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
This post contains affiliate links. Positional Words are some of those concrete concepts that students need to be familiar with. They are a part of our every day vocabulary, especially in the classroom! “Sit beside her.” “Line up behind the door.” “Walk in front of the building.” These are just a few phrases I can ... Read More about Positional Words FREEBIE
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,
We started lesson 14, Isaac, the Son of Promise, by talking about the promises God had made to Abraham. (You can read about Lesson 13 here.) We then had a brief discussion about how sometimes we have to wait to receive the things promised to us. Perhaps we are promised a holiday or a special […]
This post contains affiliate links. Positional Words are some of those concrete concepts that students need to be familiar with. They are a part of our every day vocabulary, especially in the classroom! “Sit beside her.” “Line up behind the door.” “Walk in front of the building.” These are just a few phrases I can ... Read More about Positional Words FREEBIE
Learning to read is such a fun and special time: it's a valuable skill, and sparking an early love of reading can make it become a lifelong passion. In order
FREE LEARN AT HOME RESOURCE Many teachers have been left scrambling this week to find ways that students can continue their school work at home. It is a little more straight forward for older grades, and districts that are 1:1 with technology. What about the primary grades? I made this FREE pac
Growth Mindset: The Power of Yet Recently my 1st grade classroom has morphed into a K/1 combination classroom and then resulted in HUGE gaps (academically, socially, & emotionally) between my s…
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.
Are you trying out a reading workshop model this year with your Kinders or first graders? If so, you might be wondering, how on earth do I set up a reading workshop when my kids can’t even read?! That’s definitely what I was wondering when I first started implementing reading workshop a couple of years ago. I was teaching Kindergarten, and I think I only had one student who knew a few letter names. They didn’t know letter sounds, and I definitely didn’t have any beginning readers. If this is what your situation is like, you can still implement a reading workshop in your classroom! Even if your little ones can’t name a single alphabet letter, there are things you can teach them to begin setting up the reading workshop. Here are some ideas for minilesson topics that you can use when you first start reading workshop with your nonreaders:– Procedures and Routines: Begin with the basics, such as: how students should access their reading materials, where they should sit, how to treat books, how to hold the book correctly and turn the pages, how to read silently and keep their eyes on the book, etc. It will definitely take multiple days (maybe even weeks) to teach all these routines and procedures. Just teach one simple procedure per minilesson. Also, to squeeze more procedures into one day of reading workshop, you can teach a minilesson, have kids read for 5 minutes, teach another minilesson, and have them read for another 5 minutes. This gives you more time to teach important routines, while still taking into account your students’ teeny tiny attention spans!– How to Tell a Story from the Pictures: Teach students that even if they can’t read the words, they can still tell a story to themselves from the pictures! Simply telling kids that they can do this isn’t enough, though – you have to actually model it. What I did was check out a few picture books from the library in languages that I can’t read – Russian, Chinese, Polish, etc. I would show students the book and begin by saying something like, “I found this beautiful book in the library, and I really want to read it. But I have a problem. The book is written in CHINESE! I don’t know how to read Chinese!! But guess what? Even though I can’t read the words, I can still tell the story by reading the pictures. Let me show you what I mean.” Then I would begin paging through the book, telling the story aloud as students listened. I would wrap up by saying something like, “Today I showed you that even if you can’t read the words of a book, you can still use the pictures to tell yourself the story! You can try this out today during reading time.” And then I would dismiss the kids to begin reading. Some of my Kinders were able to do it after I modeled once, but I modeled this skill several more times with different books so that all of the kids eventually “got it.” One note about this – make sure that when you establish guidelines for independent reading, you don’t require students to be completely silent. When kids begin to tell a story by using the pictures, teach them to whisper the story quietly to themselves – most kids won’t be able to silently tell the story in their heads. – How to Retell a Story You Already Know: Spend lots of time in those first few weeks of school reading aloud fairy tales and repetitive books to students. Some books I love using for this are: The Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Three Little Pigs, Brown Bear, and I Went Walking. Then, get as many copies as you can of each of those books. Place them in students’ reading bags (side note: at the beginning of the year, rather than having students check books out, I prepared book baggies for them and had them switch bags amongst themselves each day so they would have new books to read). Then, teach a couple of minilessons about how to tell a story that you already know. You might start by saying something like, “Readers, today I want to teach you that when you are reading a book that you’ve already heard before, you can retell the story using the pictures and what you remember about the story.” Then, take out a story that children are familiar with and model retelling it (without using any of the words). Have students practice this during independent reading time.– How to Read Songs: I loved singing with my Kindergarteners, and I taught them quite a few songs at the beginning of the year (simple, shorter songs are best). I then gave them copies of the lyrics that they could “read” during independent reading time. To make this work, I started by typing up the lyrics to each song. On each page, I put an image that went with the lyrics (for instance, with a song about a frog, I put clipart of a frog on that page, so they would immediately know what song it was). Then, while we sang the song as a class, I projected a copy of the lyrics on my interactive white board. I modeled how to point to the words as we sang. After practicing a song many, many times, I made copies of the lyrics for the kids. I modeled how to sing the song using the lyric sheet, and then gave them the sheets to keep in their bags for independent reading time. It was soooo cute to see them whisper-singing the songs to themselves and attempting to point to the words! They just loved this option for independent reading time. If you teach in Spanish, click HERE for a free copy of the lyrics that I used with my bilingual Kinders. – Partner Reading: Since little ones can’t sustain independent reading for very long at the beginning of the year, mix things up with some
Well, my school year has barely ended, and call me crazy, because I am already planning and creating for next year!! I have a list a mile long of new ideas that I can’t wait to try out for next year. My first one?!?! Close Reading Toolboxes!! This post contains affiliate links to amazon.com. If you…
Inspiration, tips, and sources for creating a nature themed classroom for your middle school or high school students!
what are effective reading comprehension strategies to help readers and struggling readers in your upper elementary classroom? this reading strategies list will help guide your reading instruction
As receitas da revista Cláudia Cozinha são fonte de inspiração para mim. Por passarem pelo teste da Cozinha Experimental dá aquela segurança da comida testada e aprovada. E quando reproduzo alguma receita de lá sempre dá certo. Uma delas é o...
With one simple word, you'll boost your kid's confidence and inspire them to keep trying.
Perfect for kids in kindergarten through middle school, these reading comprehension strategies and activities for struggling readers will not disappoint!
Struggling knowing how to parent your ADHD child? This article will fill you with clarity and give you ideas that require no punishments or rewards. Read about how I put Ross Greene's CPS method into action and learned how to parent my ADHD child.
I want to try all of these.
Today I am sharing 7 normal things that now seem weird as a minimalist. I wasn't always a minimalist. Thinking about some normal things...
I have an affinity for books. I’ve been reading more books a week than the average person for many years now. It’s what I do with most of my spare time. Everyone seems to know
Great LDS game to play for your next Family Home Evening
Some ideas for teaching plot elements to help students recall stories in sequential order, summarize stories, and understand theme.
Reading Comprehension Passages for Kindergarten - I created this reading resource to give my kindergarten students more reading comprehension practice. This set includes 15 printables that each have a small reading passage. Students read the paragraph and then draw a picture to match what they read. (What kindergarten student doesn't love to draw?) I will use this during my guided reading groups, but this could also be used whole group. In my classroom, I pull up the original on the smartboard, and we review the passages together after my kindergarten students have read and drawn on their own. Use this reading comprehension set during: Guided Reading Science of Reading Small Reading Groups Reading Homework Kindergarten Reading
If you’re a sewist, there are certain universal things all of us can relate to. You know, the things that we are constantly having to explain to all the non-sewists in our lives. So today I thought I’d take a shortcut and make this list – that way, we can just share this article with...Read More
In this special episode, Kasey shares 30 Things You Didn't Know Google Slides Could Do and a FREE eBook download with templates! A follow-up to one of our most popular blog and podcast series, Kasey is going to give you even more ideas for student-created projects with Google Slides.There is so much you can create with the Swiss Army Knife of Google!
Fall songs that are tried and true and loved by teachers and parents. Use these fall songs for circle time, for preschool, for kindergaten, and more!
Last year, I taught how to make inferences for quite some time. With such an emphasis on close reading, I wanted my students to read between the lines, to dig deeper, and to find out the answer to the question, “what is the author really trying to say?!” I spent a lot of time […]
Struggling spellers. If you teach one, you know exactly what I’m talking about. And you know how frustrating it can be for you and the student. Today, I’m sharing 5 things struggling spellers need. Before I get too far, I just want to say that every child is different. There isn’t a single solution that will ... Read More about 5 Things Struggling Spellers Need
Find 10 free kindergarten ipad apps for reading and math. This list includes apps that can be great independent practice or for centers.
If you work with children, I can promise you that you will come across at least one student that has these difficult behaviors. Not only are they really stressful for the teacher but they impact the student’s life in many ways. Behaviors like disrespect and defiance can make classroom's chaotic.
Not my best parenting moment. My four-year-old son and I were running late. It’s always where my blow-ups happen. We had left Target and were driving to pick up m
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
Parkinson's disease doesn't only affect one person - it affects the family, too.
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Your class syllabus does not have to be boring! It can be interesting & informative. Grab a free, editable printable AND DIGITAL syllabus.
I am officially starting my substitute teaching job next week! Super nervous and excited! I can't wait to get back into the district that I student taught. I have been printing out some emergency plans to be extra prepared. Here is the sub report that I made this morning. I hope you may get some use out of it, too! Click here to download the pdf
