The Teachable Method is a series of lessons that you can begin using within the first weeks of school, and continue using until the very last day. It makes writing fun and easy. The best part of the Teachable Method is that it requires very little preparation, yet still gets results. Let me start by first giving you a little background on how the Teachable Method came about.

When I started teaching kindergarten I knew that I had to teach my students to write, but I had no idea how I was going to do it. I searched through books and books about interactive writing, shared writing, the traits of writing, and so on. I never found a full curriculum outlined for teaching kindergarteners to write, and so many of the books weren’t designed specifically for kindergarten, instead they were designed for early learners, or primary grades, some of them even said K-2 on the front. Now, that is just crazy. There is not one teacher out there who thinks that a curriculum that works for second graders will work for kindergarten students! I turned to the internet, and while I found it to be a wealth of ideas and information, I still did not find a solid curriculum that would work for teaching kindergarten students how to write.

And so, the Teachable Method was born. I have designed a fool proof curriculum with fun and easy lessons to teach kindergarten students how to write so you don’t have to!

Once you have spent your first week of school teaching rules and procedures, most teachers are ready to move on to teaching curriculum. The problem with doing this in a kindergarten classroom is that your students are still so new to the idea of actually going to school and sitting in a classroom that it is hard to make this transition. So, remember that you need to start slow.

Something so many of us forget is that at this young age, children still have not honed their fine motor skills, and with Table Tops they will learn to do just that. Table Tops will not be done every day for the rest of the year. You will probably only use them for the first six weeks of teaching, and in just a couple of weeks, they will be the lead in to more structured writing time. Table Top time should be limited to fifteen minutes each day.

In preparation, you are going to need five baskets. (I use 9×12x6 baskets because they hold paper well.) You need to label these baskets with a lion, a tiger, a bear, a zebra, and a monkey. I use these animals because even students who have not yet learned to recognize their alphabet, shapes, or colors have usually learned to recognize these animals. We have free center tags available by clicking here. These baskets aren’t going to change much over the next six weeks, but you will change out the activities in them once a week.

The baskets each have a specific theme designed to help children develop their fine motor skills, but are generic enough that students with highly developed motor skills can still learn from them. In the next few pages you will find a description of what each basket will contain.

Each week you should take the time to go through the baskets and make sure they are clean and neat and ready for the next week. Pull out any broken crayons, or any old play-doh that has gotten stuck in them. In order for your kindergarten students to feel like they are doing something new each week, the baskets need to have a new ‘feel’ to them.

On the first day of each week you need to model the tabletop baskets for the students. You will show the entire class how to use the items in each basket, and most importantly, you need to show them what it looks like when it is clean. When you are finished modeling the baskets clean the basket up, and then show it to all the students saying something to the effect of, “This is what this basket looks like cleaned up.” It is very important to show the students what it looks like clean. If they are doing most of the cleaning, then as a teacher, you aren’t having to spend your precious free time cleaning up after them. When I first started using this curriculum I didn’t do this step, but just by showing them what a basket should look like when they are finished with it, I hardly ever had to clean up their messes!

Teachable Method has handouts available for each week and they can be purchased here.

The goal of this basket is to let children use a medium they are familiar with (crayons) to do something they may be less familiar with. Basically, the kids will pull out the tracing cards and try to stay on the lines as they trace. For some children this will be an easy basic skill that doesn’t need practice, but for others this will take a lot of effort and patience. It is important to include a variety of cards in varying levels in this basket so that all students will have a chance to do it.

Our Tracing Cards can be purchased here. They are available as a pdf download, and all you will have to do is print them onto card stock or you can print them on plain paper and glue them to a piece of construction paper. It is important that these cards be sturdy because the students will be erasing them with a piece of felt. The reason you want the students to erase with felt is twofold. The first is because it makes the preparation easier for you. If you laminate the cards then you can use them year after year with almost no prep time. And, let’s face it, as teachers it is very important to be able to be able to pull something out and set it up quickly! The other reason is because as the students are working to erase their cards, they are developing fine motor skills. They are learning how hard they have to press in order to erase the crayon from the cards.

If your cards are a little dirty at the end of the week, you can use a baby wipe or a simple degreaser like Orange Glo to clean them up as good as new.

When you are preparing this basket you will need a few play-doh toys. You want a couple of cookie cutters in shapes coordinating to the themes of the other baskets. (Each week the baskets will all be based around the same theme.)

You will also need a few play-doh toys like these:

You don’t want to use the whole kit though, just a few toys each time. You want to change the toys out weekly. (Remember, we are keeping those centers fresh!)

The object of this tabletop is for students to manipulate the play-doh in various shapes. This sounds simple, and even fun, but by doing this, your students are building up those muscles that will make them better writers!

The scissor tabletop is just to practice beginning cutting skills at first, but by the third week, we will introduce simple pasting as well. The handouts we have here at teachable method are designed to grow with your students each week, and require no work on your part. But, if you want to make your own, you just need to make sheets that have dotted lines for the kids to cut along so that they can practice their cutting skills.

Before you just hand scissors to kindergarteners, it is a good idea to have a BIG talk about their proper use. Believe it or not, you will have students that have never used scissors before, and will need to be shown the proper way to hold them, etc. The most important thing the students need to take away from the scissor discussion is that scissors are ONLY used to cut paper in the classroom. I try to always go through a big long list of all the things we can think of ALL around the classroom that you should not cut with scissors, and I explain to the children that if they choose to cut anything but paper with their scissors, then they will have to sit out during scissor time while we finish up our tabletop centers.

The handouts we have available at Teachable Method include both D’Nealian as well as the traditional ball and stick handwriting. Most school districts have a policy on which handwriting form they want you to use. At Teachable Method we prefer ball and stick, but we also understand that you can’t go against the wishes of your district.

There are two handouts in the basket for students to choose from. If they have time, they can complete both handouts, but this is for your more advanced students to give them something to do if they finish. The teachable method has handouts available for purchase, but if you want to make your own, you just need to make sure you are using the theme and have lined paper with dotted letters for them to trace. For example, our shapes handwriting handout has shapes on it with the names of the shape below in a traceable font.

When the students are finished with the handwriting part of their work, they should be given the opportunity to color their handouts and put them in a folder to take home at the end of the week. I try to save all the work until the end of the week to send home so that parents actually get a chance to see it instead of it ending up wadded up in the bottom of their backpack.

The Monkey tabletop not only incorporates fine motor skills, but basic math skills as well. By using this tabletop center, you are helping your students develop beginner geometry. Always let the children color their paper if time permits. This gives them a sense of accomplishment and a feeling that their work is valid. When they are done with this center, it should go into their take home folders.

If you are using the teachable method handouts, you just need to go in and print out that week’s handouts and put them in the corresponding baskets. There is a small animal in the top right hand corner of each sheet that corresponds with the animals on the baskets. You can get your free animal center tags here. This is to make it easier for you to prep your centers.

You need to remember that table top time should not last longer than fifteen minutes. Allow at least 25 minutes each Monday because you will be explaining the baskets to your students before they actually get table top time. This is a long time for new kindergarteners to sit, so I suggest having the students go around to different tables to get the explanation of each center, and then having them go back to their own tables to begin.

It is very important that you are up and walking around during these centers because you will be constantly monitoring and assessing the needs of the students. You will find that some children complete these centers quickly and with relative ease. If that is the case, then you can have them help out some of the other children who are struggling, or you can give them manipulatives such as bears or counting blocks to play with while the other children finish.

Tabletop centers are not designed to be a full year curriculum. They are going to tie into a much larger writing curriculum throughout the school year. (In fact, you will start doing them in conjunction with writing almost immediately.) They are, however, designed to teach children basic rules and procedures of kindergarten while helping develop the fine motor skills the students need to be successful writers.

Have fun with these centers! Go over to the play-doh center and challenge the kids to create the longest snakes, or ask them to make the tallest snowman! These baskets are designed to help you facilitate the beginning of an entire year with these students. Using them effectively now could make your kindergarten year a breeze.

This center consists of a couple of sets of headphones, a book on cd or tape, and a quick handout at the end.  This is one of the more straight forward centers, but it is VERY important that you go through all the steps of using the CD player with your students and talk about sharing the book with each other.  It is also a good idea to talk about how when you have headphones on you don’t have to yell just because you can’t hear what people are saying. :)  Just trust me on this one.  Another thing I have always done is to put stickers on the buttons they should use, like a big ‘p’ sticker on the play button, or a stop sign on the stop button.  I have found this makes it easier for kids to use the cd player.

Students will read their book, and then when they are finished they should color a picture of something they saw in their book.  Use Teachable Method’s free handout, or make your own based on the book you are reading that week.

The biggest problem with this center is where to get all these books on CD/Tape.  The best place I have found is through Scholastic Book Orders.  Just get the monthly sampler of four, and before you know it, you will have an entire set of themed books for your classroom!