Fire up KS2 pupils' imagination with this collection of 16 fictional stories with activities, all written by literacy expert Pie Corbett

In this post, I'll talk about why teaching schema is important, give some ideas and tips for teaching about schema to your young readers, and discuss when we

I mean...why WOULDN'T you use cootie catchers in your reading block? It makes perfect sense. Ok - remember last week how I was talking about doing a little spring cleaning with some of my TpT resources? Well, I did a little spring cleaning in my file folders on my computer as well. Yikes. Now THAT'S a bit of a rabbit hole. I got in a little deeper than I wanted to, but I figured I might as well finish the job. I got rid of a lot (a LOT) of cringe worthy products that just didn't make the cut anymore, and I got some major organizing done as well. BUT - you know what I found? THIS >>> It's a reading comprehension cootie catcher that I TOTALLY forgot I made! And since it resurfaced for me - I thought I'd resurface it for you! I'm sure I made it for you guys in the first place, but I can't for the life of me find it anywhere on the blog. There's actually 3 different versions. They have different comprehension questions that can be used with any fictional book. They work great as a quick partner review game. You can download them here! Find any long-lost things in your spring cleaning, lately? Pin and Share this freebie:

Discover ten free French literacy resources to enhance French literacy skills! From phonics to journal prompts, they're the perfect toolkit.

I use a lot of tracing in my Orton-Gillingham lesson plans. When I introduce a new phonogram, students will trace the letters while saying the sound. When I introduce a new prefix or suffix, students

I LOVE using centres with my students! My students love them, and will choose many of the centres to play during indoor recess instead of lego and other toys. It rained this week and one of my boys chose to build with magnets on cookie trays! Setting clear routines is the most important part. Take the time to teach the games to your students so that they understand how to play properly. If they haven't mastered the French vocab, then you will have behavioural and focus issues come up. With younger students, make sure you practice the game as a whole class many times before you introduce it as a centre. Set-up: I use the cards from my "j'ai fini" board as the centre rotation cards, as the centres are all things they can also choose to do if they finish their work early. I recently updated the file to include centre group cards, so you can write their names on the group # cards to set up your groups before they come to class. Normally my "j'ai fini" board is set up like this: Since they're on magnets, it's really easy to move them over to the other side of my whiteboard to set up the centres. I line them up vertically and put the group # cards beside them. I have each centre set up on a table group (except bug in a rug, they play on the carpet). I review the rules of each centre with them, and the CLEAN UP rules. We talk about what each centre should look like when it's been properly cleaned up. They get started at their centres, and I work with my small group at my table. When I'm done with them (about 10 minutes) I ding my bell. This means clean up and come back to the carpet. Once they're all back at the carpet, we look around to check that the room is cleaned up properly. Any groups who wrote on whiteboards are able to read a sentence they wrote to the class. This is our sharing centre. Then I move the centre cards on the whiteboard down one spot, and tell each group where they are going for their next centre. Here are some of the centres I do: 1. Bang game: Put all the vocab you’re practicing in a container. Students pull out a card. If they can say it in French (or use it in a sentence, to make it harder) then they can keep the card. If they pull a card that says “bang” then they get another turn (or lose all their cards, your choice!) You can use any empty yogurt container or plastic tupperware. Just make sure they can't see through the container! Some of my students like to play bang and then write the words they won on a whiteboard! 2. Bug in a rug: Lay out the vocab in a grid. One student hides the “bug” under a card, while the other students close their eyes. They guess in French which vocab card it’s hidden under. Whoever finds the bug gets to hide it next. This game requires an honest conversation with your students about why cheating will ruin the fun of the game! 3. Go fish: You can print any of the flashcards you're using in class. Copy them 2 or 4 per page to make them smaller. 4. Word building: Magnets on cookie trays! My students use our visual dictionaries or word wall strips to choose their words/sentences to build. These awesome magnets come from wintergreen. This set is much cheaper, but you'd likely need multiple sets. The cookie trays are from the dollar store. Ideally you want small magnets so they can fit more words on the cookie tray. 5. Sentence building: Print squares with a variety of sentence starters, numbers, colours, and objects. Students then put the words in order to build sentences. You can extend this by having them read their sentences to a partner, or write their sentences on a whiteboard/in their journals. 6. "Pictionary": One student draws on a whiteboard, the other student has to guess what they are drawing. 7. Matching: Picture to the word. My students use our visual dictionaries to check their work over when they're done! 8. Cootie catchers/fortune tellers with a partner. 9. Bingo - 1 group member can be the bingo caller, others put tokens on the words that are called. I use these as the bingo tokens. 10. Writing on whiteboards - 11. Hunting for sight words - 12. Cube game - Roll the cube and answer the question. Extension - write the question! I bought the cubes here, and write different prompts on sticky notes to slide under the plastic. 13. SMACK game - One student says the word, whoever smacks it first gets to say the next word! 14. Spin and graph sight words - 15. Stamp the sight words, themed vocab, or sentences! 16. Write the sight words - I bought salt from the dollar store and added a few drops of food colouring, then gave it a good shake. Students use a sharp pencil to write words in the salt! 17. Read and clip - 18. Spinner games - I use these in centres to give my students prompts for oral communication or writing. They can spin the spinner and either say a sentence or write a sentence. They can review vocabulary in partners (one spins, one says the word). 19. Working with Mlle - The BEST part about centres is that it means I can pull small groups to work with. Do you have any centres you love? Feel free to share in the comments :)

This week we made our mini books! Literally... I photocopied them 4/page so we had teeny tiny books! This was a selling point for my grade 1s, as they thought mini books were very exciting. The mini books followed the same pattern as the book I have read to them for the past few weeks. We practiced the vocabulary many different ways before I had them write their own book. The dot at the end of each sentence is for the colour: "Dans ma salle de classe, il y a 4 gommes roses", "Dans ma salle de classe il y a 3 crayons oranges". So... I came back from Thanksgiving weekend to find my classroom covered in mouse droppings. We had a few visitors move into our hallway of the school!!! Some of my students wrote this into their books! They thought it was quite funny! Technically, it was in our classroom... My students are REALLY excited to read their books to some of the older French Immersion students at our school!

The celebration of Matariki, the Māori New Year, has grown in popularity in recent years. Read on to learn 5 ways to introduce Matariki in your classroom.

He was my best friend . . . and now he’s gone! If you haven’t read I Just Ate My Friend by Heidi McKinnon, I highly recommend getting your hand on a copy. This lovely picture book, which follows the monster’s search for a new friend - after they ate their old friend, is a brilliant book to read

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 »

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.

There’s nothing better than the sound of the bell at the end of the day on a Friday. I usually can’t wait to get home so I can get my comfy clothes on and put my feet up (which is what I’m doing right now!) My kids are all playing nicely, the hubs has his […]

Nasalized or Whiny a is an important concept to teach and understand so your students can make sense of reading and spelling.

Hey bloggy friends! Long time, no see! Let me tell you, getting into the groove of this year has been C-R-A-Z-Y! After 3 weeks of gatheri...

If you are looking for a fun way to motivate your struggling readers or to increase engagement during your fluency interventions, consider using reading trackers and reading pointers! Trackers and pointers are fluency tools that I always keep in my literacy toolbox. Not only do they help students get excited about practicing reading fluency, but they are helpful for students who need extra support with fluency and accuracy. Keep reading to learn more about how you can use reading trackers and pointers as fluency tools to increase engagement with your students! (Please note that I’ve used affiliate links throughout this

Teaching the four types of sentences is a key component in developing young writers. Sharing some fun, engaging activities to teach sentences.

In today's post, I'll share ideas for teaching inferring through a gradual release of responsibility. Make sure to read all the way through the post, because there are several different freebies you can download and use right away!

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.

Here is a list of some of the Free French Resources found in my TPT store. Click on the title of each resource for a direct link!

FREE Call Backs and attention getters for the kindergarten classroom! Great classroom management tool!

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 about landforms with a hands-on landform building and narrative writing project.

Even though I have been teaching for several years, I'm always on the search for Free French back to school activities. Here are my favourites!

How do you feel when you hear the words main idea or main topic? Do you cringe or do you get excited? If I’m being honest, I used to completely tense up when this unit was up next because it’s a HARD concept for students. Not only was it really difficult for students to understand […]

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.

It can be challenging to come up with ideas for great word work activities that meet the needs of all your students, and it may be even harder to

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!

These following directions drawing activity ideas will teach kids to listen carefully to instructions and interpret them.

This engaging primary and secondary source activity will get your students up and moving by turning them into super sleuths. With this activity, the students will determine whether a source is primary or secondary. All you have to do is copy these cute little detective themed cards on either paper or card stock. Then, hang the cards around the room, in no particular order. The students will move around the room and decide if the source is primary or secondary and record it on their recording sheet. As another option, the cards could be used as a Scoot game. The packet includes: • Directions • Student Answer Sheet • Answer Key • 26 Primary and Secondary Source Cards I hope that your students enjoy this engaging activity that correlates nicely with the Fourth Grade Common Core Standard- RI.4.6. Please let me know if you have any questions before purchasing. Thanks, Nicole The Common Core Standards were developed and written by the NGA. © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.

Auditory Learners: How to discover your child's learning style and the top ten resources to help teach an auditory learner!

The celebration of Matariki, the Māori New Year, has grown in popularity in recent years. Read on to learn 5 ways to introduce Matariki in your classroom.

What if you are being constantly interrupted during guided reading? Here are 5 different strategies to try when your students are struggling to work independently!

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.

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!

Check out these awesome free grammar worksheets. They are perfect for your Grammar lessons or Literacy centers. Download them now!

A Show and Tell Adjective activity for primary students

Do you want your students to learn about hyperbole? They embellish reality in a fun and exciting way to engage students while they learn. This literary element will help with your students’ creative writing and you can use it when discussing the author’s craft in their reading. Read on

Your students will love this sink or float science experiment! You can use everyday items from around the classroom for this experiment!

A free comic strip template for Elephant and Piggie books, plus a set of super cute Elephant and Piggie paper bag puppet templates.