Teaching Labeling+A FREEBIE for you!

We have finished up our name cheers....FINALLY!!!!!!! We had been picking a name every day and learning to write their names and draw their portraits. I think this activity helps so much with reinforcing letter recognition and formation and really helps with body awareness and with creating drawings that make sense!! :) But, this takes a while to get through when you have 2 dozen kiddos in your class!!! Ha! I'm glad it's over. We're READY to move on!!!

Last week we learned all about labeling! I LOVE Julie Lee's lesson on labeling! The kids LOVED labeling me! It was so much fun and sooooo meaningful for them!

We also did the anchor charts and the labeling the apple, and looking at nonfiction books to see how labels are used.

But, what I really wanted to share with you was this TINY little idea that I had that made a HUGE difference!!!!

I love starting out our first couple of weeks of writer's workshop with labeling! First we do a step by step, teacher lead drawing. I think doing these step-by-step drawings really do wonders for their illustrating skills!!!

One thing that I've noticed that seems to give kiddos trouble with this is lacking that left to right print concept.  They always want to start their label with the first letter next to the "part", which many times results in the word being written backwards. For example, if you look at the word "stinger" above, many students would begin by writing the "s" next to the stinger so that the word would be written from right to left.

To help with teaching this left to right print concept, I made this little pre-made labeling sheet. Instead of giving them a blank piece of paper, like I have in the past, this time I gave them this:

Remember that TINY little idea that I was talking about??? See those little smiley faces at the beginning of the lines? They worked wonders!! We always talk about how words are written from left to right, but adding those little faces sure did the trick.

Now our labeling papers looked like this:

Love it!! You can grab a copy of this labeling paper by clicking on any of the images above :)

Now, I'm sure that I'm not the only person on the planet who has ever thought of this!! Ha! BUT, you know, sometimes it's those TINY little things that you do that can make a HUGE difference ;)

Happy Labeling!!