I like using Gerald McDermott's Native American folktales to teach the Common Core literature standards. The trickster tales are always a delight!
I am so excited to launch my first "series" of blog posts! It's making me feel all grown-up and blogger-like :)My first series is going to be on increasing student engagement in the classroom. Over
Giving students an easy, independent activity to start as soon as they arrive on the first day of school is a great way to calm their nerves. It also allows you to focus on greeting new students and getting supplies organized and put away. Here is a great first day of school printable that students ... Read More about Read & Find – First Day of School Printable
ALL ABOUT EARTH Get ready for a month filled with so many fun activities to teach your kiddos all about our planet Earth . I teach this unit in April so it coincides with Earth Day. I’ve loaded up this blog post post with read aloud book ideas, free videos you can share with your students,
One of the things I do every year that really makes a difference in my students' learning is having them use notebooks to store notes, examples, work, and
I mean...why WOULDN'T you use cootie catchers in your reading block? It makes perfect sense. Ok - remember last week how I was talking about doing a little spring cleaning with some of my TpT resources? Well, I did a little spring cleaning in my file folders on my computer as well. Yikes. Now THAT'S a bit of a rabbit hole. I got in a little deeper than I wanted to, but I figured I might as well finish the job. I got rid of a lot (a LOT) of cringe worthy products that just didn't make the cut anymore, and I got some major organizing done as well. BUT - you know what I found? THIS >>> It's a reading comprehension cootie catcher that I TOTALLY forgot I made! And since it resurfaced for me - I thought I'd resurface it for you! I'm sure I made it for you guys in the first place, but I can't for the life of me find it anywhere on the blog. There's actually 3 different versions. They have different comprehension questions that can be used with any fictional book. They work great as a quick partner review game. You can download them here! Find any long-lost things in your spring cleaning, lately? Pin and Share this freebie:
These coloring pages and sorting activities are fun for preschoolers to begin distinguishing between different colors. Click HERE to get the download on my blog! You Might Also Like:Falling for Math SortingFree Sorting Pumpkins CardsJelly Bean AdditionFree French Color Reference Signs
Teaching area is engaging and authentic with this hands-on applied math activity! Students arrange furniture to find the area and perimeter of their house.
Learn how to start a blog in 2024! Our step-by-step guide covers everything from choosing a niche, setting up hosting, writing your first post, to launching your blog.
A step-by-step introduction to crochet pattern diagrams. Plus my favorite free and easy crochet stitch charts for beginners.
*UPDATED* This is the “most read” recipe on my blog => but not because it is a favourite – but because of the ongoing discussion about “flapjack” versus “crum…
This activity is heavily scaffolded for beginners. Students orally create the word bank and sentences, but I write the words and sentences on the board using
Are you looking for some new ideas or ways to use informal assessments in your classroom? This is a complete A to Z list of assessment ideas for you!
Father’s Day is a great time to celebrate and honor the special men in students’ lives! With this cute questionnaire, students can answer questions about their dad, uncle, or grandpa and give it to them as a cute keepsake! If you will be out of school by Father’s Day, send it home for students to ... Read More about Free Father’s Day Activity – All About My Dad
When trying to differentiate instruction for our students, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. Here are 6 Easy Ways to Differentiate Instruction
Jeden Montag (außer heute - Schande über mich, ich habe es auf dem Schreibtisch liegen und total vergessen!) bekommen meine Füchse eine Lesehausaufgabe, die sie jeden Tag üben sollen. Für jeden Tag, an dem sie die Lesehausaufgabe gelesen haben, dürfen sie sich unten einen Stern anmalen. Ich kontrolliere das nicht und es ist auch nicht schlimm, wenn es mal nicht geschafft wird. Aber es ist von mir ein Angebot und ich habe das Gefühl, dass die kleinen Füchse riesige Fortschritte dabei machen. Ich habe euch direkt einen riesigen Berg an Lesehausaufgaben hochgeladen. Ihr müsstet dann einfach mal gucken, was für euch passt. Eine Freundin von mir nutzt die Lesehausaufgaben auch gerne schon einmal für die DaZ Kinder :) Alle Arbeitsblätter wurden mit dem Worksheet Crafter erstellt. Ich wünsche euch einen wunderschönen Abend! Liebe Grüße Anna
Upper elementary teachers, are you looking for back to school activities and ideas to make this year the best year yet? These tips and ideas for back to school season will save your time and sanity and help you to kick off the year smoothly!
Over the years I've created and shared more than 500 printables here on the blog. Keeping track of all of them and, more importantly, making them easy for you to find can be a bit
Guest Blogger James Robinson
Are you teaching goal setting to elementary students? These goal setting picture book stories and activities will help you set goals with your students this back to school season. Freebies included!
Woot woot! This post was featured on the TpT blog! You can see it here. Never underestimate the importance of teaching routines. In every classroom and every grade level... but ESPECIALLY in Kindergaten. And in Kindergarten,
Nee dit is geen typefout! Deze blog gaat echt over bewegend leren bij het technisch lezen. Kortweg: bewegend lezen genoemd.
Not sure how to pose for photos? Get inspired with these poses so you finally know what to do with your hands.
Teaching growth mindset can be done with read-alouds! Rosie's Glasses is a great book for this. Get ideas for using this book to teach being positive.
Planning to tutor over the summer? Here are tips for quick and easy planning! Hi there! It's Sarah! I've been tutoring kiddos for the last year and have developed a routine that makes my planning easy and my session flow smoothly. All of the kiddos I tutor are grades K-2 and in need of a boost in their reading skills...fluency, comprehension, and phonics. Warm-up I like to start with some reading that is simple or familiar. I'll either have the kiddo re-read a text from the previous session or read fluency sentences. I have my kiddos keep a composition notebook with past passages to go back and re-read. I use lots of guided reader books to find the just right text for my kiddos to read. These are also great books to leave for kiddos to practice between sessions. Fluency sentence strips from The Moffatt Girls are a GREAT help to boost fluency and confidence! They are also super easy to leave for practice between sessions. Fluency Reading Practice My kiddos have all had good sight word recognition and really need fluency work. I switch between leveled readers and text passages. I usually have kiddos read the text themselves first. After reading, we go back through the text and find words that were tricky and read them. Next, I have the kiddo read through the text with me or by themselves if they are confident. Using a leveled reader Using fluency passages and recording words read per minute (the kiddos love to see their growth!) Find these fluency passages HERE! Using text evidence passages. Grab these passages HERE! Comprehension After some fluency practice with the selected text, I move into comprehension work. In our district, kiddos need to do a written response comprehension question as part of their reading assessment. I have my kiddos practice a written response question with every text and in every session. Comprehension with level reader I use these question stems to develop questions based on the text. Grab the question stems HERE! Completed written response, kiddos write in their composition journal Comprehension with text evidence passages. Grab these passages HERE! Here I use a reading passage with several comprehension tasks for a 2nd grade kiddo. Find these reading passage + comprehension packets HERE! Phonics After the reading and comprehension tasks are complete, I work on some phonics task with my kiddos. One of my favorite tasks is doing a word family word splash. I select a word from our text. I like how this tasks shows kiddos that if they can spell a work like bat, they can also spell cat, mat, sat, etc. Writing short sentences with words from the Word Family Splash Word building and sounding out Extras I like to use phonics poems as an additional fluency tool. The kiddos glue them into their composition notebook so they can go back and re-read between sessions, continuing to build fluency with familiar texts. These phonics poems are from Susan Jones. I use our Literacy Bags in between reading tasks. Literacy Bags break up the rigorous reading and fluency practice we do for much of the session. You can find Literacy Bags HERE! I'm working with a few Kindergartners who need sight word practice. I use the K version of our Differentiated Reading Fluency passages. In K, the passages start as reading letters, then sight words fluently. It perfect support for my K kiddos! You can grab these HERE! Additionally, our Print a Standard packs have been a great support for targeting specific skills students need to work on. Each pack contains tasks for one standard and has several activities for that standard, so there are a lot of opportunities to help the student learn, practice, and master standards based skills. You can grab Print a Standard packs for ELA AND MATH HERE! Connecting with students and parents on a more personal level is the best part of tutoring. I love giving kiddos instant feedback and celebrating their successes! I also love that I can give them more choices to foster a love of reading. In the picture above, I'm showing several text selections. The kiddos I'm working with is able to choose the book he'll read with me for the session. I also love being able to help parents foster learning at home. I've found most all of my parents did not really know about their kiddo's reading level or reading abilities. This makes it difficult for parents to find the best "just right" books for reading at home. After I work with a kiddo, I leave the text piece we worked on for that session (a passage or a book) so the kiddo can re-read it with parents. I leave their composition notebooks with phonics poems for the kiddos to go back a re-read. I also leave the fluency sentence strips for practice between sessions.
This simple Pinterest strategy only takes 10 minutes a day and has the potential to seriously grow your followers and views!
Mrs. Thompson’s Treasures is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program. This post may contain affiliate links. Do you remember those Highlights magazine hidden picture pages like these? I remember always having fun with those in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. I wanted to create something similar, […]
I never would have thought I would be tracking data digitally, I am really not that savvy when it comes to tech, however, when someone pointed out how easy it was, I had to try it. You guys, its sooo much easier than my typical paper and pencil tracking system. I had data sheets EVERYWHERE!! […]
We can find work that can be done at independent level for all students and I'd to show you how I do that.
“Why do I have to read aloud? I hate reading aloud!” -a struggling 6th grade reader A number of years ago when my school district began our work with Response to Intervention or RTI, it became even mo
Christmas fine motor activities - cut Santa's beard scissor skills.
Can I just say I have one of the most creative colleagues ever!! You guys remember Jayme right? She made the cute farm games at the begi...
Love podcasts? Check out this post in the form of a podcast episode on The Classroom Commute Podcast :
Are you struggling with how to write your first blog post? If your blog is up and running and you're ready to start writing your first blog post, here're 6 tips you can follow to create your blog posts for more readers.
Oh summary. How I have such a love-hate relationship with you. Summarizing stories is something students start at a young age, and yet it is still so hard for students even in late elementary. I often find that they struggle to determine the important details from the minor details and write summaries filled with and then, and then, and then, and then, and then.....I end up feeling like Ashton Kutcher from "Dude, Where's My Car." So, why do we teach summarizing? The ability to summarize builds comprehension. Summarizing a narrative text helps students comprehend the plot of the story. According to Fountas and Pinnell, good readers are always taking information from the text and condensing it into a summary-type form. As readers pull out the most important information, they are constantly interpreting what the author is telling them and further developing the summary of the story. This year, I wanted to begin by seeing what the kids remembered about summary and clear up misconceptions before beginning the summarizing process. I made a simple chart with "What is a summary?" and "What is a summary NOT?" I wanted them to think about summaries from both sides. I gave them each a green sticky note first and asked them to tell me, in their own words, what they thought a summary was. They each came and added their sticky note to the chart. Then I gave them each a yellow sticky note and asked them to write down, in their own words, what they know is NOT included in a summary. Then they added their yellow sticky notes to our chart. We read a few of them aloud and saw that many of them had several of the same ideas. Here are a couple examples of what my students said a summary is. A summary is a few short lines of sentences that tell the most important parts of a story in order. A paragraph said in your own words but not very many details. And here are a couple examples of what my students said a summary is NOT. Your thoughts about the story. A summary is not very detailed, not long, and not a copy of the story. I like to use the Somebody-Wanted-But-So-Then (SWBST) strategy with students because it gives them a way to ensure they are looking for each piece of the summary every time they read a narrative piece. When teaching, I suggest lots of modeling, then move to group work before letting them summarize on their own. Here is our anchor chart: I discussed with them that when summarizing a narrative text, they should look for the main character, what the main character wants or his/her goals, the main problem he/she encounters, and the resolution of the problem. We summarized a short, one page text that we had previously read, about a girl names Callie who needed to complete a difficult homework assignment. (According to Fountas and Pinnell, you should begin with short texts that do not have many details). I modeled how to use the summary chart, and we looked for each piece as a whole group. I put a sticky note at each table group and tasked them with writing down the information for one component of the chart. One table wrote down the main character, one table wrote down what the character wanted, and so on. I have left this chart hanging in our room now so the students will have a visual reminder of how to get a summary! I also use a SWBST foldable with my kids. Anytime they read a story, they can fill in one of these. Doing this each time they read a book, (either a book from the library, a book you are reading aloud in class, during guided reading, a weekly story, etc) will solidify and fine tune their summarizing skills. It also reminds them that each time they read a story, this is the information they need to be looking for to fully comprehend the text. I also have a SWBST log that students complete each time they read a fiction book. This helps hold students accountable for reading and finishing a book, helps with comprehension, and simultaneously works on reinforcing summarizing skills. Many teachers do reading logs anyway where the students write down what they are reading, but this is a way to prove they have read the story, and shows if they understood what they read. Never miss a teachable moment!! You can get this foldable and SWBST log as a FREEBIE in my store by clicking here, or by clicking the picture below! Enjoy!
Small group ideas, tips, and tricks to make small group time meaningful in your preschool, pre=k, or kindergarten classroom and a giant FREE idea list too.
Learning the patterns in addition strategy can be tricky for students, especially when using a patterns in addition table. I'm sharing...
One of the fun and hands-on activities from my Seasons K-2 Unit Study is this 4 Seasons Flip Book. Actually, there are two seasons flip books included: one that’s more picture-based with simple language and one goes a little more in-depth. You can get both season flip books in one quick download today. Just click ... Read More about 4 Seasons Flip Book {2 FREE Levels}
Visual Schedules The Easy to Follow Guide for Parents, Picture Visual Schedule Printable, Autism Visual Schedule, Free Printable Picture Schedule Cards, Understanding Visual Schedules and Benefits of Visual Schedules #Visualschedules #Autism #PECS
