I have always struggled with spelling, and how to engage students in meaningful activities to practice their spelling words! I have tried just about everything under the sun, from rotating through teacher-selected word work centers, to a free choice spelling menu where students try to complete different activities throughout the week. Nothing seemed to work!
Hello Everyone! It is so nice to have time to put some finishing touches on a couple of units that we have coming up! Another historical figure we will study after Eleanor Roosevelt is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As a nation we celebrate his life daily! Thank you Dr. King! Officially we celebrate on the third Monday of January. I have posted about our activities before, but I went through and cleaned up, and added to my unit. Here are some pics from the updated unit! If you would like the 30 page free printable unit CLICK HERE!! :) My second offering for today is a unit our curriculum team worked on this summer. We had fun integrating reading and social studies and are finding it a natural way to teach and get everything in. This next unit is about other important historical figures. It includes posters about Alexander Graham Bell, Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, Garrett Morgan, and Richard Allen along with reading strategy practice activities. It also includes an invention home project packet for kids. The unit ended up to be over 50 pages! I am excited to include this unit in our curriculum in a few weeks!! Here are a few pics from the unit! For your free 52 page Inventors Unit CLICK HERE!! :) So glad I had time to share these endeavors! Hope you can use at least parts of either one! It is my joy to be able to share and help your journey in the classroom or homefront become a little less stressful. As always, please let me know if this is something you can use, if there are any typos or problems, and if you would like to see something else in particular on this little blog. I hear from teachers and parents from all over the world, and I am so grateful for all of you!! Joyfully! Nancy
I have always loved words and am a self-proclaimed word nerd. I actually read the book Word Nerds, met the authors at a conference a few years ago, and got to lead a PLC in my school all about it! Research shows that a child's vocabulary is a key component to their success in school, on standardized tests, and in life in general! Those three reasons alone should be proof enough to any educator that VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION IS IMPORTANT! What I love about vocabulary instruction is that it's cross-curricular. The words found in children's literature are just as important as those found in content areas, like science and social studies, which, in my opinion, makes it almost effortless to incorporate into your instruction. However, the hard part of vocabulary instruction is making it interesting and engaging to students. Merely writing definitions can only go so far. One way to make vocabulary instruction more engaging is to provide your students a variety of ways for them to engage with a vocabulary and then allowing them to choose what type of activity will help them best learn the word and internalize its meaning. A vocabulary menu can accomplish this. Students are instructed to choose from the ...
Need to help your students get more hands on practice for their vocabulary words? I've got 5 fun vocabulary games you can use right away!
This resource was made to help build an awareness of being safe in and around the water and sun! This is super important for kids! This sorting page provides a number of scenarios to read and think about before cutting & gluing them. It's sure to produce some good talks about visits to the pool, playing at the beach, boating on the river, or trips to the lake! Students will sort the following into "Safe" or "Not Safe": swim without an adult go in deep water wear sunscreen drink up the water you are swimming in wear goggles do not wear a life jacket on the boat wear a swim float wear sunglasses your mom catches you in the deep end of the pool run around the pool Water safety is an important discussion, this helps makes it meaningful yet simple for Kindergarten and First grade! Be sure students have an opportunity to share their thinking in regards to these situations and why they sorted they way the did. If you need other resources for Kindergarten and First Grade check my store for even more! Thanks for stopping by….
Word Search puzzles are such a fun way for kids to learn to spell, read and recognize words. 1st Graders need special words suited for them and we have them. 1st Grade spelling lists in the form of a word search game? What could be more fun? Help them along their reading journey. Print them […]
We are doing first grade phonics now. Get ready to learn and do all of the activities I think everyone will enjoy!
Learn about Ancient Greece with these free printable books to read, color, and learn! Fun geography & history worksheets.
Hi everyone! The rain has finally arrived here in Portland, Oregon. Usually we have months and months of rain, starting in October and pret...
Discover grammar games that are engaging, rigorous, and fun! These I CAN Grammar Games are perfect for grammar review, practice, and literacy centers!
Sometimes you plan and plan a big elaborate lesson and sometimes, the best lessons come to you about 10 minutes before class. This activit...
Prefixes and suffixes in first grade? Kindergarten ? What?! I'm not sure who decided teaching them so early was the way to go but never fear...
Do your young learners have poetry journals?! Mine do and we love them. The main question I have been asked in the past is what I put inside my journals and I created a resource to help answer that question. Most of the poems in our poetry journals are phonics poems, but I also […]
These days have a similar routine. After the whole group part of our Word Study time, students will meet with their word study partner. I assigned partners so that each partner pair is in the same word study group and are therefore working with the same sort each week. Students will begin by sitting back-to-back with their partner and sorting independently. After sorting, they sit next to each other and take turns reading each word in their sort. After completing this, partners will work on an activity together.
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!
This week I tried something new with the vocabulary in the story. I got the idea at a First Grade Conference in December. The student writes the vocabulary word in the middle of the sheet and then there are four things to do with the word. We completed two of the boxes together as a class and they finished the last two boxes independently. The kiddos sure had a great grasp of the vocabulary after this. When we read the story they had fantastic comprehension.
I made word family dice on this free programmable app. The students shook the dice and wrote the word under real word or not real word on a large piece of butcher paper. We also used it to add 3 digit numbers. Make Dice Preview
Hello Everyone! Hope you're having a joyfilled day!! I wanted to share my "Me and My Community" social studies mini unit with you. If you are one of my kiddos reading this, have mom or dad print it off for you and get busy!! :) We've done many of these activities already, but it is still a great summer time filler! The unit contains 30 pages of poems, drawing and writing activities, anchor chart activities, a mini book for kids to make, citizenship, community workers, map skill activities, and much more. I have loved having time to organize it. Don't you love summer for just that reason? Here are a few pics of what is included! Unit contains three poems An 8 page mini book for kids to make Our "Me on the Map" anchor chart Craft Connection Inspired by finallyinfirst.blogspot.com :) Mini poster "What will you be?" anchor sample- unit contains all 4 cardinal directions and a compas rose Since you are part of my community, here's your free 30 page printable unit. Click Here! Hope you can use a least a bit of this!! I can't wait to use it again this fall!! Have a great rest of the day! Joyfully! Nancy
Read a few ideas for your past and present or then and now unit. There are free lessons and activities as well as other fun hands-on, engaging ideas.
First Graders from 1D and 1C First Graders have been learning how to draw a self-portraits in Art. Each portrait is so sweet and unique. Using observational skills, we have been studying our facia…
This post shares The Word Collector activities and ideas that incorporate vocabulary, theme, comprehension, One Little Word, free printables, and more!
Handy worksheets to help students find the meaning of words based on context. Includes 50 examples that feature important vocabulary words for first through third graders and a word box to guide students and improve spelling and vocabulary usage. Upon purchase, you will download a PDF with all 5 worksheets that is print ready.
Learn About the 7 Continents! Exploring the 7 Continents has never been more exciting! It’s a Small World Continent Study is filled with over 35 activities to help your students gain a greater understanding of the seven continents. This 130+ page unit is filled with great resources, posters, printables, activities, and projects that will open […]
Learn about five different biomes as you color and read key facts about with free printable Biome Coloring Pages for Prek-4th graders.
One of my projects this summer was to plan out how I wanted to teach sight words and phonics skills next year. My curriculum does not dictate what phonics skills we have to teach and which sight word lists to practice, so I came up with a yearly scope and sequence that I am pretty happy with! At the end of this post you'll find a link to a bunch of freebies. This chart is in there (and it's editable). I have set aside about 20 minutes a day for sight words, poetry, and phonics. It usually works out to be about 5 minutes sight words, 5 minutes poetry, and 10 minutes phonics. My plan is to teach five sight words a week. My word lists come from Dolch, Fry's, and a few randoms thrown in! The phonics skills are based on what I feel my students need to work on Grade 1. We spend the first few weeks reviewing the alphabet sounds (I like Beverly Tyner's sequence.) Then we move onto short vowels, silent E, digraphs, long vowels, blends, bossy R, and some diphthongs. Even though I teach this stuff whole group, I do spend time in my guided reading groups doing more focused work on sight words or phonics skills too, depending on the group's needs. Each week I display the five sight words of the week on this little board. I bought a little white board from the dollar store, added the title and some clipart, and stuck on five little Stikki Clips. (Have you heard of these things? They are pretty neat. I bought them from Really Good Stuff. Apparently they stick super well to cinder block walls!) Each week I just stick the words in the clips. Easy peasy! At the end of the week we retire the words to the word wall and on Monday we put up five new words. Here's a peek at what we do all week long with these words: On Monday we introduce the sight words and practice them using some free chants from Cara Carroll at The First Grade Parade. Then we make a little mini book. Students cut apart the squares, staple it in the corner, and then practice tracing each sight word and colouring it (or rainbow writing it). They keep these mini books in their book boxes for a couple weeks to practice the sight words. They can read them during "read to self" time. On Tuesday we make and break the words. I scramble up the letters in each word and we practice putting them back together. I do this on the Mimio, but you can just use magnetic letters. On Wednesday we play Guess the Word. It's like hangman. I put dashes up for each letter in the word and the students take turns guessing letters. I cross off the letters they guess and cross off a section of the picture each time they make an incorrect guess. There are ten different monthly themed pictures. I don't just use the words of the week--I take any word from the word wall! On Thursday we read the Mystery Sentences. I write five sentences that each have one of the words of the week in it. We read the sentences together and try to figure out the missing word. On Friday we play Swat the Sight Word. On the projector I display a page with the five words all over it. I choose two students, give them each a fly swatter, and call out one of the words. The students try to swat the word. I love this because there's not one winner; they can both find and swat a sight word! :) They love this game! **I don't have any of the Mimio files for you to download, but I have put a blank PDF version of the four activities (Tues-Fri) into the freebie file. You can import the PDF into Mimio or Smart Notebook and add your own text to create the activities yourself. I have also included my sight word books and an editable version so you can put in your own five sight words.** I keep all of my sight word stuff for the week in page protectors in my Phonics & Sight Words binders (blogged about this here). The sight word lists are three weeks of sight words. I use them during Word Work. I'll blog about this more later! I number the back of all my word wall cards so that at the end of the year I can easily organize them back into the proper week. After our sight word activity, we look at the poem of the week. I have poems from a variety of different sources, but mostly I use Deedee Wills' Poetry Station Packs. They are amazing! I place the poem onto sentence strips and display them on a large pocket chart. On Monday we read the poem together, on Tuesday we look for certain letters or phonics skills, on Wednesday we ready in different voices for fluency practice, on Thursday we highlight our word wall words in the poem, and on Friday we put the poem in our poetry folders. Sometimes we will highlight the word wall words in our folder or draw a picture to go with the poem. Then we have phonics time. On Mondays I usually introduce the phonics skill with a story, such as the Scholastic Phonics Tales. Then we brainstorm a list of words that contain that phonics skill on chart paper. On Tuesdays we usually do some sort of phonics activity. My students love Babbling Abby's Highlight a Word from her Word Work packs. On Wednesday we usually do a read and match activity together. These cards are from Reagan Tunstall's Big Phonics Bundle. I love this bundle! It has so many activities for so many phonics skills!! It is well worth the price. On Thursday we do another phonics activity... this might be a cut and paste activity or a read the room activity. I have so many things in my files from The Mailbox Magazine or other TpTers. I might also have a Phonics Read the Room pack in the works... but we'll see about that! ;) On Friday we usually play Roll & Cover or Roll & Write. I photocopy the black & white versions of these games onto coloured paper so we can play as a whole group. Then I place a few laminated, coloured versions of the game in our word work centres so students can play them again during guided reading time. I keep all of my phonics stuff for the week in page protectors in my Phonics & Sight Words binders (read about this here). The first five weeks of school are a little bit different for phonics because we are reviewing our alphabet sounds. We still do sight words each work (although the very first week of school we just focus on our names) and we do a poem of the week, but each week we focus on five (or six) letter sounds. I like to use Beverly Tyner's sequence. (If you haven't read any of her books, check out Small-Group Reading Instruction. It's really great!) I'm planning on using activities from my new Alphabet Practice pack. Each week the activities are the same, but it focuses on a different set of letters. The first week is BSMAC, then TDLRI, JGHON, PUQWY, and lastly ZXEVKF. On Monday we will practice the sounds that each letter make by chanting "b says /b/, m says /m/, etc." We sometimes add an action to go with it, like biting an apple for /a/ or bouncing a ball for /b/. Then we do a card sort in the pocket chart. We will sort the picture cards based on their initial sound (or final sound with X). On Tuesday students will do a colour code activity. They have to write the initial letter of each word, then colour the picture using the colour code. Great practice for those colour words as well! Then when they are done, they can play Spin to the Top. They spin an uppercase letter and practice tracing the letters. When one letter reaches the top, they win! On Wednesday we do a read the room activity. I place 12 cards around the room. Students find the card and write down the letter the word starts with beside the correct number. When done, they do a letter search on the back. They circle and count each type of letter and write number beside it. Great for identifying letters in different fonts! On Thursday we do a cut and paste sort. Students have to glue the correct lowercase letter and two beginning sound pictures beside the correct train engine. Then when they are done, they can play Roll to the Top. They roll a die and practice tracing the correct lowercase letters. When one letter reaches the top, they win! On Friday we play a game. Either small group beginning sound BINGO (included in my Alphabet Practice pack), Roll & Cover, or Roll & Write. Check out these products by clicking the pictures below. Well I hope that gives you some good ideas for teaching sight words, poetry, or phonics! Click the picture below to download some of the freebies from this post.
These are all of the Kindergarten Wonders sight words. I laminate one for each student and let them keep it at their desk as a study tool. They may use dry erase marker to cross out or circle ones they need help with! :) This could also be used with Pre-K students as enrichment and 1st grade students as review!
These NO PREP RESOURCES are COMPLETE units designed for 3rd grade social studies. They align with TEKS standards, follow the IFD of the TEKS Resource system, and are designed to be completed in 20 days, but can be adjusted as needed. They were created for asynchronous (everyone's favorite word!) learning, and may be adapted for synchronous needs. With this being the first year with new social studies TEKS it has been difficult finding resources, so these can serve as a base for making them your own as using them as-is. Products Included: Communities Unit Celebrating Freedom and Heritage Physical Geography and the Environment Product Details: Explanation of concepts Concept Review Videos Performance Assessments ** Each resource is UPDATED to include Unit Vocabulary Activities**
Free printable first grade word search PDF - first grade sight words word search for your students or children at home!
This past week has been SUPER busy! I've neglected my blog and am now back in action. With all the craziness going on, I'm especially looki...
Hello Everyone! One wonderful perk about the 15 hour drive home? I was able to put the finishing touches on my Landforms unit. This unit is coming up in our curriculum, so I'm glad I had time to organize and put everything together. This mini unit includes almost 70 pages of learning centered around exploration of landforms. There are some social studies activities (of course), some ELA (abc order, vocabulary, antonyms, written expression), some math, and a couple of craft connections. I hope you can use even a small part of this. Here are a few pics of the unit. Landforms book inspired by AIMS curric. Unit includes patterns! mystery picture includes clues with mixed math practice If you are interested, please click here for your free unit! Well, spring break is almost over. I have missed my kids so much!! Can't wait to see them! But that's going to have to wait one extra day as I have jury duty tomorrow. Thank goodness for a wonderful substitute teacher who just so happens to be a dear friend. My kids are in good hands!! Next up? Natural resources and geometry units! Stay tuned!! As always, thanks for taking time to take a peek! I appreciate each and every one of you!! Take care! Joyfully! Nancy
Help your child practice reading a map and using the cardinal directions. See if she can interpret the different parts of a map.
Teaching prefixes and suffixes in isolation is a thing of the past! Teach your students so they learn the words in context.
A teacher's how to guide to using Words Their Way, an assessment-based, differentiated, leveled, hands-on approach to spelling and word work.
LOTS of fun, no-prep Antonyms and Synonyms Worksheets! This pdf is filled with exercises for K-3rd grade students.
PRIMARY PHONICS - UNIT 6 We are ready to tackle digraphs ! I can’t believe we are already here. My kiddos were just starting school it seems like, and I remember most students couldn’t even identify their letters. Now we are reading sight words , CVC words , short stories and MO
Another center that is really popular in my class is Read, Visualize, Draw . It's a great way to practice visualizing while reading, which...
