More Back to School Time Savers

While there is no magic recipe for setting up your room and preparing to meet your students, there are many things that can ease you into it. I have a few suggestions for items to include in your backpack that may help alleviate some of the stress of going back to school. 

If you teach emergent readers, you know that word work is an essential component of reading instruction.  As a Reading Recovery teacher, I have spent years honing this aspect of literacy education. You can reap some benefits from my experience by perusing my 8 part blog series that starts here.  You may also wish to check out Word Work: A Guide for Teachers of Young Children.  

If blank bulletin boards bother you, download these FREE writing posters that coordinate with 6 Traits of Quality Writing. They can stay up all year!  Did I mention that they are FREE?

As students progress in reading and writing, an essential skill is breaking words into syllables.  Syllabication skills are included in EVERY elementary grade level of the CCSS.  As a literacy specialist, I have come to recognize that many struggling readers and writers do not have a good grasp of these skills.  Take some time to teach syllabication. The return is huge!

To help you with this task, I have several editions of Rules of Syllabication products that make excellent bulletin boards and/or center anchor charts.  The rules in each of the following are the same; the graphics and size of the posters vary by theme.

You may also like the Under the Sea Edition Bundle which includes the rule posters from the Under the Sea Edition above and a delightfully animated power point presentation.

As you are preparing centers and small groups, you may find the following syllabication activities helpful.  Friendly Frog's Syllables Book and Friendly Frog in Outer Space are both well suited to small group instruction or independent work.

Friendly Frog is very popular with my students.  Hence, he is a frequent visitor to our centers. The kiddos are always excited to see him back.  You can find these centers here.

Until next time...

Scrattle Literacy Center -- Valentine's Day FREEBIE

It's about time for Valentine's Day!

Because I want you for my valentine, I have a literacy center freebie for you.  I call it SCRATTLE; SCRAbble + baTTLE.  

Scrabble™ and its social networking cousin, Words with Friends™, are jumping off the computer screen and finding their niche in the classroom.  It's always great fun to take a set of letters and challenge your class to make as many words with them as they can.  In Scrattle, I'm upping the ante by adding a math component and competition.  

Here's how it works:

• Give your students the letter set for this edition of Scrattle.

• Students cut out the letters.
• Students find a partner to battle.
• Armed with a recording sheet, the partners record the words they can devise.
• Once their recording sheet is filled, the students calculate the value of their words by adding the numbers on their letter pieces.
• Alternatively, older students calculate the value by multiplying the numbers.
• To differentiate for G/T and enrichment students, a combination of operations is available.  (It is possible that this version will create negative numbers.)
• After their calculations are completed, the partners compare their numbers, filling in their opponent's scores on the recording sheet. 
• Students then add >, <, or = to the scores box.
• The student with the most > scores is the winner.

Here's an example:

This center comes with letter sets in color, as well as black and white.  Also included are 3 recording sheets, allowing for differentiation.  

You can download this center here.

Enjoy!

You may also like these Valentine's Day products available on TpT or TN:

It's a big weekend for football and sales.  All of my products are on sale on both TpT 

and TN.

Valentine's Day Syllables Center

As we all pull out our February files and begin preparing centers for the plethora of special topics in that month, I thought I would share about my syllables center for Valentine's Day.  

Friendly Frog is my students' syllabication friend.  He appears frequently in our centers, helping everyone learn the somewhat tricky rules for using syllabication skills in decoding and recording words.  For Valentine's Day, he is helping my students to focus on prefixes and suffixes.

Using these work mats, students sort Valentine cards.

There are 24 cards and a recording sheet, as well as labels for the center folder.  

This activity is aligned with the CCSS and is most appropriate for grades 1 - 3.  Did you know there are syllabication standards for EVERY elementary grade?  There are!  To help my class retain the syllabication rules, I have a permanent display of 16 rules. Naturally, they feature Friendly Frog and are available in Friendly Frog's Rules of Syllabication.

If you are interested in introducing Friendly Frog to your students, you can find these products in my TpT Store and my TN Shop.  Try them.  You'll like them.

Friendly Frog's products include:

      

  

Poetry Possibilities -- February

Do you love poetry but struggle with how to use it in your teaching?  Do you eschew poetry lessons because your schedule is too tightly packed to allow "frivolities?"  Did you know that reading poetry is the #1 way to improve reading fluency?  What you need is a plan that allows you to include poetry in your teaching while maximizing skill building and efficiently using your precious instructional time.  You can find such plans in my series, Poetry Possibilities.

Poetry Possibilities -- February is a collection of 17 poems covering Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day, Presidents' Day, and the 100th Day of School.  Each poem is accompanied by a set of Possibilities for your teaching pleasure.  For example, the following poem about Valentine's Day is included in the unit:

The Poetry Possibilities that accompany this poem are:

As you can see, it is possible to use poetry in your teaching every day.  You can incorporate it into centers, guided reading lessons, art activities, movement activities, music, math, social studies, science, etc.  If you like this preview of the product, you can find it here.

I hope you don't think I forgot about Black History Month.  In fact, I created a product, Black History Month Poetry Possibilities with 14 poems about Black Americans of note.  

You can also find a FREE Poetry Possibilities product, Poetry Possibilities -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which can, of course, be used in your Black History Month studies.  There are 3 poems about MLK, Jr. in this product.

You may also be interested in Poetry Possibilities for Winter.  It has 20 poems about winter topics with teaching points and possibilities.

I am hoping to have Poetry Possibilities for March up soon.  Until then, please remember to make the world a better place by teaching with poetry.

Valentine's Day Hink Pinks, ... Freebie

Another holiday, another set of Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies, and Hinkity Pinkities.  Ever since I attended my 1st state conference for Gifted and Talented Education, I have seen, heard and read about Hink Pinks.  These vocabulary building, problem solving, critical thinking riddles are staples  in GATE.  Perhaps my decades long connection with Hink Pinks, et al, is best explained by the fact that my students absolutely love them!  They loved them when I was in the classroom and when I became an enrichment resource teacher, my pull-out students literally begged for more of them.

If you are new to the land of Hink Pinks, here's how they work:

• Hink Pinks are riddles wherein the clues lead you to a 2 word answer.  Each answer word must have just 1 syllable and the 2 answer words must rhyme.
• Hinky Pinkies are riddles seeking answers with 2 syllables in each word.  The 2 words must rhyme.
• Hinkity Pinkities are rhyming answer words with 3 syllables each.

Some teachers like to distribute these clues on a work sheet, but I continually strive to eliminate worksheets from my teaching. About 20 years ago, I started putting the clues on 1/4 sheet cards.  By doing so, I was able to create a resource that was ready to use year after year.  

Armed with my Hink Pink, et al cards, I was able to use them as an anchor activity when students were arriving each morning. They also work well as a sponge activity or at a center.  When working as a pull-out enrichment specialist, I used these cards as a warm-up activity.  Without a doubt, G/T students are enthralled with these riddles.  But, I also found that "average" students were intrigued and set their caps to solve them.   

In my TpT store, I am offering a FREE set of Valentine's Day Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies, and Hinkity Pinkities.  Here's a preview:

The answer to this Hink Pink is sweet treat.

The answer to this Hinky Pinky is sandy candy.  

The answer to the Hinkity Pinkity below is valentine turpentine.

There are 24 cards in this FREE set.  Naturally, there is an answer key.  Did I mention that it is FREE?  You can retrieve your copy here.

If you like this product, you may like these, as well:

  Find it here.

 Find it here.

 

Find it here.