Christmas in July Deals 7/16 - 7/23/22

There are hundreds of great deals coming your way! Use #ChristmasinJuly22 to find new deals everyday for a week; 7/16 - 7/23/22.

  

First in the week of great deals is $1 Deals.

Here are the links to my $1 Deals:

WOW! Weekend

It's about time, teachers, ...

You can get any/all of my syllable sorts products for FREE!  Please leave some TPT feedback.  Your impressions are important to me.

12 Days of Christmas -- Day 4

It's day 4 of my --

Today's gift is Friendly Frog's Holiday Syllable Sort. In this CCSS aligned activity, the kiddos will determine the number of syllables in each holiday related word as portrayed on the sorting cards. Here's a sneak peek:

If you are looking for a literacy center perfect for this holiday season, this is it!  Head on over to my store and get your free copy.  But don't waste time; it's only free for 48 hours.

Stop by again tomorrow for another 12 Days of Giveaways.

Have you checked out these products that also feature Friendly Frog?

The Great Vocabulary Divide

Educational research is replete with studies about THE GREAT VOCABULARY DIVIDE between successful and unsuccessful students; a fact every teacher knows without benefit of those studies.  

While the research shows that the gap begins in infancy (with a 30 million word difference in exposure to words by age 4 between socio economic classes), the import to education is that vocabulary development is crucial to all learning. It is no surprise that children with larger vocabularies are better equipped for learning when they enter school.  After all, by virtue of hearing more words, they are exposed to more grammar, sentence structure, cadence, expression, and countless other aspects of language that are vital to success.  By 3rd grade, when reading shifts from learning to read to reading to learn, the gap is wider; the consequences more pronounced.  Bottom line, children with larger vocabularies are stronger readers and perform significantly better on standardized tests.

What are teachers to do about this divide? Clearly they must create word-rich environments that entice their students to revel in the power of words.  Direct, daily instruction is key, yet research shows that dictionary work is the least effective method. According to Blachowicz, Beyersdorfer, & Fisher (2006), young children need 4 conditions to develop vocabulary knowledge:

1. exposure to new vocabulary
2. engagement and motivation
3. multiple experiences with new words that promote context and definition
4. independent word-learning strategies.

I will argue that children need 3 additional things:

1. teachers who model a love of words
2. interest in and curiousity about words
3. active involvement in "playing" with words.

I am a self-professed logophile.  Words have always intrigued me and word play delights me. It is only natural, then, that I consistently incorporate word play into my curricula. I call it "play" because that is what it feels like to my students.  It's learning disguised as fun and it fulfills all the conditions cited above. 

One example of word play in my class is Hinky Pinkies.

Intrigued? These vocabulary building, critical thinking exercises are so popular with students that they literally beg to do them. How often do you get enthusiasm like that? 

Hinky Pinkies are often thought to be for gifted students. Certainly G/T students love them and engage easily with them. But there is no universal law that restricts them from being used with regular ed. kiddos. I have decades of experience using Hinky Pinkies with heterogeneous groups as young as 2nd grade. In fact, special ed. teachers and speech and language therapists have left positive feedback about using them with their students.  

As a result of working with Hinky Pinkies, your students will not only increase their vocabularies, but gain facility with syllables, phonemes, synonyms, parts of speech, and verb tenses. They exercise their problem solving and critical thinking skills. My children have been known to voluntarily seek out dictionaries and thesauri!

The vocabulary benefits alone should be enough to convince any teacher to try these riddles. But my favorite outcome is the look of pleasure and satisfaction on my students' faces when they solve their first Hinky Pinky all by themselves.

You can find lots of Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies, and Hinkity Pinkities in my TPT store, but you can try these for FREE!  And they are just in time for St. Patrick's Day.

It's About Time to Grow Your Spring Centers!

It's about time, teachers, for spring centers.

Here are some spring centers that may add some beauties to your spring bouquet of classroom activities...

Spring Showers Syllable Sorts challenges your students to determine the number of syllables in each word/picture card. The pictures provide support for young readers. This center is low prep and holiday neutral.

How Many Ways - April Edition combines computation with critical thinking.  This center is open ended, providing a great challenge for fast finishers, and/or differentiated instruction.

Spring Square Puzzlers are excellent for exercising your students' problem solving skills.  The challenge is to reconstruct the square array so that all the images match on every interior side.  3 puzzles are included, making differentiation easy and providing a challenge for every grade level.  

The other 2 puzzles are progressively harder as they are a 3x3 array and a 4x4 array. There is a secret clue in each puzzle that can be provided if your students get too frustrated.  

Be forewarned!  Your students will not want to put these puzzles away.

There are more centers to come so check back soon.

You may also like these spring resources:

Freebie February

Remember that this product is FREE for just 1 day.  Grab it while you can.

In this product, there are 16 rules for dividing words into syllables. Each rule is clearly stated on a full sheet bearing colorful, pirate  graphics. An example word is provided for each rule and those words are all thematically related.  

This product is aligned to the CCSS.  Did you know that EVERY elementary grade level has one or more standards associated with syllabication?

Other syllabication products you may like:

 

Day 6 of Freebie February

It's about time for Valentine's Day, so today's freebie is Friendly Frog's Valentine's Day Syllable Sort.  I wrote about this literacy center a couple of days ago, but in case you missed it, here's the upshot:

Friendly Frog appears in many of my syllabication products. This time he challenges your students to sort word cards according to whether they have a prefix or a suffix. Friendly Frog's Valentine's Day Syllables Center is a low prep literacy center.  

Just for today, you can score this center for FREE!  I hope you enjoy it.

You can also get these Valentine's Day centers for FREE: 

And this one is quite inexpensive:

Freebie February -- You're Going to Love It!

It's Day 3 of Freebie February! I hope you find today's offering useful for your literacy centers.

This circus themed product has 16 rules of syllabication.  They are letter paper sized and in beautiful color.  Each rule has a circus themed example to further illustrate the principle described.

Rules of Syllabication *The Circus Edition* is CCSS aligned. Did you know that every grade from K - 5 has a CCS Standard for working with syllables? This product will help you meet those standards. 

Enjoy!

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