Grab this fun little unit all about punctuation (period, exclamation and question) aka: the Marks Family! Please check the preview for what is included: An 8 page reader titled: Meet the Marks 3 pages of posters Punctuation & my voice activity Punctuation craft necklace A Trip to the Beach cut & paste activity At Lunch Today cut & paste activity Punctuation Power cut & paste activity Meet the Marks Family pop up activity. If you need other resources for Kindergarten and First Grade check my store for even more! Thanks for stopping by...

Superhero worksheets are a FUN way for kids to practice letters, counting, math, & more with their favorite super hero printables. Ages 3-9.

Teaching about peace and what it means to be a peacemaker at school and at home? You'll want this resource filled with activities that help facilitate your talks & teachings! This is perfect for first grade students & even mid-end of the year Kindergarten too! Includes: Peacemaker poster Peacemaker words/vocabulary Symbol poster Sort sheets (peacemaker/peacebreaker) & (symbols/not symbols of peace) Drawing symbols Handprint craft This is peace response This is love response Be a peacemaker reader Check out my MLK Jr. reader and timeline to help with peace too!

This post is long overdue! It's been brewing for a while. :) Phonemic awareness is a huge part of my kindergarten curriculum. I wanted to s...

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!

Froggy Gets Dressed book activities unit with literacy printables, reading companion activities, lesson ideas & a craft for Kindergarten & First Grade

"It was like herding cats!" That was my answer to my husband the other day when he asked how my day had gone. Seriously, the days I have first and second graders are just hard - fun, but exhausting. That is until I found the SECRET to STEM and the littles! Are you ready for

Cute free dinosaur printables for your upcoming dinosaur theme. These dinosaur preschool worksheets include lots of activities for kids.

I love teaching students to make inferences in first grade. They feel like detectives as the search for what the author hasn’t said in the text. I thought I would take some time to share with you some of my favorite activities for teaching students how to infer. Using Photographs: When we begin making inferences, […]

The Gruffalo book activities unit with literacy printables, reading companion worksheets, lesson ideas for Kindergarten, First Grade, and Second Grade

Phonological and phonemic awareness games and activities for your kindergarten and first-grade students! Ideas for each skill.

20 Free Name Activities for the First Week of Kindergarten. Check out these amazing hands-on and fun name activities! Integrates multiple skills.

Wild Thing Book Activities! This unit is fantastic for Maurice Sendak's book Where the Wild Things Are. Writing worksheet and craft included. Perfect for kindergarten or first grade!

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs book activities unit with literacy printables & reading companion worksheets for Kindergarten, First Grade, Second

Review classroom rules and encourage positive behavior during the first week of back to school with these David Goes to School activities and craft!

Beginning phonemic awareness activities using items you already have in your classroom! Using blending and segmenting sounds in words.

Are you looking for my original Color Me Readers? While those books can be used appropriately to teach concepts of print, in the original blog posts I demonstrated their use with three-cueing. I did this

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.

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

ALL ABOUT FRIENDSHIP Friendship and conflict solving skills are so important to teach our kiddos. Our job is to teach them important social skills. They need these tools to ensure successful relationships with their peers and adults. It is tricky, but it can be done! I am sharing some

Books for teaching sequencing should have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Here are 16 great books for kindergarten or first grade.

It’s time to study dinosaurs! Here are some really great resources for

There are a million things that we have to fit into our school day—and handwriting can feel like just one more thing that we don’t have time for! BUT it’s super important. Even in our digital age, students need to learn to form letters correctly! In this post, I’ll share 5 activities that I use to help my students improve their handwriting. Many of these can be done in the context of writing instruction (perfect for when your students aren’t applying their handwriting skills to their actual writing). I’m suggesting these activities in addition to your normal handwriting instruction. These activities don’t replace explicit instruction that shows students how to form letters. I recommend dedicating time daily or weekly for teaching handwriting, having students practice on paper and with sensory materials (i.e., shaving cream), etc. Activity #1: Highlight the lines on students’ writing paper. This is more of a strategy than an activity—but it can be super helpful! To help students who struggle to write within the lines, you can highlight the lines on their writing paper (for handwriting instruction AND any other writing activities they do). If handwriting is a big challenge for a student, you might want to begin with paper with two lines, and then move to paper with three lines. Baby steps! I definitely can’t take credit for this strategy. 🙂 I learned it from a wonderful occupational therapist who worked with one of my students. I wish I could give her a shout-out, but it’s been about 10 years now and I can’t recall her name! Activity #2: Have students sort letters by their attributes. Students need a “language” to help them think and talk about letter formation. It helps to use words like loop, dot, tail, stick, etc. I really don’t think it matters WHAT terms you use, as long as you are consistent with those terms. (If you have a handwriting curriculum that students use at multiple grade levels, definitely stick to the curriculum’s terminology for consistency.) To help students learn how letters are the same and different, you can have them sort letters by their attributes. Students might sort magnetic letters into groups of letters that have curves, straight lines, or both. I also like to have students sort letters by the lines they touch. For example, students might group letters by those that have tails below the bottom line, those that touch the top and bottom line, and those that touch the middle and bottom lines. Having the highlighted letter cards is especially helpful to getting students to focus on these lines! Activity #3: Play a “Handwriting Scavenger Hunt” game. This game is helpful when you want students to fix up their handwriting in the context of their writing! There are lots of different ways you can play the game. You give clues about a letter (or multiple letters), have students find it in their writing, and then have them fix up the letter if they see that it is formed incorrectly. The clues can range from simple to more complex. Here are some example clues: Find a lowercase a. Find a capital letter. Find a capital letter that is a vowel. Find a letter that has a tail below the line. Find a letter that touches the middle and bottom lines. Find the letter at the end of the word the. You might have noticed that many of these clues have more than one correct answer—this is helpful because you don’t always know which letters students have included in their writing. It helps to have visuals of the letters to discuss them with students (once the mystery letter(s) are revealed). Also, make sure to have students study the letter(s) carefully and fix them in their writing, if necessary! Activity #4: Play a “Mystery Letter Guessing Game.” This activity is somewhat similar to #3, but it can be done out of the context of writing instruction. Instead of having students search through their writing, simply place letter cards on the table (4-6 letters at a time). Choose one letter and give clues to help students guess it. They have to wait for 2 clues before making a guess. If you put the below letters on the table and choose the letter c, you might give the following clues: “This letter touches the bottom and middle lines.” “This letter has only curves, no straight lines.” You can swap out the letter cards and play multiple rounds of this! If you do want to incorporate students’ writing, after students have guessed the mystery letter, they can search for examples in their own writing and fix any letter formation mistakes. Activity #5: Play “Handwriting Inspector.” In this partner activity, students work with a partner to fix up their handwriting. After you provide instruction about how to (politely) give feedback, students swap papers. They look for examples of excellent handwriting, as well as areas for improvement. Students can also do this independently, in a “Fabulous and Fix It” activity where they work on improving their own handwriting. Conclusions The materials shown in this post all come from my Kindergarten, first grade, or second grade small group writing bundles. And handwriting is actually just one small part of these resources—they address all kinds of writing issues, including capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and content! You can read more about these materials by clicking on the images below. If you have other favorite handwriting activities that you love, feel free to share below. Happy teaching!!

No more boring book reports! Check out 26+ FUN, creative and unique book report ideas and free printable projects too!

Are your students struggling with retelling a story? These retelling ropes are easy to put together and will help cue your students! Several activities and organizers are also included to round out your retelling and sequencing unit. ⭐I've included 4 different ways you can set up your retelling rope: 1. Characters → Setting → Beginning → Middle → End 2. Characters → Setting → Problem → Beginning → Middle → End → Solution 3. Characters → Setting → Conflict → Beginning → Middle → End → Resolution 4. Characters → Setting → First → Next → Then → Last Of course, you can mix and match and come up with your own order as well! However, the graphic organizers, foldables and bookmarks all come in the four options listed above. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ⭐ Here's what this pack includes: •Directions on how to create your retelling ropes •Graphics for a Large Teacher Retelling Stick/Retelling Rope •Graphics for a Smaller Student Retelling Stick/Retelling Rope •Retelling Bookmarks for Students (Color and B&W) •Differentiated Retelling Graphic Organizers

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.

These Recess Queen activities and lesson ideas will help your students practice important reading comprehension skills in an engaging way.

In this post, I am sharing how to teach inferencing with a Mystery Box! It is an excellent way to encourage kids to think whil having fun!

Huge pack of themed worksheets to help preschoolers learn math and literacy skills with a fun medieval theme. Print pdf file with Castle Worksheets!

Read the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs book and then do these fun activities with your kids. Kids will love these hands-on book activities.

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!

SEPTEMBER NO PREP MATH AND LITERACY ACTIVITIES

Early finisher activities for elementary school classrooms that foster student choice and student engagement.

Maximize your first week of school with some amazing tips! Learn about the 5 essential must-haves every teacher needs for success.

Start off the elementary school year with these special back to school lessons and activities that are fun and important for K-2 kids: Participate in community building activities, get to know each other with All About Me activities, and build friendship and empathy with students.

Engage your little leaners as they dive into the ocean with these ideas! Videos, songs, books, and more are here to make your ocean unit easily planned!

Do you do all of these 6 essentials of reading intervention? Each is a must-have for effective intervention and will make it so much easier...

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!

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

You're Finally Here book activities unit with literacy printables, reading comprehension worksheets, book companion activities, lesson ideas, craft

Book clubs in first grade?! It may seem like a stretch, but the Spring is such a great time to get your students ready and used to reading, thinking about, and discussing books with their peers instead of me, the teacher! When done right, it can be such a fun learning experience for both […]