Second graders need to have hands-on practice with ELA skills in a meaningful way. This post shares some fun 2nd Grade literacy center ideas.
FREE printable Sequencing worksheets for preschool and kindergarten kids. Includes 15 activities featuring seasonal themes, hygiene such as brushing teeth, washing hands, and fire safety. Great for language and literacy development!
Try these If You Take A Mouse to School preschool activities for a back to school theme.
Discover the perfect All About Me preschool activity designed for young kids! Get a free printable worksheet that's simple, engaging, and ideal for emergent readers. Download now!
From insect crafts and themed activities to fun facts and games, these preschool insect theme printables are a great way to make learning fun!
These 15 picture book activities go great with your preschooler's favorite stories. Great hands-on activities that help to further explore the books!
Story of David for kids (with printable!) Great bible lessons on David for children, including a David and Goliath Sunday School lesson.
Fun ideas for teaching adjectives and descriptive writing that are just right for October and Halloween week in the primary classroom.
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Use different sentence frames to increase text connections. Help students
Provocations can be overwhelming. Let's take a look at some simple ideas for literacy provocations found in a Reggio-Inspired Preschool.
Recently, I have seen some debates on using centers and the Science of Reading. If you have been a teacher for a long time, centers were a HUGE part of Balanced Literacy. Recently, teachers have shifted away from balanced of literacy to research based Science of Reading. You can read my Science of Reading Post ... Read More about Centers and the Science of Reading
All About Me Preschool activities encourage kids towards self-discovery. Here are over 20activities to try with your preschoolers.
Need a creative idea for teaching money to kids? The Money Game is a fun hands-on way! Inspired by the Beth Kobliner Book- Make Your Kids a Money Genius
Fun and learning packed The Day the Crayons Quit activities that include free printables to download. Just supply crayons!
Fluency tends to be a commonly overlooked skill, but you can change that by learning about strategies for teaching fluency with your elementary students!
Grab these FREE printable Rhyming Puzzles for a low-prep and hands-on activity to use in your Kindergarten literacy centers or small groups!
Dear Zoo is such a fun book! Check out these Dear Zoo activities for preschool & kindergarten. Includes a FREE printable game, snack, & craft.
This year for preschool we are part of a co-op preschool group. I put together name recognition activities for all the kids in the preschool. Here are the activities. Name sticks To make this activity. I got paint stick stirrers and used Mod Podge to glue the letters of the child's name on to the stick. Then used mounting tape to stick the letters onto the clothespins. Your child matches up the letters to spell their name. Name Block Matching This can be made in any word document or you could make make it easily be hand. Name Puzzles Here are free puzzles patterns for 4, 5, 6, and 7 letters names. You can either hand write your child's name or open in a word document to add your child's name Just right click on the each image, save and print. I recommend printing on cardstock paper so it is more durable 4 letter name 5 letter name 6 letter name 7 letter name Name Tracing You can download free front from this website to make these tracing cards in a word document. The font is called ABC Print Dotted. This is laminated and so it can be used over and over again. Name Path For this activity, you can use any word document and create a table. Then can choose what letters you want to use and what path to create to spell your child's name. This is also laminated so it is reusable. Progressive Name Tracing This idea is also part of the Preschool learning binder I put together. I download free front from this website to make this in a word documents. The names of the fonts are ABC Print Arrow, ABC Print Arrow Dotted, and ABC Print Dotted. All of these activities are stored in a laminated 9 x 12 folder. I used an X-acto knife to cut a slip in the top. I like this folder idea because it keeps things together and can be passed around easily to each home when it it our turn to teach preschool.
Dear Zoo is such a fun book! Check out these Dear Zoo activities for preschool & kindergarten. Includes a FREE printable game, snack, & craft.
Back to School is right around the corner for us and I am SUPER excited to kick of this school year with some fun, hands-on and engaging resources for The
The Empowered Educator - Children's Cardboard X-ray 'Tablet'
Build phonological skills with this rhyming activity. Erase Me is fun to use for an all about me unit and is super easy and quick to prepare.
How to create a retell literacy center in kindergarten. Plus a list of 20 famous stories and retell props (with printables) to complete this center.
Need Bug Activities for preschoolers? Check out our 9 Hands-On, grab and go, math and literacy activities for Preschool or Kindergarten.
Head back to school with The Kissing Hand book by Audrey Penn. Pair it with activities and crafts to go along with the theme of the book or even buy Chester
Check out these 7 activities to use with the novel Charlotte's Web including spider web synonyms, how to draw a pig, spider web art, and more.
Subtraction can be a difficult concept for kids to grasp. The best way for kids to learn challenging math concepts is through hands-on, interactive lessons and games. Get off my boat is a great w…
Kids will have fun looking for nouns all around them in this Grammar Activity for Kids. Simply print the Noun Hunt printable and head out for fun learning.
Past, present, and future.
I receive a lot of questions about how I run my literacy block. At my school, our schedule is blocked out, but I have freedom to arrange my own blocks (if that makes sense). So my literacy block is 9:40 – 11:15, and this is what I’ve decided to do with it: We start right ... Read More about My Literacy Block
This is a great activity to do after your Second Step, Listen Attentively lesson.Students just need a paper and crayons. All shapes and images are easy to draw.Read the directions slowly, as students listen attentively and follow your steps.An example drawing is at the bottom of the page.For more li...
Making connections is a strategy that readers use to better understand the text they are reading. It's one of the most powerful strategies your readers have in their tool belts. Readers use their prior knowledge to make a text to self, text to text, or text to world connection to what they are reading. I have put together some lessons and activities for the elementary classroom that can be helpful in teaching this valuable reading strategy. The first thing you want to do is make sure students have a basic understanding of the word connection. You can start with this simple opening activity. Put four of the provided cards into a bag. Pull them out and show them to students. Ask them what the connection is between the objects in the bag. Have a conversation about how they are connected. Then talk about any connections they have to those objects. It's a very basic way of discussing what connections are. You can then relate that to making connections in a book. I included five sets of cards that you could use each day of the week or you could split the students into groups and have them discuss connections with their groups. I would model describing the connection on the card above, because students will have to describe their connections in writing during the unit. You could laminate this to use again. The posters I included cover the three different types of connections that readers can make. For the anchor chart, I also included sentence frames for students to refer to throughout the unit when describing their connections. Text to Self Connection Craft I would explicitly teach one type of connection each day at first. You can uses these crafts for students to record their connections each day. Lots of modeling will probably be needed. Text to Text Connection Craft Text to World Connection Craft Once students have learned the different types of connections, you can go into making them understand that you can make different types of connections within one text. Give each student the 3 strips for the different types of connections they can make to a text. You can then make them into a chain connecting these cards to the name of the text you read. Close your lesson by summarizing the connections made on the cards above. This is a great visual for students to understand how making connections works. I always like for my students to have these little hats to wear while practicing the strategy. They also can get these bookmarks and badges. Always use some sort of exit ticket to close your lesson. This is where you will get an additional assessment to guide your instruction for the next day, as well as your small strategy groups. I like to always include additional graphic organizers for additional lessons on making connections, as well as for small groups and centers. I made them for the three different types of connections. You can use these case files for your whole group lessons or during small group teacher table. After you have taught how these work, these are great for a literacy center! Finally, a fun Friday activity we love to do are Brown Bag Book Clubs! You fill the bag with popcorn and have students fill out the graphic organizer over a read aloud. They then get into groups to discuss their connections with their book club, as well as to review other strategies previously learned. I hope these making connections activities are helpful for your readers! You can find it HERE or by clicking any of the images in this post. If you own the Reading Comprehension Bundle, it has been added there, too, so be sure to download it in your My Purchases tab. Happy reading!
Name games are a great way for you and your students to remember everyone in class. They also build community, vocabulary and connection!
Here's a simple way to teacher less than, greater than: with toys! Free printable included.
Each classroom brings students of multiple learning styles and backgrounds. It is our job to provide opportunities that reach all of the many different learning styles that come to us. For this reason, it is
Here's a collection of Harold and the Purple Crayon Activities and Crafts to go along with the story that children love.