Boggles Your Mind

Being a word-phile [yes, I made that up], I am always attracted to activities that employ ... words! So, for several weeks now, as I traverse the Pinterest world, I have been consistently drawn to the Boggle™ boards that are popping up. Brilliant!!! Wish I had thought of that.

Since I didn't think it up, I can at least promote this wonderful idea.  Initially, I found bulletin board Boggle™ boards like these:

http://rockinteachermaterials.blogspot.com/2012/01/i-love-pinterest.html

 http://terristeachingtreasures.blogspot.ca/2012/08/classroomsetupday2.html

These boards are awesome for early finishers, as anchor activities, and/or sponge activities.  It also occurs to me that they could be carefully manipulated to provide extra practice on word families, spelling lists, and phonics foci.  As a Reading Recovery teacher, I see potential to highlight high frequency words that my students know or know with lapses.  (That's official RR speak.)

But, the Boggle™ brilliance carries on ...  Boggle™  has found a niche in literacy centers. Brillianter!  [I made that up, too.]  

 http://alove4teaching.blogspot.com/search?q=boggle

http://thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com/2011/02/boggle-dental-health.html

http://justeveryschooldaylove.blogspot.com/2011/02/boggle.html

If you visit Miss Martin's TpT Store, you can grab a FREE Boggle recording sheet.  Thanks Miss Martin!

The beauty of Boggle™ centers is that you can so easily differentiate instruction for your students.  Certainly you can manipulate the letters/words used in the boards, again incorporating the focus of your current instruction (short a words, words with blends, word families, content area vocabulary, ...).  Making the array larger increases the challenge, as well.  I can envision high school teachers posting 12 x 12 arrays of letters. Perhaps the chemistry teacher can place the elements in the board.

Then I came across this product:

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Boggle-Math-Boards-Mega-Pack

Brilliantest!  

By putting numerals on your board, you can challenge your students to find equations in whatever operation you are studying.  You can ask them to find numbers with a specified number of digits; perhaps requiring a specific number in the ten's place. The potential for differentiation is huge.  

What else can you imagine in using Boggle™ math boards?

It Boggles™ the mind!

You may be interested in these products from my TpT Store:

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...

Hat Day Riddles

It's about time, teachers, for some Hat Day riddles.

No, the riddles are not about why the chicken crossed the road.  Rather, these riddles are about literary characters, historic figures, or occupations associated with hats.  Try these out:

          He may never grow up, but my, oh my,
          This boy in green can certainly fly!

          Who is he?

          His hat is striped in white and red.

          He put a pink stain on mother’s bed.

          Who is he?

          He  often wore a stovepipe hat.

          Do you know a president like that? 

          Who is he?

Were you able to solve them?  My students love the challenge!  I write 1 or 2 riddles on the board each morning of Hat Week.  As soon as my students arrive, they begin copying the couplets for handwriting practice.  While completing this anchor activity, they can ponder who is described in the riddle.  

At our morning meeting, volunteers read the riddles before we share the answers.  This affords me the opportunity to assess my students' ability to read fluently, with expression, and with regard for punctuation.  Mini-lessons on these topics are easy to slip in daily, giving valuable reinforcement for these critical reading skills.

Hat riddles are fun and motivating.  They can provide valuable information about your students' problem solving abilities.  Moreover, they provide the students with ample opportunities for making connections: text-to-world, text-to-text, and/or text-to-self.

These riddles are part of my thematic unit, Hats!  Hats!  Hooray for Hats!  There are 29 riddles in all.  If you have some gifted/talented students, challenge them to write more couplet riddles to share with the class.  Doing so causes them to employ higher order thinking skills.  I am always amazed at the riddles my kiddos compose.

The ELA components of this thematic unit include vocabulary work, comprehension, poetry, alphabetical order, writing center ideas, and a 14 page booklet for students to make about Hat Idioms. You can download the Hat Idioms Book for FREE on TpT or TN.  Following is a preview of the Hat Idioms Book:

Hold onto your hats!  

Next time, I'll share some math activities from Hats! Hats! Hooray for Hats!

The answers to the riddles above are:

Peter Pan

The Cat in the Hat

Abraham Lincoln

Green Tree, Green Tree, What Do You See?

It's about time, teachers, for an emergent reader just for the holidays. 

Green Tree, Green Tree, What Do You See? is my take-off of Bill Martin, Jr.'s classic, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?   The text mimics the patterns and rhythms in Mr. Martin's book.  

The black line pictures not only support the text, but are inviting to color.   Ask your students to color the pictures noting the color words in bold print on each  previous page. 

This Christmas book emphasizes the following high frequency words: what, do, you, see, I, a, looking, at, good, boys, and, girls, for, & me. While the text is highly predictable, there are enough exceptions to require your students to truly attend to the text.  The lilt of the story encourages fluent reading.  Repeated use of question marks and periods provide ample practice for “reading the punctuation.”

The pages are formatted for double sided printing.  By printing them in the order given, you will be able to fold and staple the book together with the pages in the correct order.  Please note that page 4/5 should be printed on both sides of the same paper.  

You can get your copy of this 9 page reader for just 99¢ at either TpT or TN.

Until next time...

If you like this reader, you may like these emergent readers, too:

Where is the Thanksgiving Turkey?

It's almost turkey time, teachers!  In response to requests by some of my wonderful followers, I have created an emergent reader book for the time leading up to Thanksgiving.

The text is simple, predictable, and supported by the pictures.  Each page follows this pattern:

The turkey is [preposition or prepositional phrase] the [object].

The prepositions may not be familiar to your students.  However, they should be decodable, using the finger masking technique described in my last blog post.  That is, use finger masking to help your students find a recognizable chunk.  For example, on the following page, inside may be unfamiliar to your students.

However, in should be a familiar word.  By covering the rest of the word, you help your student focus on something known.  

Remind your student to quickly check the picture for a clue.  Then direct her to start the sentence again, drawing your finger back as she reaches the masked word.  Repeat this procedure, as necessary, with the other prepositions she encounters.

Where is the Thanksgiving Turkey? also provides the opportunity to work on phrasing and fluency.  Through both direct instruction and modeling, teach your students to phrase as follows:

/The turkey is/   /inside the barn./

/The turkey is/   /in the leaves./

The pattern lends itself perfectly to 3 word phrases, with one exception:  

/The turkey is/     /on top of/     /the pumpkin./

I think it is always wise to put something in that is a little unexpected.  After all, we do want our students attending to the text.

Now is the time to hop over to my TpT store to get your copy of Where is the Thanksgiving Turkey?  It is copy ready in black & white.  Your students will enjoy adding color to the pictures.  It is currently selling for just $1.

There are some great linky parties that you should check out:

• Margaret @ iHeartLiteracy is hosting a linky party for FREE Literacy Resources.  Hurry over there!  Who doesn't love FREE Literacy Resources??

• Linda @ Primary Inspirations is hosting a Turkey Time linky.  There are scores of resources there for you to peruse.  I bet you'll gobble them up!

Until next time...

Word Work, the Reading Recovery Way -- Pt. 9

In the course of your word work, teachers, it’s now time to introduce flexibility for spelling patterns that change sounds.  To this end, make 3 words with the same spelling pattern, but differences in sounds, e.g. come, some, home.  

Say the words for your student, pointing out that the spelling pattern is the same.

Now, make 3 more words with a spelling pattern that changes its sounds, e.g. bear, wear, near.  

It’s time to put the task on the child.  Ask her to say the words.  Then ask her if they are words she has heard before.  If she is able to correctly pronounce all of these words, she is demonstrating flexibility.  If, however, she struggles with this, demonstrate for her how readers try different sounds until the word is familiar.  

If the student struggles with flexibility, you can also address the issue in text reading. For example, Marianne Berkes' book, Over in the Ocean: In a Coral Reef, is a counting book that rhymes.  Such a book is great for flexibility because it give your student inherent clues for using flexibility.  On the following page, two is a tricky word with an unusual spelling pattern.

When your student pauses at two, quickly cover the text with your hand and ask her what would make sense there.  

If you receive a blank stare, ask her to reread from the beginning of the page.  When she reaches two, insert the /t/ sound for her and wait for two to pop out of her mouth.  Most often it will pop out.  If, however, it doesn't, remind her that this book is a counting story (there is even the numeral 2 on the page) that also rhymes.  Reread with her from the top of the page, thereby pushing her to read more fluently.  When you reach two, again give the initial sound.  Now it should pop out of her mouth.  If, by chance, she still does not produce two, point to the numeral on the page.  Then, have her reread from the top yet again.  

After she reads it correctly, draw her attention to the word two, and ask her if two makes sense there.  Then ask her if the word looks like it could be two.  Assuming she answers affirmatively to both questions, reassure her that, indeed, it does say two, even if it doesn't look like to or too with which she is familiar.  If she still struggles with this text, it may simply be too difficult for her.  Toss it aside and choose another book.

As always, stay with this task until you are confident she understands it.

The time has come to end this series about Word Work. Hopefully, it has been helpful to those of you working with emergent readers.  The complete text, including points not covered in this blog, is available in my TpT store.

Now that we are in the holiday season, everyone tends to feel a time crunch.  In an effort to ease the stress, Melissa at Mrs. Bushnell's 4th grade blogspot is hosting a holiday linky party. Check it out!  It just might save you lots of planning time.

While you are blog hopping, be sure to check out 3 fabulous giveaways.  Stop by Teacher's Toolkit where Wendy is having a huge giveaway to celebrate 200 followers.  (I'm donating a product of the winner's choice.)

Jennifer at Live. Teach. Create. is having a giveaway, too.  (I'm donating Poetry Possibilities - Fall.) Take a minute to enter.

Nicole at One, Two, Three: Math Time is hosting a monthly giveaway.  Her November giveaway has more than 40 teachers donating products.  (I'm also offering Poetry Possibilities - Fall for this giveaway.)

Until next time...