Helping K-2 Teachers Like You Save Time, Grow Instructional Skills, and Teach With Confidence!
It's safe to say at this point, all weeks are super busy. I meant blog earlier in the week, but of course I didn't. Which leads to the real...
We had a blast writing friendly letters to our second grade teachers today. It was a great opportunity to share all the things we have done ...
As part of Earth Day, we are learning about the 3 R's, reduce, reuse and recycle and so we wanted to share with you this Free Recycling Sort. It's an easy and engaging activity for the kids to help them understand the concept of sorting. We actually used the free printable in 3 different ways in the classroom.
Helping K-2 Teachers Like You Save Time, Grow Instructional Skills, and Teach With Confidence!
Would you like to decorate your classroom with fun, hand-drawn anchor charts/posters? Do you simply not have the time to get them done? Well, you have come to the perfect place! I love making these engaging and appealing anchor charts. I also can draw/create any other topic you would like, just contact me directly and ask! My students absolutely love these posters and references them every day. Many of them are visual learners, so the colorful images really help them connect and remember what they have learned. This particular anchor chart is for readers/writers learning all about the silent "e" at the end of a long-vowel word. I came up with this little, fun, rhyming poem to help my students remember that when they see the "magic e" at the end of the a long-vowel word, then that vowel says its name! **These will be copies unless asked otherwise for a custom poster. They are not laminated, and are printed on normal, anchor chart paper. I ship these out ASAP after being ordered, but please keep in mind once shipped, it is outside of my control. Therefore, if shipping does not meet your expectations, I highly encourage you to please reach out to me first, and we have always been able to work something out to make up for anything that may have occurred after I have sent your package, thanks so much!! Hope you love it :)
So I haven't blogged in a month, and there are 10 thousand things going on at school. Space Night was on Friday, and I thought to myself, "Well, now that Space Night is behind me, things should settle
These kindergarten anchor charts will give you the tools you need to teach math, reading, friendship skills, and much more!
As part of Earth Day, we are learning about the 3 R's, reduce, reuse and recycle and so we wanted to share with you this Free Recycling Sort. It's an easy and engaging activity for the kids to help them understand the concept of sorting. We actually used the free printable in 3 different ways in the classroom.
This week our theme letter is A. We been learning about apples and continued that theme this week. But we also did some other things. We brainstormed all the things we could think of that start with Aa. We sorted Aa words from the Mm words we learned last week. We also learned about alligators this week since our zoo phonics character for Aa is Ally Alligator. We learned this cute poem "alligator pie" which I saw from Jessica over at Room 36 and then we made alligator pie. The kids loved this yummy treeat! Get my Alligator Pie pages HERE and HERE. We read about alligators and then recalled what we learned and made a can/have/are chart. The kids followed along and filled theirs out on the carpet as I filled in our big chart.I had to laugh when one of my kids answered that alligators are "blood pressure medicine" LOL. He meant cold-blooded. Here's our completed charts: You can get a free copy of the kids chart HERE. We compared and contrasted two alligator books. "There's an alligator under my bed" and "alligators." One is a fiction book, the other non fiction. We added them to our fiction/non fiction chart. The kids are getting good at telling the difference on their own and identifying the books correctly. Here are some of our show and tells from this week: Some books we loved this week: There is also a great youtube video to go with this book HERE.
Fun Fall classroom activities and ideas plus a free printable for teaching about bats, owls, and shades of meaning in vocabulary.
A Place for Teachers to get resources for their classrooms
We’ve been working on patterns in my class this week. And I have to say, my kids are just naturally getting the hang of it. Lucky for me. They are so into it, in fact, that they end up finding circles on the back of their snack wrapper and then they rush up to show […]
...we're excited for first grade!! Happy first day of school to all of the teachers who started today. What a whirlwind the first day always is! The first day of school is one of my absolute favorites as students walk in with that fresh sparkle of excitement in their eyes. I love to start the school day with a read-aloud and first day of school books are so great! One of my favorite stories (and authors) is Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes...as I'm sure many others can agree. Such a sweet story that students can easily relate to. Today after reading the story we created a graph (hats off to my teaching partner for the idea) to chart how we felt before the first day of school. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised that 19 kiddos were excited! We had so much fun using sticky notes (a first grade favorite) and interacting with the anchor chart. Following our graphing, we did a readers response coloring/writing activity. Typically I have students finish the sentence frame "I was worried about..." but today the students wanted to write "I was excited about..." and their answers were just the sweetest. From meeting the teacher to making new friends to reading new books...they covered it all! I can't wait for the second day of school and I hope that my students are just as excited for day two!
Seems simple, RIGHT? Read a chapter, write a summary… Our students see this a lot, whether it be on our reading assessments, in our own classroom work, or on our state assessments. Bottom line, we want our kids to be proficient (and feel confident) in taking out the important elements from a piece of text,...
Have a chatty class? Do your talkative students get louder and louder during small groups until it feels like chaos? Do they talk when you'r...
We are working hard at learning all of the concepts of print! My kiddos are doing really well (which is good since I feel like we've been talking about it for years!) with all of it - and are actually applying what they have learned when they partner share about reading books. These anchor charts aren't anything new - but I've made one for the past 3 years and they really do help. Last year, we did Eric Carle's VHC. Please excuse my hand drawn illustration (can't draw for the life of me). This year, I decided to go with one of our favorite books for the theme. I made it a tad bit snazzier too - since I'm all about fonts and digi paper backgrounds at the moment! I think it's really important to use a book kids are familiar with. We've read Chicka Chicka at least 10 times this year (sometimes it feels more like 100 times haha!). I found a copy of the cover online and printed it out. I also found a picture of the inside and printed it out. I have the pieces for the anchor chart in the file below - click the pic to grab your copy!
Have a chatty class? Do your talkative students get louder and louder during small groups until it feels like chaos? Do they talk when you'r...
Here are a few happenings from this past week. We've been learning about sentences this week. I made this anchor chart to help us remem...
What are reward tags you ask? See some FAQs about reward tags and my answers to help you get started at implementing this behavior management system. Get tips for how to use them, storage ideas and different types to use in the classroom.
Hey blogging friends! Just a little post to share some of the things that we've been working on this past week...PLANTS! Plants that grow u...
Here in KC we've been pretty much swallowed up by snow. Yesterday we got a foot in about two hours! Needless to say, I'm at home with my kids and there's little hope of my leaving the house in the forseeable future... Stuck. While I love being with them, I also get a little bit of cabin fever and I must say, it has hit. Hard. Too bad for me. I don't think my car could even get out of the driveway if I tried. Because I just love these Five for Friday posts from Doodlebugs, I figured this week I'd focus on five of the anchor charts I've been using lately as well as a couple of the fun artsy things we've done over the past couple of weeks. 1. Here is the anchor chart I refer to when we're working on vowel teams. They love the song from Starfall here and so we song it A LOT when we find these vowel combos. 2. We've also been learning about George and Abe and I use these to record facts about them. I used this ScrappinDoodles clipart as inspiration to draw them. 3. We've been working and working on Addition Strategies and my kids are STILL rather stumped. However, they have LOVED the strategy of Making a Ten since I started calling them "Ten Friends". They get so excited when they see a "Ten Friend". We've done lots to build up this skill. I held up fingers and they held up the friend (for example, I hold up 4, they hold up 6). I did that a lot while lining up, waiting for specials, during bathroom breaks since it is quiet. I also used a deck of cards and turned one. They'd call out or write the friend on their white board. We also played some matching games. A few of them are still relying on the chart, and converting this to subtraction will be interesting, but for now I am just happy to see them finding the friends. I'm also including one of the matching games we used in our Guided Math tubs. Just click on the picture. 4. For the culmination of Chinese New Year we always paint these banners. I think I got this from a Mailbox magazine years ago, and have done it for as many years as I've been teaching. They. love. it. It's actually the chinese symbols for Gung Hay Fat Choy and they just emulate what I paint. I love that they all turn out just a little bit differently. 5. Finally, I have the good fortune of teaching right next door to one of my very best friends. While I was away on maternity leave this fall, she went and found the world's most adorable apple craft. They made little stained glass apples. I'm for sure going to do them next year so I'll post pictures of them then. Anyway, she was smart enough to think of adapting them for Valentines' Day! You just cut a heart out of contruction paper and lay it on contact paper. Then I cut up a bunch of tissue paper and put it in a bucket. The kids just picked out the colors and layered them inside the heart. I stuck them straight onto the window and Presto! Stained glass cuteness in about ten minutes. If you're buried in the snow, hope you're enjoying another long weekend. If you're not... Well... You probably have a beach nearby so I don't feel too sorry for you. :) Head on over and link up!
Learn 30+ common suffixes in English with meaning and examples.
We said goodbye to our insect unit. Every year this is one of the favorites so it is hard to say goodbye to those pesky critters and move on. :(
Hey Friends! It's Theresa, from True Life I'm a Teacher ! I wanted to share how I use (and have used for several years) a token economy ...
There's a little corner in my room that is frequently visited by fidgets, tattle-talers, and more. How do you deal with these issues? Keep reading!
We are a couple weeks into the new school year and everything is going great! Our class of 22 is busy learning routines and procedures and new 4th grade skills. Back to School Night took place this past Thursday and it was wonderful meeting many of our new families. The students were very proud to show off their new classroom to their parents and siblings. I always love overhearing their chatter as they show parents "our meeting area", "my desk and morning work binder", "our classroom library and book tubs", and "the place where we do our attendance and lunch count". They are like little experts already! One of the new things in our district is the new reading series--Benchmark Literacy. This is far from the traditional basal series of the past. It is always a challenge to get to know something new but I think that once it becomes familiar, it will work well with the balanced literacy framework that's already been in place the last few years. I am no longer following Daily 5 (sad face) but I do think this new program does a good job of setting up the routines and procedures in a way that is similar to Daily 5. As in the past, this program requires a number of anchor charts to be created and posted in the room for the students to reference throughout the year. If you've followed this blog for awhile now, you know that anchor charts have only become a part of my classroom in the last few years. I would like to share some of the new charts created this past week as part of the new series. This is a new bulletin board that shows all the Metacognitive and Comprehension Strategies covered in the 4th grade BL curriculum. These are a lot like the CAFE lessons I used in D5. Each week, we focus on one of each. For example, this past week we had whole group lessons on Asking Questions (Metacognitive) and Identifying Main Idea and Supporting Details (Comprehension). We refer to this board almost daily! The components of Readers' Workshop. What Readers' Workshop Looks/Sounds Like-- These were things the students came up with and they are pretty spot on. These students are very familiar with the Balanced Literacy framework so they now come in knowing expectations pretty well. We will refer to these often as well. Turn to your Partner-- These are the prompts and questions we have begun to practice using during our reading discussions. This takes A LOT of practice but it will pay off in dividends later on as the students start to have really rich discussions about what is read! I'll close this post with a photo of my up-and-coming writing center! It includes posters I began using last year and is still a work in progress--but I'm likin' it so far! Can't wait to share more information with you soon!
Learn tips and tricks about how to teach counting money to 1st and 2nd graders. Learn teacher tips plus fun money activities for students.
Hey friends! I hope you're enjoying your GLORIOUS 3-Day weekend. We don't get enough of these, do we? I have to say, I'm loving putting m...
Combining directed drawing and writing together provides an engaging literacy activity that targets core skills.
Article 15(3) of Indian constitution gives our govt. special power to create special provisions for women. However, this section is being used by the political parties to bring gender biased one si…
