The start to the school year for newcomer ELLs can be overwhelming and nerve-wracking. It is our job to set them up with tools to help them feel comfortable exploring a new language in a
Hi Friends…. The past two weeks we have been working on Prefixes and Suffixes in our second-grade classroom! My kiddos were having such a good time brainstorming words with prefixes and then figuring out the meaning. They really had a strong grasp of the concept… I was pretty impressed. After our whole … Prefixes, Suffixes and a FREEBIE Just for YOU! Read More »
Click to see how one teacher uses 1 book to launch writing workshop with a detailed breakdown of each day and a free download.
Planning your guided literacy time is bout to get so much easier. I get asked a lot about how to tie reading and writing together, while focusing on fluency, comprehension, phonics, vocabulary, writing, etc. I create this resource to get kids excited about reading and writing, and to make planning
Hi friends! It feels like forever since my last weekly round-up post! Here is what we have been up to in our classroom! Scroll to the bottom for the freebie! 1. NUMBER SENSE LOOSE PARTS TRAY I switched up my math loose parts tray and the kids ate it up this week! They are obsessed with gems, so I think the rhinestones helped. In the tray I put magnetic numbers, dominos, rhinestones and blocks with the words and, make (for composing numbers), numbers with dots (for extra support) and +, - and = signs to encourage addition and subtraction. 2. ROLL & COMPOSE We have been working on composing numbers in math so I modelled whole group, then set out this "Roll & Compose" as a math centre. Students are instructed to roll both dice, place the dice in a box and make the composing number sentence with magnetic letters. You can find this "Roll & Compose" centre in my "Composing Numbers for Kindergarten" pack on TPT. Click here or on the image below if you are interested in taking a look! If you want more ideas for composing numbers you can read my full composing numbers blog post here. 3. BEE INQUIRY A few of my kids had questions about bees, so we did a K-W-L chart with the whole class to see what else they were wondering about bees. We got so many great questions! We started by reading the book "Give Bees a Chance" by Bethany Barton (which we loved! It is a funny book with lots of interesting facts, great for Kindergarten!) and we wrote down what we learned about bees. I was so impressed with some of their pictures too, I have some amazing little artists! "I learned that bees have 5 eyes." "I learned that bees have 2 stomachs." If you are interested in the recording sheet I use for inquiry writing, you can find it in my "Inquiry Writing Templates for Kindergarten" pack by clicking here or on the image below: 4. ST. PATRICK PRINTING Can you believe it's March already next week!? Since St. Patrick's Day is during March Break, we usually have some of the centres out a bit early. Here are the tracing sheets I added to the dry erase centre after school today for next week. My "St. Patrick's Day Activities" pack got a big update earlier this week so be sure to re-download it if you own it! If you want to check it out, you can click here or on the image below: 5. MYSTERY CVC WORDS Here's another new centre I had out for the kids to try this week! I wanted something that would work on the skills my kids needed most; identifying beginning sounds, blending sounds and reading CVC words! This centre combines all 3 skills. It was a little challenging for some of my JK's but the SK's were great helpers and many kids worked in pairs to solve the mats together. I had lots of requests to share these mats, so it's now available in my TPT store. You can click here or on the image below to check it out if you are interested! 6. 2D SHAPE PUSH PIN SHEETS {FREEBIE} I posted this photo to my Instagram stories and got a request to post the file, so here it is! Print, slice in half and staple these sheets to construction paper and set them out with push pins. Students poke each dot and peel the copy paper off at the end to uncover their picture! It's great for perseverance, concentration and fine motor development! My kids love it! You can grab these for free by clicking here or on the image below: Ok that's it from me for this week! Have a great weekend! - Yukari
Use these free Writing Folders and freebies to give your writers support during their independent writing time. Find all our FREE Writing Printables HERE. If you are a subscriber to my newsletter, you can download all the printables that go with it for FREE! Not a subscriber? Simply subscribe HERE! NOTE: If you are already a ... Read More about Writing Folders – for K-5 Learners
Download these free picture mats to build vocabulary in preschool and kindergarten. These are great for English language learners, too! #vocabulary
We are starting our unit on Bears! Last week we read many versions of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Part of our work on the story included this story map. It is made for kindergarten students, but would be appropriate for first grade too. They drew pictures to show their ideas and then I labeled the drawing or wrote the dictation about what what happening in each part of the story. First, the kiddos worked on the setting and characters. I love this colorful busy picture that includes all sorts of details. She put the beds outside the house because she wanted to include some of the items from inside the house in the picture. This little boy drew just the house, but added the different sized bowls and had me label them. This was a great characters picture. So darn cute! Then on another day, students did pictures for the beginning, middle, and end of the story. First, we did an activity together where we ordered picture cards and talked about different parts of the story. It was great to hear the kids verbally retelling the story in their own words. That is one of the things that is great about doing an activity like this - a great way to really listen carefully to the oral language of students. I love the picture of Goldilocks in this one. Her hair is great! I was so excited when this little sweetie used the word "discovered" in her dictation to me. Woo hoo! Great language! I thought my sweet little students did a great job with this activity! And I was happy with how much they were enjoying the many versions of the 3 bears stories. And, now that they have done a complete story map with a very familiar story, I can start doing these with more challenging literature. OK, here is your freebie, just click on the link under this image to go grab it in my TpT store: Story Map FREEBIE by Katie Byrd I hope it is a big help in your classroom! Please leave some love in the comments if you are using it with your class. Happy Teaching!
Do you hate to teach poetry? Do you want your students to learn and enjoy poetry? Try these simple ways to learn how to teach poetry...
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.
Use these free writing journals with your kindergarten students. Comes with front cover, back cover to explain writing process, and scaffolded, lined paper.
Combining directed drawing and writing together provides an engaging literacy activity that targets core skills.
A free comic strip template for Elephant and Piggie books, plus a set of super cute Elephant and Piggie paper bag puppet templates.
Heute gibt es eine neue Wortschatzdatei mit Übungen zum Thema "Kleidung". Wie jedes Mal: schlichte schwarz-weiß Bilder: mit Bild und Wort, nur Bild, nur Wort. Dazu gibt es noch zwei Übungen zur Vertiefung des gelernten Wortschatzes: geschüttelte Wörter und ein Wortsuchrätsel.
Four Square Writing has endless possibilities! You can get it here for free or you can get it by clicking on the picture. I left it blank so you can put in your own topic. You can check out my previous post about how I used 4 square writing in my classroom during our author study …
Onomatopoeia Language Arts Classroom Poster. Created by The Writing Doctor. Visit "The Write Prescription" dot com.
Teaching writing can be a stressor for a lot of primary teachers! Engaging Writing is a HUGE help! Simple, effective and quick meaningful writing lessons!
This is a great writing exercise to practice writing a narrative. Keywords and drawings are given.
Your students will have so much fun writing with these Roll-a-Story boards. Their creativity will be flowing after discovering which super fun character, problem and setting their story will be about. This resource is perfect in helping students write creative and interesting stories while taking the ‘stress’ out of thinking of what to write about. To use the boards, students simply choose a board and roll a die three times to discover which character, problem and setting their story will be based on. There are 9 different boards, which means there are almost 2000 different story possibilities! Includes both a USA and AUS/UK version. A version is also included where the problem and setting begins with a lowercase letter. You may also like: Roll an Activity - Literacy Centers ♥♥♥ Follow me to be the first to hear about FREEBIES and updates ♥♥♥ ♥♥♥ Earn TPT Credits when you leave feedback ♥♥♥ I welcome and appreciate any feedback, comments or suggestions. You may also contact me on [email protected]
Die Schulsachen - DaF Arbeitsblätter
A few years ago my campus adopted a resource called Fundations. It is great for to use with your guided reading target group. They also have a handwriting resource that I use with the whole class. The hand writing paper looks like this When you teach the letters you have sky line letters (h), plane line letters (a), and worm line letters (j). So Say I am teaching the lowercase letter h. I would say to students...Start on the sky line. Write a straight line down to the grass line then back up to the plane line curve and down to the grass line. ( While I am saying it I am also modeling it) If you are interested in how to teach the other letters or in the paper leave me a comment with your email and I will email it to you. Still haven't figured out embedding documents. Sorry :-(
The list below contains the books I have used over the years for teaching figurative language. Some of them are designed to teach about figurative language and some of them are books with figurative language woven naturally into the poem or story. Just recently, we shared how we used one of these books to do a text ... Read More about Books with Figurative Language
Procedural writing or "How-to" is one of my favorite units! Read this post to discover some fantastic mentor texts to use in your classroom!
Here are some tips to get your students writing narratives as well as a free writing template below. What is a narrative? A narrative is a story! Narrativ
This "How to" Writing lesson includes How to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich writing activity where students can write the steps to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in their very own pb&j booklet. Additional writing pages are also included.NOTE The HOW TO MAKE A PEANUT BUTTER &...
I did the research so that you don't have to! Here is a list of 10 free resources that are perfect for distance learning in Kindergarten.
Ideas and materials for assessing English Language Learners. Help get an idea throughout the year of your students language level.
Last week I was here: Doing this: And it was fantastic. This week I was doing this: With them: And it was also...
If you teach writing to K-5 learners, this book list has over 15 books to help you teach young writers all about the writing process.
A collaborative blog where two friends share great ideas, activities, and resources about teaching, coaching, and tutoring in the primary grades!
Happy Saturday everyone! Today, I wanted to share a new writing rubric that I created with my students this week for their personal narratives/stories. I don't know about you, but my students always have a hard time assessing their own writing. Plus, I always have such a hard time grading it (I always procrastinate with grading writing for this very reason!) because it can be so subjective to grade. Over the years, I've learned the answer to these two issues- RUBRICS! Rubrics are such a great way to help your students learn to assess and judge the quality of their own writing. The best part of using rubrics is that my students help to make them, so they take ownership of them which in turn makes them more meaningful to the kids. Each day this week, we looked at different 2nd grade writing samples (from other classes) and judged the writing in each area on the rubric. As we judged them, I helped the kids write the criteria for each section on the rubric. We found that using the words ALL of the time, MOST of the time, SOME of the time, and NONE of the time were easy to use for a 4, 3, 2, 1. Here is the completed rubric if you'd like to download it and use in your classroom! Comparing it to a cheeseburger was a fun way to help my students understand the difference between a 4, 3, 2, and 1. We talked about how a 4 is like a deluxe cheeseburger with all of the toppings- it can't get any better! A 3 is a complete cheeseburger but is missing some of those yummy details. A 2 is a burger with just a bottom bun- there is a lot missing! A 1 is just a bottom bun- no one wants to eat this because it's no good at all! What are some ways that you use rubrics in your classroom? I'm linking this up with Heather at Peacocks and Penguins- be sure to check out her linky for some great ideas! Have a great weekend!
Howdy! I am Mr. Greg from The Kindergarten Smorgasboard. My real name is Greg Smedley-Warren. I have been teaching for 11 years. I spent a year teaching fifth grade, two years in second grade and am now in my 9th year in Kindergarten. Kindergarten is my passion and my calling but honestly, that wasn’t how it started. When I was moved to Kindergarten (not voluntarily!) I called my mommy and cried. But on the first day, I fell in love and knew that Kindergarten is where I belonged. I have remained in Kindergarten ever since. I plan to never leave the classroom as the kids are what drive me to continue my growth as a teacher and person.
