The Predictable Chart is an activity from Month by Month Reading and Writing in Kindergarten by Dorothy Hall and Pat Cunningham. During this activity each child completes a predictable sentence that the teacher writes on a chart. Sentence topics go with our classroom theme or they are seasonal or holiday related. For instance during our mouse unit our chart was "When I see a mouse I (blank). (Student name) or near Halloween a chart could be "I will be a (blank). (Student name) As the sentences are written, the teacher points out conventions of print such as capital letters, leaving spaces between words or punctuation. This activity must be conducted at a brisk pace to hold the children's attention.
In our class, on Mondays and Tuesdays the children dictate sentences and we touch read them (half the class on Monday, half on Tuesday). Children are invited to tell what they notice about various sentences and words. On Wednesdays and Thursdays we play sentence builders. I laminated several sentence strips and cut them into word-sized pieces and made some wearable pockets from tagboard, yarn and left-over laminating strips. I choose several sentences and write one word on each piece. They are placed into the pockets which are worn by children in the class and then the child who authored the sentence gets to wear his/her own name and put the sentence in order. On Fridays the sentences are cut apart and given to each student author. The student places the words in order, illustrates them and glues the words to the page. The student work is laminated and then pages are put in classbooks for the children to read and reread during free reading.
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