These worksheets for main idea and supporting details are a great way to build reading comprehension in young students. Grab the free sample.
When learning how to read, working on FLUENCY and building CONFIDENCE is extremely important! Kids need to know that they CAN read when given the right
When teaching narrative writing in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade, there are so many writing skills to cover. They range from creating a sequence of events (beginning, middle, and end) to more difficult
Supercharge your morning work with I Heart Literacy! Each page features a fun theme so your students will not only be practicing reading and ELA skills, but will also be learning about a curriculum-based topic. A wide variety of Common Core skills are addressed. Try these five free pages for free! Happy Teaching! Rachel Lynette ... Read More about Morning Work ELA and Reading Freebie!
I am SO excited about our NEW Fall Math and Literacy Packet for 1st Grade! I have been working like crazy to get this packet finished and I am happy that
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.
I can't believe it's only Tuesday...Seriously? I already feel like I need the weekend for a break. Part of the problem is that it was my ...
These noun activities for first grade kids will get your students engaged and learning with games, anchor charts, pocket chart sorts and worksheets.
This post will give you more than 360 pages of 1st grade common core language arts worksheets with answer keys and posters to help your students learn!
Adding some fun games for reading in the classroom schedule will instantly get your kids excited to read! These 5 fun reading games are...
74 File Folder Games for 1st Grade!!! Do your students need more hands-on activities in a world where everything is digital? Are your parents asking for
Winter is just around the corner and I have been working hard on our Winter Math and Literacy Packet for Kindergarten! I am happy to say that it is
Check out these science of reading centers ideas to help give your kinder and first grade readers authentic practice during literacy centers.
This is a wonderful free game for teaching nouns in first grade! Kids look at each common name and tell if it's a person, place, object, or animal. #grammar #nouns #firstgrade
We also use this fun matching game to review comprehension skills. After reading the short stories a few times, we match them with the picture cards.
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.
If Montezuma had an Instagram account, what would he say when Cortez arrived in 1519? My fourth graders have some ideas. We are finishing our study of the conquests of the Inca and Aztec empires and have been reading about … Continue reading →
Ditch the phonics worksheets and try these hands-on phonics activities to incorporate the science of reading into your literacy instruction.
A 2nd grade summer early finishers reading worksheet focusing on comparing and contrasting.
Ready to rock teaching beginning of year writing in first grade? These early days of writing instruction must be targeted and on point. Click to learn more.
Find powerful point of view teaching activities and ideas including strong books and anchor charts to strengthen students' understanding.
Are you ready for the month of March? We are all geared up for some fun learning this month! Our March NO PREP packets are done and we are ready to go!
This Must Do May Do System is the HACK to your rotating reading centers! Have smooth-running groups and effective independent work time.
This past week we launched our writer’s workshop lessons! I use my writer’s workshop units throughout the year, but before we dive into small moments we talk about what Writer’s Workshop looks like in our first grade classroom. This poster is hanging in our classroom and we go through each of these bullet points throughout […]
Narrative Writing Mentor Texts This year our 1st grade team has transitioned to using Mentor Texts to teach and guide students through our writing genres. It’s my first year knee-deep in ment…
If you have been following our blog, you might have seen our post about our favorite teacher hack, earlier finisher packets! If you missed it, don’t worry, I will sum it up real quick for you. Essentially, despite teaching different grade, Emmy and I realized we were both having the same Issue. Kid
Pokemon Go was all the rage in 2016. Fortnite in 2017. You get where we are going with this! Getting back into the swing of things of a new school year can be tricky, but we can help! An easy way to connect with your students is to make your back-to-school lessons relevant and relatable. How can you do this? We have compiled a list of several ways that you can easily incorporate teen trends into your back-to-school lessons for the first few weeks (or anytime!) of the year. Most teens love music and connect with it on a personal level. You can bridge that connection by incorporating music into your daily routines. For example, play an upbeat song between bell work and discussion time to motivate your students. If you struggle to know what's popular with your students, just ask them! The beginning of the year is the perfect time to find out more about them and their music preferences. You can give them a writing prompt asking what their favorite songs are or be even more specific; ask them: Which song makes you want to get up and dance? Which song could you listen to over and over again and never grow tired of? Once you have compiled a list of their favorite songs, search the lyrics of a few. You can often find the best examples of figurative language in song lyrics. If the lyrics are appropriate, print them off and play the song in class and ask students to find examples of figurative devices. This activity can be done anytime, but it's for great back-to-school to review figurative language and to gauge your students' learning levels. Another way to incorporate music directly into learning is to compare popular music artists with writers or subjects you are reading. During poetry and Shakespeare units, I love challenging students to see if they can guess whether the line or phrase is from a song or a poem. I created an entire series with various poets and musicians that you can download here. I'll start out with a presentation and a student handout so the as whole can engage in the activity. It's so much fun to see their reactions when they swear there's no way the line came from an old poet, but it actually did! The next day, I'll display the bulletin board (below) so students can continue to interact with the lines of poetry and songs. One way to grab the attention of your students is to explore books that may have been released since school has been out and/or sharing some titles of books that will be released in the coming months! Talk about anticipation! :) Here are a few YA books that came out recently: Girl Gone Viral by Arvin Ahmadi The Haunted by Danielle Vega We Walked the Sky by Lisa Fiedler Here are a few YA books that will be coming out soon: Frankly in Love by David Yoon The Beautiful by Renee Ahdieh You can also see what your students are interested in by displaying these Genre Reading Cards around a few tables in your classroom (or in the library). Simply, set out the different genre cards, select a few books that fit within each genre, set a timer for 2-3 minutes and let your students explore the various titles. Follow-up with a brief discussion on their favorite books they may have already read (or discovered) through the stations. This is a quick and easy way to see what genres they are interested in or may be interested in exploring this school year. Whether it's the World Cup or the Super Bowl, chances are many of your students are fans of sports or are familiar with at least one sport. Using this FREE survey at the beginning of the year, ask your students which sports or teams are their favorite. (Click HERE to get an editable digital copy of the survey ready for distance learning!) Once you have an idea about their favorites, you can incorporate them into your lessons. For example, if you are writing a sample sentence for a grammar lesson, name-drop a player from one of their favorite teams. My students are usually divided between being either a Chicago Cubs or a St. Louis Cardinals baseball fan, so a sample sentence may be: "Anthony Rizzo and Dexter Fowler sat down together to have pizza after the Cubs defeated the Cardinals last night." Every two years, you can integrate the Olympics into your lessons. Re-word the titles of your activities or assignments by using Olympic-themed names. Instead of calling it a class discussion or a "think-pair-share," call it the "Opening Ceremony" or "Passing the torch of knowledge." A quiz can be called a bobsled competition or a vault competition for gymnastics. Award the top three scores with gold, silver and bronze medals. If you teach multiple sections of the same class, have your classes compete for the overall winner. Awards points for the class with the fewest tardies, the highest scores on quizzes or assignments, and/or the liveliest discussions. Better yet, have your students create the areas for competitions and what they'd like to call them. They can even pick which country they would like to represent (or create their own country). Some students may not like traditional sports, but love video and online gaming. The popularity of videos such as Minecraft and Fortnite paired with the rise of schools adopting eSports as official extracurricular activities indicate that our students still love gaming. Instead of fighting it, try to embrace it by giving students opportunities to utilize both the skills they learn through games with academic skills. For example, I asked my students to recreate a scene from Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. One group built Rome in Minecraft and reenacted one of the scenes live as the class watched. My head was swimming a bit, but it was pretty amazing to see what they created together and how they adapted it to the text. They learned more about the play from that one assignment and had so much fun doing it. This particular assignment may not work with other games, but if you allow your students the possibility of incorporating their favorite game into a project, you may be amazed at the ideas that they come up with. I don't know about you, but one of my favorite things as a student was when we were able to follow-up a book with a movie. As a visual person, I always appreciated when I saw a book come to life after reading it (even though most people prefer the book over the movie). Watching the movie after reading the book can lead to a lot of fun class discussions. Here are a few fun prompts that you can use to follow-up after your are done reading and watching! What did you like better, the book or the movie? Why was the book better than the movie? Why was the movie better than the book? What did the book have that the movie didn't? What did the movie have that the book didn't? A great way to grab the attention of your students would be to plan a unit around an upcoming movie release based on a book. This might be an older book or perhaps, a newer one. Regardless, your students will think it's pretty cool that they are going to be able to watch a movie. I realize it's not possible for all classes to be able to watch a movie in a theatre, but it's a fun and quick field trip if you can make it work! Movie theatres usually give a discount on larger groups and I usually try to work in a price that includes popcorn and a drink for everyone, too. If you think money may be an issue for some students, it does not hurt to ask your administraton for some assistance. They will, almost always, find a way to make sure everyone in your class is able to participate. You can also plan a unit around a particular theme of a movie coming out (or already in stores), if you're looking to take a break from reading for a few weeks. Once students gain a better understanding or appreciation about a particular theme, you can show them a movie where they can explore that theme even more. This way, if taking your students to a movie theatre isn't an option, then show a movie in your classroom instead! Note: You can ask your students which movies they may be interested in watching at the start of the year, then surprise them with the themed unit based around that film! One of the easiest ways to incorporate both social media and pop culture all at once is incorporating current events into your classroom. You can do this on a local, national or international level. You can simply ask your students to start talking about what's happening in your town, in the world, or even more specifically, with their favorite movie actors, singers, bands, etc. What's the gossip with their favorite celebrities? Once your ideas have been shared and topics have been listed, you can use this list as a means for an impromptu writing activity, as an essay topic, etc. The possibilities are endless. If you're interested in checking out more ways on how you can incorporate pop culture into the classroom, click HERE. You might also be interested in: Soundtrack of my Life/Playlist of my Summer
Ready to rock teaching beginning of year writing in first grade? These early days of writing instruction must be targeted and on point. Click to learn more.
For K-1 students, centers are one of the most developmentally appropriate things that you can do for them. Let me give you the break down on each of my 5 centers, and how I manage them!
Free parts of speech posters to display in your classroom. Download your free copy.
September Writing Prompts are here just in time for fall. Get your Narrative, Informative and Opinion Organizers and Draft pages today.
As educators, we know the importance of building a strong foundation in reading for our students. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is through the use of decodable words and sentences. These specially designed reading materials are crucial for young readers, helping them develop essential skills and confidence. In this blog post, we will explore the concept of decodable words and sentences, discuss their importance, and provide practical ways to integrate Decodable Word and Sentence Strips MEGA bundle into your classroom. You can purchase the BUNDLE HERE What Are Decodable Words and Sentences? Decodable words are words that follow regular phonetic patterns, making them easier for beginning readers to sound out and recognize. For example, words like
