Fundations: Red Sox Style!

If you come into my classroom after morning meeting, you generally see students identifying letters and their sounds and writing the correct lowercase letter formation on their whiteboards during Fundations.   So far we have learned 7 lowercase letters: t, b, f, m, n, i, and u.
Today's Fundation's lesson was a little louder than usual. The children were surprised to hear we would be having Fundations in the gym as a special Red Sox Day treat.  We warmed up in the classroom with a quick letter, keyword, sound drill (t, top, /t/, b, bat, /b/, etc) then acted like our favorite All Star Red Sox players running the bases and cheering for each other, except with one important difference: the rules of Fundations baseball are much different than baseball at Fenway. 
The pitcher (me), gave each batter a word.  If the batter could tell me the beginning letter of the word, they could run to first base.  If they could name the first letter and its matching beginning sound, they could run to second base.  If the batter could name the beginning letter, sound, and state another word that started with the same beginning letter then they got a home run!

Karthik is a fast runner!

Ella got the first home run of the game!!  Way to go, Ella!

The outfielders had an important Fundation's job as well.  They had to write the beginning letter that the batter named on their whiteboards.

After three home runs, the teams would switch positions.  Everyone had a chance to be a batter and an outfielder.

I loved the encouragement, teamwork, and good sportsmanship from all the children!  I hope the Red Sox do just as well in tonight's first playoff game as their young fans did today!

Common Core State Standards: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.2.D
Isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in three-phoneme (consonant-vowel-consonant, or CVC) words.1 (This does not include CVCs ending with /l/, /r/, or /x/.)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.3.A
Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary sound or many of the most frequent sounds for each consonant.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.K.1.A
Print many upper- and lowercase letters.