Happy Saturday! I went to my first official common core training yesterday. I was one of the few who loved it. For real. I am lucky because I’ve been able to learn about it at a much slower pace since my school hadn’t adopted it yet. So many bloggers have been blogging about common core (and actually living it for real) and I have been soaking it all up. I knew it was only a matter of time, so I started doing my homework! This training yesterday was so good. Now I’m even more motivated to dig deeper with my reading and writing instruction. With my new job, I hope to be able to go into classrooms to lead lessons with each class. My wheels are spinning! More about that later… For now, I have a few pictures from my week.
Sight words can be so hard for struggling readers. Here is one activity I did with my first grade group:
I did one sentence strip at a time. They read the sentence and we thought about what word would make sense in the blank spot. Then they had to make that word. They reread the sentence with the sight word. Then they unscrambled the word and made it again. Each student had a different sentence strip. They worked on one or two each day. They switched each day so they could read all the sentence strips and practice making all the words.
My first graders also made words by matching the onset and rime. They made real words and nonsense words. We practiced blending to read words (add p to one of your purple cards. What word did you make?) and and making words (make me the word pot). At the end, I let them match the purple and the yellow however they wanted. They read the word and had to tell me if their word was real or nonsense. They also made words for each other, then switched desks and read the word the other person had made. That was a big hit!
You can get this from my short o pack.
I love these Roll and Read sheets from Mrs. Magee. Fabulous!
We sorted words by word family. Each family lived in a different pumpkin house. I got the idea of using these cute little pumpkins from the fabulous Cara Carroll. She is genious! She used these for sorting addition and subtraction. You can see that post here.
My second grade groups also sorted long and short o pictures. As we sorted, they wrote the words on their white boards.
They had to read these sentence strips and fill in the blanks with long o words.
More sorting with leaves:
Thanks to Mellonheadz clip art, I made a bunch of Star Wars themed cards. I’m not totally done, but I got a good start. My boys went crazy for these. They kept asking for these Star Wars cards!
I read some cute books with my second and third graders. They both came from readinga-z.com. LOVE this website. If you don’t already have a subscription, you should definitely get one! I’ve used this site for 10 years now and it keeps getting better and better. There are so many fabulous books at your fingertips. The subscription is a great deal.
Click on the pictures to get to these books:
Both of these books are perfect for teaching/reviewing problem and solution. The pumpkin patch story actually has three problems and solutions in the story! I made these graphic organizers to go with them:
Then we worked on summarizing:
I also made blank versions of the four of these to use with any pumpkin story or any fall story.
My Fall literacy pack is SO close to being done! The pack I’m making will be a Ready-to-Go Fall literacy pack (similar to the Back to School, Spring, and Snowy pack).
Last year, I posted my Fall into Literacy Pack, which includes fall-related centers. This pack is a combination of centers from September, October and November literacy menu packs that are only to do with fall. If you don’t have those menus, and would like some great fall themed centers, click here to preview:
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
