Recently, I have seen some debates on using centers and the Science of Reading. If you have been a teacher for a long time, centers were a HUGE part of Balanced Literacy. Recently, teachers have shifted away from balanced of literacy to research based Science of Reading. You can read my Science of Reading Post ... Read More about Centers and the Science of Reading
Print this free kindergarten assessment pack to use as end of the year testing for your kindergarten students. This is a great way to see where your students are at, and find any areas for development.
A ton of free printable worksheets for kindergarten you'll love to use in your class or at home. Fun kindergarten worksheets to download!
Use a sound wall in your kindergarten classroom with these tips, ideas, and suggestions about using a sound wall in kindergarten!
These fun and simple Crafts and Read Alouds for Kindergarten will give you a ton of ideas for how to extend story time to center time!
I used to spend so much time looking for the perfect read aloud books each month to read to my students. I have finally compiled a list on this blog post to save you so much time searching for books your students will love. I have even created FREE book companion activities you can pr
Kindergarten is a most delightful ages for read alouds–kids are full of wonder and silliness, and the selection of excellent picture books is enormous. Here are 50 of the best books for kindergarten.
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,
Super cute Printable Colors Book for kids is a fun teach colors to kindergarten and preschool students. Print free printable mini books pdf and go!
No more boring book reports! Check out 26+ FUN, creative and unique book report ideas and free printable projects too!
Looking for hands-on & interactive task boxes for kindergarten that builds independence, cooperation, fine motor, and more? Absolutely!
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.
Learn about five different biomes as you color and read key facts about with free printable Biome Coloring Pages for Prek-4th graders.
Hi friends! Today I wanted to share some of my favourite alphabet centres with you! I'm hoping that it can become a reference for your weekly centre planning :) 1. ALPHABET PLAY DOUGH MATS Do your kids love play dough as much as mine do? I'm always looking for new play dough mats to add to the mix. I made these this summer and the letters are big enough to use with play dough or other loose parts like buttons or pom poms! Play dough is great for developing finger muscles which will help our kiddos with their writing as well! You can find these mats in my TPT store by clicking on the image below: 2. ALPHABET TRACING BOOKS Although I don't like having too many worksheet-type activities, I like having some dry erase activities to help kids who are just learning to print their letters. These printables are super simple and great for beginning writers! It gradually gets harder from top to bottom. Click on the image below to see these printables in my TPT store. 3. ALPHABET CONSTRUCTION My old school used to have these and my kids loved them there. Scholar's Choice was having a sale so I finally snagged them for our class! The kids love how tactile these are and the cards are super helpful for the kids who need the support. You can find this "Letter Construction" set on Amazon or the Scholar's Choice website. Here are the links if you are interested in checking them out! Amazon.ca Scholar's Choice 4. ALPHABET PUZZLE I'm usually not keen on printable puzzles (I like the real thing for puzzles) but the kids surprisingly ate this one up! The picture makes it self-correcting and it was a great opportunity for the SK's to be leaders and help their JK friends match and learn the letters :) You can find this puzzle by clicking on the image below: 5. ALPHABET Q-TIP PAINTING I shared this activity last year but I'm going to share it again because it's always a hit! The kids use paint and q-tips to trace the letters! This is another one that is great for developing fine motor skills. You can grab these sheets for free by clicking on the image below! 6. ALPHABET PATTERN BLOCKS I have SO many pattern blocks.. so I was super pumped when I found these alphabet pattern block mats! Best of all they are FREE! They are by Confessions of a Homeschooler and you can download them HERE. 7. ALPHABET TWEEZE & MAKE I found these letters at Dollarama. I set them out with some centimetre cubes and tweezers and had the kids make the letters! 8. ALPHABET ROLL & WRITE I put some magnetic letters into these insertable dice and had the kids roll and write the letter they got. Super easy, especially if you already have insertable dice and magnetic letters! 9. ALPHABET READ & SORT I wrote letters on these white beans, wrote letters on the muffin liners and then had the kids sort the beans into the matching muffin liners. Cheap and the small beans make it great fine motor practice for those little hands! 10. ALPHABET FIND & WRITE For this one, I put some letter beads in a bottle with black beans and had the kids find the letter beads and write the letters they found on a whiteboard. 11. ALPHABET PICK & WRITE {ON CHALKBOARD} I love these chalkboard from Handwriting Without Tears! I have the kids pick a tactile letter tile, trace the letter with their finger and then write the letter on the chalkboard. These chalkboards are great because they are double sided so they can flip it over and do another letter while that side dries! 12. ALPHABET MONSTER MUNCH This centre has been a hit every year! I got some tennis balls from the dollar store and then cut a slit in the middle with an exacto knife. Then I hot glued some googly eyes to make them "Tennis Ball Monsters". The kids squeeze the side of the mouth, say the name of the letter and feed the monster. 13. FIND ALL THE LETTERS! Bingo dabbers are always a hit so I made this centre to incorporate them! Here, students pick a letter out of the bin, say the letter, find it on their sheet and dab the letter. Then they put that letter back and find another until all the letters are dabbed. If this is too easy, I also set out the same activity but with pictures in the circles so that they pick a letter, identify the beginning sound and dab the letter that makes that sound. You can download both sheets for free by clicking on the image below: That's it for now! I hope to add to this post when I can :) I hope you are able to use some of these ideas! What is your favourite alphabet centre? SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave SaveSaveSaveSave SaveSave
Teaching growth mindset can be done with read-alouds! Rosie's Glasses is a great book for this. Get ideas for using this book to teach being positive.
Handy free printable leif erikson for kids worksheet and coloring pages to make into readers to learn about famous early explorer!
"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
Blank books provide a great way to encourage kids to write. Here are 3 easy ways to assemble blank books for your writing center, literacy center, and beyond.
SEPTEMBER NO PREP MATH AND LITERACY ACTIVITIES
Download this FREE Help Your Child Learn to Read reading tips brochure for your students' parents to support their child in learning to read.
FREE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN ACTIVITIES It is the first day of kindergarten! What do I teach? I have taught kindergarten both in the classroom and homeschooling my own daughters. After years of teaching kindergarten, I have come up with the perfect activities for the first day. I have d
These printable cutting practice strips are an easy way to help your young learners work on their fine motor and cutting skills. Find more Cutting Practice Packs HERE. *The free download button can be found at the END of this post. Printable Cutting Practice Strips You’ll find horizontal lines, vertical lines, zigzag lines, and ... Read More about Printable Cutting Practice Strips
Do you want to kick off the kindergarten school year the right way? Get the full list of the top 8 do's and don'ts
This post could alternatively be titled "what works for me" because lets face it, there are a million ways to do centers, and what wo...
Here are some helpful tips for name practice in Kindergarten. I also created some freebies for your first week of school.
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!
Need some ideas for transportation centers and activities? I'm here to help! I'm sharing my favorite, most engaging transportation-themed activities with you. I also created Road Number Mats FREEBIE for you, too! AND a train name craftivity FREEBIE! Go grab your lesson plan book and get ready to be inspired!
130 Kindergarten Journal Prompts If you need free kindergarten journal prompts to keep writing fun, you've come to the right place. Not only is this article, there are more helpful posts all throughout the blog. After
1st Week of Kindergarten Plans & Ideas including a freebie. Teaching little learners with purpose and fun.
Do you have struggling readers you just can't reach? This mega list of reading intervention activities will help you teach all students how to read!
We are doing first grade phonics now. Get ready to learn and do all of the activities I think everyone will enjoy!
Woot woot! This post was featured on the TpT blog! You can see it here. Never underestimate the importance of teaching routines. In every classroom and every grade level... but ESPECIALLY in Kindergaten. And in Kindergarten,
Never planned to homeschool, now wouldn't trade it for the world
FREE printable Sequencing worksheets for preschool and kindergarten kids. Includes 15 activities featuring seasonal themes, hygiene such as brushing teeth, washing hands, and fire safety. Great for language and literacy development!
easy to use Kindergarten Writing Workshop Units that include writing prompts, ideas and activities for beginning writing throughout Kindergarten
In this blog post: Download a set of decodable readers based on your favorite fairytales and folktales including The Little Red Hen, The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Jack and the Beanstalk, and The Three Billy Goats Gruff. If you’ve been around for a while, you know that one of my favorite […]
Empower ELL newcomers with essential classroom English phrases using this resource pack designed for beginners. Perfect for mastering survival English skills.
