Winter Giveaway

Just wanted to let you know that today only I am giving away FOUR winter products. Click here to head on over to Spark of Inspiration for your chance to win. 🙂

« iTeach 2nd Linky: Syllable Division

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Sarah's First Grade Snippets

2 weeks ago

I’m excited to be speaking at the FREE Kindergarten Classroom Kickstart Summit happening July 7-10!This virtual event is designed specifically for kindergarten teachers and includes sessions on:- Classroom management- Literacy instruction- Hands-on math- Student engagement- Fine motor development- Social-emotional learning- Classroom setup and organizationComment FREE and I’ll message you the link to sign up! ... See MoreSee Less

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Sarah's First Grade Snippets

3 weeks ago

Have you noticed how certain Science of Reading “facts” seem to spread everywhere?A catchy explanation…A memorable rule…A strategy that’s presented as the answer.Maybe I’m being a little dramatic calling them myths. Many of these ideas contain truth. The problem isn’t that they’re all wrong. It’s that they’re often presented as the whole story. Things are stated so confidently, that I think they can be misleading…I think the common theme is oversimplification.I get it. We all want to share interesting, practical ideas that help other teachers. But in our effort to make complex research easy to understand, we sometimes lose the nuance.Three examples immediately come to mind:📌 “Teach these spelling rules and your students will become great spellers.”📌 “The Scribal O explains why can represent /ŭ/.”📌 “Just do phoneme-grapheme mapping and you’ll create automatic readers.”Each of these ideas has value.But each one is only one piece of a much bigger picture.I think the takeaway is this:There are very few magic bullets in reading instruction.The Science of Reading isn’t simple. It’s beautifully complex. As educators, we do our best work when we embrace that complexity instead of reducing it to catchy one-liners.Spelling generalizations are definitely helpful. But they’re just one part of becoming a skilled speller. As words become more complex, students also rely on orthographic patterns, morphology, syllable stress, etymology, and much more. They are important and helpful, but they are just scratching the surface. So when you see the promise fixing your spellers with a list of rules, remember that skilled spellers don’t just know rules. They know how the English spelling system works. To be clear, it’s not the phonics/spelling rules I’m against (I have tons of resources and posts about them so I’d be a hypocrite to say that!) I’m against the false promise that learning these few rules will turn your students into great spellers. Yes, the Scribal O is a fascinating part of English spelling history. But it’s only one explanation, and it doesn’t account for every word with representing /ŭ/. More importantly, an interesting story i ... See MoreSee Less

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Sarah's First Grade Snippets

1 month ago

Sentence pyramids are great for building fluency... but what if they could do even more?These Summer Sentence Pyramids go beyond repeated reading by giving students opportunities to practice:☀️ Decoding words and sentences✏️ Spelling high-frequency and decodable words📖 Reading with increased fluency🧠 Identifying who or what the sentence is about🔍 Finding the action in the sentence🎨 Matching pictures to meaning for an added comprehension checkEach page follows a simple, predictable routine that helps beginning readers build confidence while strengthening multiple literacy skills at once.Perfect for:✔️ Kindergarten✔️ First Grade✔️ Summer practice✔️ Intervention groups✔️ Students learning to read CVC words and simple sentencesComment “summer” for the link!(If you’re a member of The Teachers Table , these are free there!) ... See MoreSee Less

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Sarah's First Grade Snippets

1 month ago

My youngest just graduated 8th grade. 🎓🥹And since I can’t seem to stop thinking about words, it got me wondering about the word graduate itself.What does it really mean to “graduate”?The word traces back to a root meaning “step.” A graduation isn’t just an ending—it’s a step forward, a step up, and a step into something new.That made it the perfect word to break down through multiple lenses because we look at a word through multiple lenses (sounds, spelling, syllables, morphology, and etymology) we gain a much deeper understanding of how our language works.One of the most powerful shifts in literacy instruction happens when we stop seeing words as isolated vocabulary terms and start seeing them as connected systems.Because when students understand how words work, they can read, spell, and understand thousands of new words more easily.And just like a graduation is one step on a much bigger journey, learning about one word can lead us to countless others.✨ Interested in learning more about morphology and word structure? Comment “LOGOS” ... See MoreSee Less

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Sarah's First Grade Snippets

1 month ago

Looking for ways to keep your upper elementary readers engaged this summer? ☀️📚I just created a FREE Summer Reading Activity Pack for students in grades 2–5! It includes:✅ Reading Scavenger Hunt ✅ Reading Goal Tracker ✅ Vocabulary Collector ✅ Word Detective Activity ✅ Reading Response Choice Board ✅ Resource List with free reading websitesPerfect for helping students build vocabulary, strengthen comprehension, explore different types of texts, and stay connected to reading all summer long.Comment SUMMER and I’ll send you the link! ☀️ ... See MoreSee Less

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