GRAMMAR UNIT 7: CONTRACTIONS It is time to teach contractions ! My students have come so far with their grammar skills in units 1-6. Our language has improved so much as we have been learning about nouns , adjectives , verbs , adverbs , capitalization , and punctuation .

Social Studies, first grade, centers, belonging, planning, centres, assessment

Try these essential tips for how to run Math centers: Easy, simple, and effective organization ideas and resources for the K-2 classroom.

Do you reinvent the wheel every single week when it comes to centers, word work, stations.....whatever you happen to call them? Yeah, me too! I know better, I swear I do but it just never fails. I am here today to tell you that there IS A BETTER WAY! Let me begin by saying I am a big fan of Daily 5. I run my room about as closely to the Daily 5 model as possible but this is one area I just never could give in on. The sisters suggest having out materials for students to build words, write words, and work with words during this choice. It is that simple. It is called word work after all right? I have always felt the need for my work work choices to be very specific so that students could be working on what I wanted them to be working on. Wait a minute.....that's the opposite of Daily 5 philosophy. It's all about CHOICE and becoming a BETTER READER so why am I making all of the choices? So here is what I did. I put as many random materials as I could find in my classroom and made them available to students. THAT'S IT! Along with a sight word list to use as a reference and one fun morning of showing them what it was all about and I haven't looked back since. They are working SO HARD during our word work time because they are truly using materials they love and making good choices to become better readers and writers. It has been amazing! Here are a few simple, simple examples. Again...simple! I did not go out of my way for any of these! #1 Magnets I have a couple of really organized sets of magnets and then these just thrown in a clear shoe box. Guess which one gets picked the most? You guessed it! Maybe it's the bright colors or maybe kids are just drawn to chaos. Either way it's a win! #2 Wiki Sticks I lied. I did go out of my way for this one just because I've always wanted to use them. My students think they are really fun! One of my kiddos who struggles the most during word work time (and refuses to use a sight word list) spelled out "tatr tot" last week using these. He was pretty impressed with himself and I was too! I got these from Amazon. You can see them through my affiliate link HERE. #3 Pom poms I've used these for fine motor before but I've never just included them in word work. They get picked every round! I didn't originally tell them to use a cookie sheet to build on but I like how it keeps everything in one space. They came up with that idea. #4 Beads I had these from the Dollar Tree for my fine motor bins too so I just included them in word work for now. They are REALLY interesting to build with because you have to pick up each bead and set it on its side so it won't roll away. The cookie sheet came in really handy for this one. #5 Plain OLD white boards I have really old yucky white boards. Guess what? They don't care! I set them all on the shelf and they pick one, a marker, and a sock (they are baby socks) and write their sight words. Marker dry? DON'T COME GET ME! Just throw it out and get a new one! I put an old assortment of markers in here so we could weed out the bad ones. TIP! Put your sight word list in a sheet protector and students can cross off words as they write them. My students figured out that organization tip too. I love when they help me figure things out! #6 Letter Tiles These came with our Reading Street materials and they are really fun for building CVC words because there are so many vowels included. I encouraged them to work on sight words but I noticed one student building CVC words, blending them together, and then sorting them into real words and make believe words.You better believe I had him share out at the end of word work to show his classmates and now everyone is doing it too. Instant center.....no prep! #7 Scrabble Tiles Seriously though. I have been collecting these forever and I NEVER use them because well.....honestly I didn't know what to do with them. It bothered me a little that they were all capitals but guess what? My kids don't care! They love using the little stand to build words with and it does not matter one little bit that they are all capitals. #8 Letter Stamps I had these already and they are always a part of our word work so this was a station that just stayed the same. I do like that they have to focus on our new words of the week for this one. I have to be in a (little) bit of control sometimes! But my 2nd grade colleague just has blank paper at this station and they stamp any word they want. I'm sure my kiddos would love that too! I might switch it out and have them do that next week. You can get the STAMPS HERE and the STAMP PAD HERE. These are affiliate links which means I get a small amount if purchase through the link at no additional cost to you. Seriously love these though and they have lasted a long time! #9 Paper Centers Yes....I still need a little bit of control and my theory is that some kids will totally love using all of the hands on stuff but some kids still want to complete a paper like a cut and glue, word search, or write the room. I didn't do away with all centers, I just added all of the fun word work centers into what we already had going. BUT! This has already saved me a ton of time in the planning department. I put out 4 papers for the week and that's it. All my centers are planned for! You can see the centers I have available that are aligned with Reading Street stories HERE. This week our story is The Little Engine That Could. You can see the four paper choices on top and then all of the materials stored below. I love these containers from Walmart because the handles on the sides lock the lids down tight and keep beads, wiki sticks, tiles, and pom poms from flying everywhere. I have reflected a little bit on whether these were just working so well because my students are UBER independent right now or because this is just a great fit. I mean really, they are almost 1st graders after all! But I think that these would have worked great at the beginning of the year with some alphabet options just as nicely as they are working now. I put out similar items at the beginning of the year anyway, this would just be some added options. Would I overwhelm my students with all of this in one day. NO WAY! My students have been exposed to all of these items in one way or another (through fine motor stations, word work, or in small group with me) except for the wiki sticks. Those were brand new. I waited a couple of days to add those in to make a BIG deal about them. If this was the beginning of the year I would put out 2 choices until we were really solid with those choices and then add more in. Get the sight word list shown in the pictures that aligns with Reading Street Kindergarten words HERE. These types of centers work great with these Rainbow Word Sight Word lists too! Want to save this post for later? Pin it here! P.S. Get a FREE ALPHABET ACTIVITY when you sign up for my newsletter HERE!

PRIMARY SCIENCE UNIT 1 - THE HUMAN BODY We are so excited to dig into Unit 1 in our science sequence! We kick off science this year with My Body and My Five Senses . It is the perfect place to start science with our primary kiddos. This year we are going to explore and learn about the

Use these number sense math activities to build number sense in first grade! Students will love these engaging, fun games too!

Are you looking for engaging grammar centers? These parts of speech activities are perfect. Here are 7 noun centers for teaching grammar.

Measurement concepts benefit from hands-on learning! Help your K-3 learn non-standard units of measure & how to use a ruler. Get 20 ideas for measurement today!

Celebrate apple week with your kindergarten or first grade students with these interactive apple investigation activities!

I have been on a math kick lately. I think it is because my kids are strugglingggg with basic math concepts lately and it’s killin’ me! We have been learning addition strategies and practicing addition within 20 for two weeks now and my class has just started to pick up their momentum. They are […]

KINDERGARTEN MATH - TEEN NUMBERS AND PLACE VALUE We have come so far in kindergarten math this year! My sweet kinders now have 1:1 correspondence down, they can write and recognize numerals 1-10, we covered geometry, measurement and data…. so now we are tackling those tricky teens and place valu

Do you want to know how to teach fractions? Check out this post for a fun hands-on lesson!

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.

20 ways to teach graphing, lesson ideas for graphing, graphing for first grade, second grade, third grade, and kindergarten

Here are three retelling strategies you can take and use in your classroom right away. Head on over to the post to grab the activities.

I am sharing my favorite First Grade math station with you on the blog today! Use this math game to practice addition facts in class today!

Playing emotion games and completing fun social-emotional learning activities will help kids learn about how they are feeling, all while they are having fun. Use these simple and engaging Color by Emo

Teach children strategies for adding and subtracting, build math fact fluency, solve word problems, and play math activities and games. A FREE addition equation sort is included!

This Alliteration mini-unit was created with little learners in mind! It has teaching posters and many interactive activities. My students loved it and would re-use the cards over and over in a literacy station by choice!!

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,

First grade math centers, games, and differentiated worksheets! SO many fun activities for graphing and data analysis in this HUGE unit that is fun and differentiated! It is JAM-PACKED with over 200 pages of everything you need to teach graphing and data analysis. This pack covers 5 main standards/concepts: bar graphs, tallies and tally charts, picture graphs, pie chart, and concepts of graphing like labeling parts of a graph, types of graphs, graphing in reverse, converting graphs, etc. There is a lot of stuff in here! Fun activities, multiple levels of worksheets, graphing games, and assessment so that you can really build on these skills while having a lot of engaging learning fun! There is a lot of practice collecting data, building different types of graphs, analyzing and answering questions about graphs, converting graph types, etc. Save a ton by buying this in the First Grade Math Units 10-18 BUNDLE See fun pictures of this unit in action in my blog post about it: Graphing and Data Analysis in First Grade In this HUGE graphing unit, there are 50 differentiated worksheets, 8 math stations, 10 cut and pastes, 8 posters, 7 pages of assessments, and 27 days worth of pre-made graphing questions/categories (with personalized kid cards your kids can make to look like them to create the graph with their choices) in this pack! All of the math stations come with student-friendly guided directions, teacher directions/tips, all of the materials, and recording sheets and most of them are differentiated as well. **Please click the green PREVIEW button above** It will show you the table of contents to give you an idea of what is included. It is structured like my previous math units so if you click the links below to the other math units, some of their previews can show you more of what you're getting. This is everything you need to print and go to teach these concepts for graphing and data to a variety of learners - it will save you so much time! Plus, ALL of your students will be learning and having fun at their own level since everything is already differentiated for you! This pack will make your math planning a breeze to help your students organize, represent, and analyze data in a variety of ways! A UK spelling version (for example, colour instead of color) is included in the file :) For my other first grade math units: First Grade Math Unit 1 First Grade Math Unit 2 First Grade Math Unit 3 First Grade Math Unit 4 First Grade Math Unit 5 First Grade Math Unit 6 First Grade Math Unit 7 First Grade Math Unit 8 First Grade Math Unit 9 You can currently get all of these at a deep discount in the Units 1-9 bundle!! First Grade Math Units 1-9 BUNDLED First Grade Math Unit 10 First Grade Math Unit 11 First Grade Math Unit 12 First Grade Math Unit 13 First Grade Math Unit 14 First Grade Math Unit 15 First Grade Math Unit 16 First Grade Math Unit 17 First Grade Math Unit 18 which you can also get for a deep discount in the First Grade Math Units 10-18 BUNDLE There is so much stuffed in these that I had to split it into 2 big bundles! I also have a Money Unit in this same format! - Miss Giraffe

Discover grammar games that are engaging, rigorous, and fun! These I CAN Grammar Games are perfect for grammar review, practice, and literacy centers!

We are doing first grade phonics now. Get ready to learn and do all of the activities I think everyone will enjoy!

Implement 1st grade phonics routines in your classroom this year! Whole group SOR lessons, phonics activities, centers, and phonics freebies!

See how Newton's Third Law of action and reaction explains why airplanes fly in the sky, ships move through water and rockets launch into space.

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,

If you’re looking for fun and engaging first grade STEM centers, you’ve come to the right spot. We can help take your teaching skills to the next level.

Simple ideas for managing guided math rotations! Tips for organizing and running math centers efficiently and successfully!

Number fact fluency is important to develop in first and second grade. Without automatic recall it's hard to move on to more complex skills.

These FREE domino addition printables are a great Kindergarten or 1st grade math center for practicing beginning addition skills!

FREE MARCH CENTERS ☘️ Sign up with just your email and I’ll send these to you!

These activities are easy for kids to do, with concepts that build their science knowledge.

Engage students in science for September on topics like magnets, apples, matter, and fall through science experiments and integrating science and literacy.

Exploring matter and energy in kindergarten and first grade is so much fun. Watching little ones see the objects around them scientifically is exciting and a tad bit adorable. But nothing beats the surprise as they see matter change before their eyes. Teaching states of matter may take a lot of preparation and experiments, but

Find 5 number sense activities for kindergarten that build a solid foundation of math skills including counting, ordering, comparing & more.

PRIMARY WRITING - UNIT 3 I am so excited to teach this narrative writing unit! This writing curriculum is geared for kindergarten, first grade and can even be used in second grade classrooms. In Unit 3 , we are learning how to write a personal narrative . We practice writing about what we l

I love incorporating games into math as much as possible. Who doesn't love playing games, right?! But the problem with games is that they often require quite a bit of prep work for us teachers. I've been trying to come up with some that require little to no preparation to use. I'm so excited to