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Found on KinderTown.com
Description:
Duck Duck Moose Reading is a solid phonics practice app for your beginning reader. Children quickly progress through five varied phonics activities, each focused on a specific set of letters. Games are entertaining to play and are designed to focus kids on individual sounds, letters, or both letters and sounds in the context of words. Kids earn animals to add to their zoo after each series of activities. Parents are given a progress report for multiple kids who log into the app. We’d like it if parents were able to customize which letters and sounds are given to each child to practice. Overall, this is a good phonics practice app with the high quality visual and touch screen design that Duck Duck Moose is known for. Duck Duck Moose Reading is perfect for children at the Kindergarten or first grade level and costs $2.99

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Follow Milo the Meerkat and his sidekick Puffs through the zoo on a phonics learning adventure! Duck Duck Moose Reading has 9 different word and letter activities that help kids learn by feeding and playing with flamingos, monkeys, lions, and more. Collect animals for your habitats and make your own zoo scene as you learn more letter sounds.

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Found on KinderTown.com
Description:
Intended for ages 4 and up, Kiwi and Pear’s World Adventure is an interactive storybook that follows these lovable monkeys on their travels, and encourages your children to learn about basic geography. Your children can join them for a ride on the Amazon River, ride a camel through Egypt, or enjoy a picnic at the base of Mount Fuji. All with fantastic animations, storytelling, and music throughout!

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Kiwi and Pear's World Adventure - Lite on the App Store

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Read reviews, compare customer ratings, see screenshots, and learn more about Kiwi and Pear's World Adventure - Lite. Download Kiwi and Pear's World Adventure - Lite and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

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Found on KinderTown.com
Description:
Word Wagon is a fun, award-winning app teaching letters, phonics and spelling. Based on Common Core State Standards kids will learn letter names, sounds and spelling of 4 and 6 letter words.

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Word Wagon - by Duck Duck Moose (iPad, iPod, iPhone App for Kids)

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Kindergarten phonics activities for reading: memory game.

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Kindergarten phonics activities for reading: memory game.

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Teacher trainer, Freia Layfield, shares her top tips for teaching phonics for reading to kindergarten children and demonstrates a useful memory game.

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Kindergarten phonics activities for reading: memory game

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Teacher trainer, Freia Layfield, shares her top tips for teaching phonics for reading to kindergarten children and demonstrates a useful memory game. For more video tips on teaching English to very young learners, as well as 21st century skills, visit https://elt.oup.com/feature/global/21st-century-skills-kindergarten

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Blending and segmentation (Phonics: Stage 4)

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Blending and segmentation (Phonics: Stage 4)

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Found in Week 2 PADLET
Description:
Yolanda Soryl teaches a small group of New Zealand 5 year old pupils how to blend and segment. These children have been at school between 6-8 weeks. The lesson follows the 'Hear Read Write Revise' approach to teaching phonics. The focus is on interactive learning, fun and success.

Yolanda trains teachers internationally on how to incorporate phonics in a balanced literacy programme.

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Blending and segmentation (Phonics: Stage 4)

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Kindergarten/1st Grade Phonics Activities 

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Kindergarten/1st Grade Phonics Activities 

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2 Activities:
1.Vowel-picture-word matching
-They listen to a word read or look at a picture, then place a block in the appropriate cup. This strengthens their Vowel recognition.
2.Rhyming-Vowel-Word Matching
-They see images of words and they need to match the rhyming word or same vowel to a picture on a different tab.

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Café Drama Center(Developing Language and Vocabulary Through Play)

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Café Drama Center(Developing Language and Vocabulary Through Play)

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Found on: http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/balancedliteracydiet/
Description:
Every month we try to switch the dramatic play center so that the children have different opportunities for play, and gives the kids opportunities to use different kinds of words and to role play in different situations. And they're building their vocabulary by dramatizing different situations.

Before we decided to open our café I thought it was important to brainstorm with the children to get their ideas for what we should see in the café. And so we came up with this list, and I thought it was important to draw little pictures to help them read that list, and it was also good for them for developing their vocabulary before they even started to play in the café. Giving the children a purpose for their writing is really important to me and so in various places in the classroom we've given them some motivation to write. In our café for example, the children have created the menus that are being used. So in Ava's menu we know that her donut costs 31¢ and we can see that she has chocolate milk on the menu for just 1¢.

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BALANCEDLITERACYDIET :: index :: Balanced Literacy Diet

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Every month we try to switch the dramatic play center so that the children have different opportunities for play, and gives the kids opportunities to use different kinds of words and to role play in different situations. And they're building their vocabulary by dramatizing different situations.

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Who's That Community Helper?(Building Knowledge, Language, and Early Literacy Skills)

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Who's That Community Helper?(Building Knowledge, Language, and Early Literacy Skills)

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Preparation:

1.  Find dress up clothes that represent several community helpers

1.  For example, firefighter hat and boots, gardening gloves and tools

2.  Create a name card for each community helper

1.  Write the names in clear, lowercase letters

3.  Right before the activity begins, invite several students to dress up as the community helpers

1.  Do this while the rest of the students are engaged in other activities

Implementation:

1.  Introduce each community helper to the class (without using their title) and have everyone guess who they are and what they do

1.  Ask students to support their ideas based on clues from the community helpers appearance

2.  Ask students to elaborate on their answers by asking questions

For example: Right! This person does have a job related to flowers. Can you tell me more about what you think this person does?

3.  If students are having difficulty, think-aloud about how you are able to guess the community helpers identity

2.  For each community helper:

1.  Show the class the cards with the names of your community helpers

2.  Ask them to think about the first sound they hear in the community helpers name

3.  Invite a student to come up and choose the correct card based on their knowledge of letter-sound correspondences

Praise the student if they are correct or provide support if they have difficulty choosing the correct card

Have the student give the card to the community helper to hold

3.  Repeat this process until all the community helpers have been identified

4.  Then, review each name as a class

Adaptations For:
English Language Learners/ESL:

- Give students more exposure to information about each community helper if they are not familiar with them
- Encourage these students to actively participate by allowing them to dress up as one of the community members
- Define and practice new vocabulary words (such as "firefighter" or "hose")

LD/Reading & Writing Difficulties:

- Some students may need additional help observing clues and making guesses
- If students struggle with letter-sound correspondences, provide assistance if you invite them to choose the correct name card

Cultural Appropriateness & Diversity:

- Ensure that students are not assigned "stereotyped" roles (for example: male firefighter, police officer, and doctor, female nurse, teacher, and mother)
- Use gender-neutral job titles, such as "police officer" instead of "police man"

Differentiated Instruction:

- Allow some or all students to guess the name of the community helper by writing the names with inventive spelling and holding up their guess

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BALANCEDLITERACYDIET :: index :: Balanced Literacy Diet

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20 minutes - Find community helper dress up clothes - Create community helper name cards - Right before activity, invite several students to dress up 10 minutes - Teacher introduces the community helpers - Class guesses the name and job of each helper - Class identifies the first sound in each helper's name - Students choose the name card that corresponds to each helper's name Teacher: - Community helper dress up clothes - Name cards for community helpers

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Great Resource for many different lesson plans!
Creative where it refers to lesson plans as recipes and sections/topics as food groups.
It states:

The Essential Food Groups:
Know your ingredients!

The "recipe sampler" above presents one "literacy recipe" (lesson plan) for each of the key "food groups" required for elementary students to grow and flourish in literacy. Browse the Recipe Finder tab (search) to explore the hundreds of literacy recipes available on this website. Below is a brief explanation of each of the food groups. For more in-depth understanding, go to the Food Groups tab and learn what it is, how to teach it, and how to assess it.

1. Motivation for Literacy
Activities that stimulate enjoyment of books and appreciation for the usefulness of reading and writing motivate students to become engaged with the magic of the written word.

2. Oral Language
Understanding and speaking in oral language are fundamental to the development of reading and writing, so teachers need to provide rich opportunities for students to communicate in the classroom.

3. Knowledge Building
New learning builds upon what students already know, so exposing them to novel concepts and encouraging inquiry and exploration enhances their school success.

4. Concepts of Print
Explicitly showing students the features of written language, including how books "work", how letters and words are used, and how text is organized serves as an important introduction to literacy.

5. Writing Conventions
To communicate effectively in writing students need to be explicitly taught the "mechanics" such as handwriting and when and how to use capitalization and punctuation.

6. Phonemic Awareness
Young children need to be taught that the words they say can be broken into parts, based on individual speech sounds, known as phonemes, and this phonemic awareness plays an essential role in sounding out and spelling words.

7. Letter-Sounds & Phonics
Understanding the relationships between spoken sounds and written letters is also essential for the development of reading and writing, particularly in the early elementary years, and students best learn these letter-sound connections through systematic and explicit teaching.

8. Spelling & Word Study
To be successful readers and spellers students need to learn spelling patterns that are the building blocks of most words, through word analysis and useful spelling strategies, but they also need to read and spell automatically those tricky, irregularly spelled words (such as: the, two, laugh) that they encounter frequently.

9. Vocabulary
An understanding of word meanings is essential to high levels of reading comprehension and written expression, so students need to have many opportunities in the classroom to hear and use words in ways that promote vocabulary growth.

10. Reading Fluency & Expression
It is not enough for students to identify the words to understand the meaning in text, they also need to recognize them effortlessly in order to focus their attention on the ideas, thus teachers need to use effective strategies to promote the growth of fluency and expression.

11. Reading Comprehension Strategies
Students have to be aware when they do not understand what they are reading and problem-solve to figure out the meaning of the text, so teachers need to model and promote the use of effective comprehension strategies.

12. Writing Processes & Strategies
Learning to write is a complex process involving sub-processes such as word choice, organization of ideas, as well as the foundational skills like spelling and handwriting, so teachers must provide many engaging opportunities in for students to learn to plan, organize, edit and revise written compositions.

13. Text Structures & Genres
Exploring genres and structures in fiction and non-fiction texts develops students’ understanding of the importance of purpose, audience and message, so teachers must provide opportunities for them to write for authentic purposes and teach them structures and genres to support those purposes.

14. Classroom Organization & Time Management
A positive and well-organized classroom environment is fundamental for student productivity and success in all subject areas, so teachers need to prepare activities and plan instructional time to build an engaging learning community where students feel confident and are motivated to learn.

15. Assessment for Instruction
Assessing students' skills and understanding and providing them with formative feedback on a regular basis is essential to the promotion of student growth and learning. As well as guiding the students, assessment provides direction to the teacher for whole class and small group instruction.

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BALANCEDLITERACYDIET :: Balanced Literacy Diet

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With the support of The Melissa Institute this website was developed by university-based literacy experts and school-based practitioners - literacy specialists, classroom teachers as well as district and school administrators. The Balanced Literacy Diet framework is designed to provide a comprehensive multifaceted internet resource to support the development of research-informed reading and writing instruction in schools.

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KinderTown transforms mobile devices into powerful teaching tools by finding and organizing the best educational apps for kids ages 3-8 years old. ... Each app we select for KinderTown has been tested and reviewed by educators, parents, and most importantly, children.

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KinderTown | The Educational App Store for Engaged Parents