you might say the sound D and have them stomp on the letter D. Or you might say the sound is E, E, E, or E, E, E and have them stomp on the letter E. It's a lot of jumping. It's a lot of dancing around. It's a lot of fun. Even put some music on to make it even more fun. Some important words to know before they go to first grade are the words, sight words, the, and, is, it, me, we, like, and see. And there are some others that you can do I, A, as, and so a lot of those you can just write down a really good resource that you can look up is called Dolce words, Dolce 100 first words, or you might look up fries, F-R-Y,

8:16 E-S, 100 sight words. There are lots of freebies that you can download. Easily print those out and make your sight words. Now don't give them too many, maybe 10 at a time. Once they have accomplished those 10, then you can start on the next 10. That will give them a, a leg up going on into first grade and be ready to go. Have them practice writing and spelling words. Encourage writing simple words and sentences. Have your child label the drawings or write short notes to family members. Maybe you can have a writing Friday, so where everybody in the family writes a nice note to each other and that would include your youngest ones to get involved writing a nice little note to family members. Give them good practice at that as, as well and encourage the family. You can strengthen listening skills at number four. Give multi-step directions like put your shoes away, grab a book and sit on the couch. So make sure that you're giving more than two directions. So go upstairs, grab the, um, your socks and your shoes, bring them downstairs and we will put them on. So helping them follow the, the, um, directions in the classroom, um, will be very similar.

9:45 A lot of times we're going to line up for recess. You need to put your paper in your mailbox, get your coat and line up. And so having those three step directions will very much help them get on their way for first grade. For math, let's talk about math for a minute. Counting a number recognition, make sure your child can count to 20. Recognize numbers up to 10 so that they just see them and they know what they are. And next make sure that when they see the number nine or the number five that they know what that means. So if you write a five on a three by five card, they can put five beans on that three by five card. They can recognize that five, um, the number actually means five things.

10:37 So other things you can use would be pennies or macaroni's. Um, and so you can do one through 10 and have them place on each of the cards, that number that it represents so that they are, um, understanding that's not just a number, but it represents, um, no, a number of things of items. Um, basic addition and subtraction. So you can start with hands on activities like cereal or blocks to practice adding and taking away small amounts. So you might write two plus one equals three and you can show those with beans or again, or macaroni's or your pennies. So just your basic addition. Um, I would definitely start with addition and then once you kind of get that mastered, then you can move on to subtraction. Very simple, less than 10. So 10 minus five or 10 minus two, um, eight minus four. Don't go too big with those unless they have those mastered, then definitely go up, you know, you could move on up to 15. And then if they have that mastered, move on up to 20, but it's okay if they're just within 10, um, going into first grade for subtraction. They will be learning that in first grade, the higher numbers. Number three, recognizing patterns and shapes.

12:02 So point out patterns in your daily life and play games and involve sorting by color, shape, and size. Fun game. And I talked about this last week with the getting ready for kindergarten is when you are driving down the road, you can play I spy the color red if you're coming on a stop sign and they can call that out. Well, you can also call out the shapes. If you see a yield sign, that's a triangle. You might say I spy a triangle. So you can play this color, say shape or size. Um, if you're doing size, you can do small, medium and large and you can do that maybe on your kitchen table. So you have three different items, one that's small, something medium, and you can probably pull from your toy box for that one. And with something small, something medium and something large, and they would just point it out. Understanding. So number four, understanding time concepts. Talk about daily routines using words like morning, afternoon and night and introduce clocks to recognize hours and minutes.

13:10 Now I will tell you in my first grade class, we start at the beginning of the year, just understanding in our math meeting, the hour, and then around the middle of the year, we start adding the half hour. So in first grade, they're going to be learning hour and half hour. So if you can just introduce them to that, they don't need to have that mastered, but just introduce them, show them what the hour hand looks like, what the minute hand looks like, and that what if it's eight o'clock, the little hand is on the eight and the big hand is on the 12. And if you do that, just introducing them to that, that would be a big help for them to just have a little step ahead going into it. It won't be the first time they've heard it. So you can build independence and confidence. So encourage self help skills.

14:04 Teach kids to open their lunchboxes. And I did talk about this last week with the kindergarteners. It's the same with first grade. Have them practice something you're going to bring, have them bring and see if they can open it without you. It's not that the teachers don't want to help. They absolutely want to help, but you don't want your little one waiting to eat sitting there waiting to eat while the teacher is trying to get around to 10 to 15 kiddos that don't know how to open their lunch. So it might be five minutes, seven minutes, eight minutes before they can start eating. And the teachers and aids are running around trying to get everybody get their lunch opened and you know, time just passes. They only get about 25 minutes by the time they sit down, going through the line and sitting down.

14:58 So if you are sending their lunch, make sure that they can open everything. And I did talk about, if you want to know about some of the things to avoid, you might go back and listen to my kindergarten one. Those getting ready for kindergarten, those fruit ones that are in the fruit juice little packets and you open them up. I as an adult, when I open them up, I spill them. They just pop out right in front of me. They spew out, they spew on my clothes. And those poor sweet little ones, they're trying their best to get them open and they cannot. And a lot of times it does get all over them and all over their other food. And so it just helps to avoid their certain things to avoid. When they're lining up to go to recess or if they're lining up to go home, again, the teacher is sometimes alone. Many teachers do not have an assistant in their classroom. I have one with me at our at lunchtime and then but at the very end of the day, she leaves out just before we're putting jackets on. So it's me getting any jackets on and at this time of the year, most of my students now can put the little zipper. I don't know what you call it, but the little thing that goes down into the other thing to make it zip up. Make sure they know how to do that because I want to help them. I do. It's not that. It's just that getting to all of them and getting to them quickly is sometimes difficult to do. And so everyone just has to wait on me. And so I try to teach them as I'm going so they become more independent

16:33 as the year goes on as well. Can we also talk about tying those shoes? That is another thing. So once we've gone around and got all the jackets zipped up and everybody's got their hoods on and then we have four or five pairs of shoes that need to be tied. And so even if there's two of us working, it's not easy to get all the shoes tied. Now we do get around to it, but we could be outside so much quicker if they know how to tie their shoes. And it just also gives them more independence to get up in the morning, to get their shoes on, get them tied and going to recess. And then at the end of the day and throughout the day, they're just, you know, if their shoe just comes untied, we're walking down the hall. We have to stop the line and get those shoes tied because we don't want anybody falling. My suggestion would be if your child is struggling to get their shoes tied, practice on that at home, but maybe until they've learned how to do that, maybe get the Velcro kind now, or if your child is having some coordination skills, difficulties, then just get the Velcro.

17:48 It's okay. And they can until they learn how to tie those shoes. And then eventually it's like riding a bike. Once they learn to tie their shoes, they get to wear the shoes that need tied. But teaching them helps them learn, it helps them grow, praise their effort that they're trying and just tell them how much you love that they are trying. So I do always encourage my children in my class to try first and I'm coming around and if I, if they don't have it done by the time I get to them, then I'll definitely help them. And I'm teaching them along the way as well. So number three and building independence and confidence is developed classroom habits. Practice raising your hand to speak or taking turns. So when they're home, they don't have to take turns to talk unless you have a large family. But when you're in a classroom of 20 to 25 kiddos, this year, my class is a little bit smaller of 18, but I have had first grade classes up to 30, believe it or not. And so practicing raising their hands to speak and just understanding that it's different than it is at home, you know, where they can just speak out at any time. That's why we do it our home too. We just speak out because there's not that many people to compete with. But in a classroom, understanding how to take turns is really important. Teach them how to sit for short periods. And I think when you read them books or you work with them with these things, that's

19:23 definitely going to meet that need right there. Help them to transition between activities smoothly. So if you are playing at the park and you give a set time to go, practice going and when you say go, it's time to go because when the whistle blows at recess, so maybe you can practice with the whistle at recess, they're going to have to line up. So it's a little bit different when you have a, you know, your own children in the play at the playground and you say, Oh, okay, we can do five more minutes. Well, we can't do five more minutes because we might be going to lunch or we might be going to our specials class or we have to get back in because we've got to start our next learning block or social studies, science, math or reading. And so we have block schedules and we can't play for another five minutes. So helping them transition from one thing to another. And when you blow the whistle or when you say it's time to clean up, they, you know, set a timer, they have five minutes, they need to get that done. That will definitely help them for sure. So my final thoughts for you is the best way to prepare your child for first grade is through fun, everyday learning experiences. So if your child is beginning to get frustrated, just take some deep breaths and try again later. I wouldn't force the episode, I wouldn't force it to go on too long, but just try again later. Practice it again, give them a break and then

20:54 maybe in an hour or two or after nap time, you might try one of these strategies again. All consistent efforts will make a big difference and then they will have that experience once they've come to school. So just want to thank you for listening to the Education Connection. If you found these tips helpful, share this episode with a fellow parent or teacher and don't forget to subscribe for more early education tips. If you would like to leave a five star review, that would be much appreciated. It will help my listeners find this platform so that they can also get the knowledge and the tips and the encouragement that they mean to have healthy, happy learners. See you next time.