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Monday, October 27, 2014

Donor's Choose---and a freebie or two :)

First, let me start off by saying I posted my first Donor's Choose project.  I was excited to get the news that my project qualified for a Spark Offer.  This means that if someone donates to my project and enters the code SPARK, Donor's Choose will match dollar for dollar (up to $100.)--but only up to October 31.   Awesome, right?  Well, it got better--I then got an email saying that I qualified for a Match Offer from Perry and Donna Golkin Family Foundation.  This one isn't guaranteed, and is limited to time.  So here's where I need your help, if you or if you know of anyone that would like to donate to an eager group of students and provide them engaging activities to hold their focus while still learning, I'd love for you to check out my project or pass on my information. The cost of my project with the help of Donor's Choose and the foundation has really brought the cost of my project.  Please check it out to see how much I need. I would so love to see this be successful.  
Click on the image below to see my project "Readers Today, Leaders tomorrow.

http://www.donorschoose.org/project/readers-today-leaders-tomorrow/1404827/?rf=email-system-2014-10-teacher_promo_expiring-teacher_372533&challengeid=20505718&utm_source=dc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=teacher_promo_expiring


With Halloween in the air, I decided it is time to break out a few new activities for my students.  Below is a differentiated pack that I will be using with my K-2 Students this week. 
First students can use the ABC cards to sequence the alphabet (using upper or lowercase letters)

Students can also match capital to lower case letters

Students can match letter to beginning sound. 

Students will play a spinner game to review past sounds. 

Another group of kiddos will be working with PrePrimer sight words. 
There are a variety of activities included for the word cards including Boo Monster 
(played like Old Maid).  
This group of students are also working on digraphs, so they have a spinner game activity as well. 

I've made a few Halloween sentence puzzles for my kiddos and thought you may enjoy them as well. 
(I've had many positive comments on past Sentence puzzles.) 
Students will put the sentences together and then rewrite the sentence correctly.  
(These sentences are missing both capital and punctuation as that is what 
I'm working on with my groups. :)

If any of this looks like something you can use for your students, please click the image below.
Everything is in one download. 
First Grade and Fabulous-Literacy Freebies for Halloween


Tuesday, October 14, 2014

A Snapshot of our Week

I am a horrible blogger.  
I have a hard time remembering to take pictures of all the great things we do, all the fun we have, and all the work they take such pride in.

I'm a horrible blogger. 
I have a hard time keeping up with all the great things other classrooms are doing, following blogs, leaving comments, sharing their great ideas via links on FB or the blog.

I had such great intentions years ago when I started.  I wanted to share ideas and resources. 
I wanted to continue sharing freebies that may be useful for others in their classrooms. 
I wanted to blog EVERY night.  
*sigh* I'm a horrible blogger.

What am I though?  A busy mom, a busy wife, a busy teacher.
A resource for the Resident Educators.
An Advocate for Parents. 
 (I want to share ideas/resources and strategies understand how to help at home.)
I'm a resource for my First Grade team (even though that's not my job title anymore).
I'm....maybe even a little EXHAUSTED.  
That's what I am.

But I am also Blessed without measure!
I am so thankful for all the good in my life.
(Did I ever mention that I finally bought land---in the COUNTRY!!) 
For the people I've met, the friends I've made
and my supporting followers!!
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for sticking with me!

Now let me show you a little peek into our week.

Remember I now teach Kindergarten-2nd grade Reading Intervention, 3rd Grade Reading with Science in Mind, and 1-2 Math.  My day keeps me hopping, and organization is a must.  But I'll be honest, a lot of days during my lunch, I'm working on my math intervention pages.

Thank goodness for My Cute Graphics for having some graphics available for my last minute ideas.

Like this math page my first graders worked on today.
We have been working with cubes, tens frames, and today we revisited the number line. 
Fall Number Line Subtraction
 We also ended up with a new Math Series this year.  We are using my Math.
One of our activities for first grade this week was vertical subtraction. 
We worked with dominoes and completed this activity.
Domino Subtraction
 My 2nd graders have been working on skip counting by 2s, 5s and 10s.  
Today's focus was skip counting by 2s. 
We colored in numbers on a hundred chart and discussed the pattern. 
But today they had so much fun working on our spinner game. 

They were honestly excited working on this.  
One of my little girls was hoping there was a back side. 
Skip Count by 2s

 In Reading, we are working on a variety of skills.
One group is working on silent e.  This week we did Long i/Silent E.
We are working in notebooks, so this page below was part of our interactive notebook.
Students wrote the name of the pictures on the top of each flap and glued the picture to the inside of the flap.  We used the headers to sort our pictures before gluing them in our books. 
Long and Short i-Interactive Notebook
My Kinders are working hard too!

 

 I have to admit I have struggled with Kindergarten.
I have taught first grade, second grade and even fourth grade during my 15 year career, but Kindergarten scares me!   I almost feel like I have a little bit of an idea of what I'm doing now.
I mean if I'm seeing them make progress, we're on the right track, right? :)

 They have really enjoyed the activities that I included in my first set of beginning sounds. 
Click the image below to see this on TpT. 
Beginning Sound Pack-First Grade and Fabulous


I also wanted to share some freebies with you.
If you have liked the items above, please click on the image to grab yourself a copy. 
And again, thank you for all the support you have given me!
It makes my heart happy!!! :)

 

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

All About the Letter T during RTI--with a freebie

This week my kinders are revisiting the letter T during intervention. 
We start with watching the great little video on ABCMouse.
I have to use my IPad as I do not have a projector (*insert major sad face here*)
You can also view the video on YouTube.

(While I'm sharing YouTube songs, here are some other cute ones for the Letter T.)

I watched a few minutes of the one below this evening. 
 It looks kinda cute, but I've not had the time to share it with my kiddos.


The videos are a good way for me to get my students to listen for words.  
They have a hard time hearing the sounds, and this also helps increase their vocabulary.
We listen to a song every day to come up with a word list.

Yesterday we made the letter T.  We cut and pasted a sentence that said "T is for torn paper."  Students ripped paper up and glued it inside of our T shape.  This helps with those fine mother skills.

Today we drew pictures that begin with the T sound, and also completed a sort.
We did one whole group, and one independently.

You can see those activities in a letter pack I made.
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Beginning-Sounds-and-Letter-Activities-with-Letters-C-M-A-and-T-1473120
I will be working on more letter packs similar to this one.
I do so some improvement with my kinders with the variety of 
activities we've been doing from this pack.

I'm also not wanting to just focus on letter sounds. 
I believe rhyme is important, as well as learning to track print.
These are all beginning skills that are very essential to early readers.

We are using the nursery rhyme I'm a Little Teapot along with our letter T activities.
We've been singing the song, acting out the motions, and my girls (my guys not so much) are really enjoying this.  They are recognizing the letter T and the sound T. 

I thought I'd share with you our Little Teapot activity.

We will be searching for the letter T in our booklets and highlighting them.
I did make a projector image for you--remember I don't have a projector... *insert sad face again*

The dots inside the student reader are to help my kiddos track the print.
 I want them to understand that these are words.  Words have spaces between them to build sentences.
We will also be sequencing our nursery rhyme.


If you think you can use any of these activities with your kiddos, click the image below..
.and I'd love to hear from you with a little comment!!  :)
I'm a Little Teapot Freebie--First Grade and Fabulous


Thursday, October 2, 2014

What Are We Up To---Our Week Review

For those of you that weren't aware, I have moved to a Title One position. It is taking a while to feel like I'm in my groove--and actually I am still not in full swing "I know what I'm doing mode"..heck,  I'll be honest, I have NO clue what I'm doing, but I'm working hard and so are my kiddos.

Let's start off with my first group of the day.
This week our phonics focus is Long A, silent E. 
I started out with a pretest on mixed short a/long a silent e words. 
I decided that I should keep a record of their work that they are doing with me for data purposes 
(and possible referral and SSMT process.) Therefor I made a pre and posttest page. 

After we had our pretest, we viewed the correct spelling of the words. 
We talked about silent E (mean E) etc.  We made mean E. (A meanie because he pinches the vowels--he's a bully) We cut apart this fabulous clipart *chuckle* (made by yours truly lol) and glued him to a craft stick.  We practiced reading words with short sounds, and then placed the E on them and read them while screaming out the letter A when we read the word. 
 Example:  rAke (they shouted the A) 
Want my silly Mean Es?  Click Mean E for craft stick-First Grade and Fabulous


Then  I thought since I'm keeping a record of their work, 
why not try to do a few interactive notebook pages
 (something that I'm not too familiar with making/creating, but let's see how it works for my kiddos)
Again, we reviewed that A makes two sounds.
We glued our Short A and Long A headers in our folder.
*Note our pretest is at the beginning of our folder, on the other side of the Short A page*
Then I gave them our boxes to write on.

 We wrote our words and used a different color for our vowels.  
Then sorted the words between long a and short a.
 
 
Then I gave them the pictures. 
They had to read the words that we had just written and discussed and match the picture with the word.  After I checked them, they were allowed to glue them down under the correct flap.
If you are interested in trying this with your littles, click HERE to download my "interactive pages"

As the week went on, we practiced a roll and read activity.  We roll a big die cube, and practice reading the words that correspond with the number we rolled.
Roll and Read-First Grade and Fabulous
Click the image above to get your own Freebie Roll and Read.

And we also worked on pages from my Reading Detective pack.
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Be-A-Reading-Detective-Mission-3-Silent-E-1036105
Click above to see this on TpT.

I had the students highlight the words that had the same sound as in snake (as marked on the paper.)
Click above to get a copy of this page. 
 But as I saw that I had a few that could do this independently, I also saw that I had a few struggling.
 
 *Note we fixed the word math after discussing that there was no helper for the a*
I then handed them those lovely aquarium stones from the Dollar Tree. 
 I gave them the amount they needed for each line we were working on.  
That seemed to help them too.

There's something about this E that gets my kiddos!! 
 
So what else are some of my little ones working on?
 
We have been reviewing our letter and letter sounds to build fluency.  We roll a big cube, practicing reading the letters in the row that corresponds with the number rolled, and then we go back and say the sounds in the same row.   *I use AimsWeb to assess
 (that is why you see capitals--but we will switch it up next week to lowercase)
They seem to like this little Roll and Read. 
If you are interested in the Roll and Read FREEBIE, click on its image.
Roll and Read--Letters/Sounds
We've also worked on rhyming words/word families.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/All-Sorts-of-Sorts-Ready-to-Print-Sorts-for-Your-Little-Learners-865315http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Fun-Phonics-with-Short-Vowel-Word-Families-1469725
 Click the pictures above to see these activities and more on TpT.

In math, both groups have been working on addition, adding to ten and part/part whole.

During lunch today, I decided I wanted to change around my lesson, so I created these two pages.
Thank goodness for My Cute Graphics to help pretty up my printable pages today.
 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3D5Bsh09DJKQjJwdkJITFZOTGs/view?usp=sharingFirst Grade and Fabulous addition pages

If you like these math pages, you can click the pages above to grab you a couple freebies.

 


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