Build A Sentence Interactive Word Work!!

Blogging... two days in a row??? It must be spring break! Oh my gosh. I am soooo enjoying a relaxing week at home to catch up on school work, run errands, and binge watch Gilmore Girls.

This morning, I started prepping my word work for when I return to school next week. I wanted to come up with a fun activity for students to interact with parts of speech as they are creating sentences and I put together this super simple idea, Build a Sentence Interactive Word Work.

Yesterday, on my errands, I picked up this awesome cardstock on sale at Michael's Craft Store.... 3 packs for $10!! Woohoo!! I had lots of fun colors to choose from as I put together this activity today!

I started by printing each of my word sets 

{nouns - verbs - adjectives - prepositions/conjunctions/articles} 

on different color cardstock.

Then, I cut the cards apart and mixed them together. There are 60 word cards all together.

As I began making sample sentences, I realized that 60 word cards may be overwhelming for my firsties when we begin this activity for word work. When I introduce this in my classroom, I plan to start with half the cards and then gradually add in more words in future weeks.

Here's a sample of the types of sentences that students can make.

I also created a printable to go along with the sentence building cards so that students can write their sentences. We will have to talk about adding uppercase letters to the first word in the sentence and punctuation when we write the sentences... since the cards are all lowercase letters so that the words can be used anywhere in the sentences.

And there you have it... a fun, simple, interactive activity! Can't wait to use it with my firsties next week! Enjoy!

Spring has Sprung!!

I am very happily writing to you from my spring break Monday morning. Nothing better than your first morning of not setting an alarm. Pure bliss!!

Spring has arrived in our classroom and I'm currently in the works of prepping more spring activities for when we return from spring break!

RAINBOW SIMILES

Last week, I tried out a new craft and writing activity from Teacher by the Beach and I LOVED it!! Her FREE activity can be found on her blog... click this link to view her post!

Here's her photo of the finished product! Apparently, I forgot to take a photo after I hung ours in the hallway.

We wrote Rainbow Similes and made some rainbow artwork to go with our writing!

We began by brainstorming things for each color of the rainbow. It was a perfect chance for us to use the "pair and share" method of sharing ideas with a partner before sharing with the whole group. Here is a peek at our brainstorm... please excuse my disgusting, smudgy whiteboard!

Then, I added to Teacher by the Beach's idea by creating a "planning page" for my students to write their similes on. I have many students in reading/writing intervention this year, so I knew that they would need a little more guidance to create their similes.

Here's a photo of one of my adorable firsties making his final copy! Students traced over their writing with a Sharpie, which was very exciting for them and make the writing look crisp and clean!

After finishing our writing, students made rainbow artwork.

Such a fun activity! Now our hallway looks so bright and cheery!

APRIL WRITING AND PHONICS PRINTABLES

Click the photo or this link to see this in my TpT store.

This past weekend, I created by second set of Writing and Phonics Printables... now ready for APRIL! I wrote about this idea in my March post, but I created these simple monthly printables as take-home activities for my first grade students who are in need of writing intervention. I had a solid group of about 5 students who came into first grade reading below grade level. They are making great gains in reading so now I'm focusing more on their writing and phonics/spelling skills. I have a fabulous group of parents this year who want additional resources for their children to work on at home. I've received great feedback from those parents after completing similar resources for the month of March... so here we go... ready for the month of April.

Now, that being said, these could easily be used in the classroom as well!

Here's a look at some of the activities included in the pack. Click this link to download 5 of these printables for FREE!

A FREEBIE and A STEAL!

Finally, I have a few Easter/Spring math activities up my sleeve. The first one is a freebie!! Grab this fun Easter Math Sort from my TpT store! Can't wait to work this into my math workshop centers!

Finally, the steal! Grab this Spring Mini Math Book for only $1.00!!! Skills include name collection boxes, missing number subtraction, adding/subtracting 10s, What's My Rule? (function machines), fact families, and telling time to 5 minute increments.

Well, that's what I have for my spring activities! Can't wait to check out TpT for other activities I can grab for next week!

Literacy Recap!!

I don't know how this always happens... it's been over a month since my last post! The weather is gorgeous here in Wisconsin this week and I am finally feeling motivation to sit down and BLOG! We have been soooooo busy with reading and writing in first grade and I am excited to share a few of my new and simple ideas with you!!

But first, a peek at what I bought in the big TpT Teachers are Heroes sale!!! Oh my gosh! I am so excited about all of these items!! Highly recommend them all!!

I started putting together Miss DeCarbo's Intervention Binder for Language Arts! Many of these interventions will come in handy at the beginning of next school year. I have several students in intervention right now and there are some great activities that I am using now... especially for reading blends and digraphs.

Ahhhh! I'm so in love with this resource.

Alright, now for some more simple ideas that you can easily put together!

MAGIC E PRACTICE:

After winter break, we made the switch from focusing primarily on short vowel word families to long vowels. My intervention kiddos have a hard time switching back and forth from long and short. This is such a simple activity that we did in my guided reading groups. I wrote simple CVC words on a piece of chart paper (some are nonsense words). Then, I taped a "magic e" to a bubble wand (you could use a popsicle stick).

Students read the CVC word and then add a magic e to see how the word changes. We switch back and forth from short to long vowels. Then, I let the kiddos take over leading the activity. They LOVED it and it was great practice. These two cuties begged to use the poster to practice together during a round of Read to Someone... how could I resist??

WORD FAMILY TOSS:

This next activity, I thought up on my way to school one morning. I was looking for a way to spice up my phonics mini lessons during Daily 5. I got to school and taped together a few colorful boxes that I had from the Target dollar section. I wrote word families on post-its and stuck one in the bottom of each box.

For the activity, I had my students create a wide aisle on the carpet, with students sitting facing the center. Each student had a whiteboard and a dry erase marker. I placed the word family boxes in the aisle and students took turns tossing a small pattern block into the boxes. After a student tossed the block, we wrote a word in the corresponding word family on our whiteboards. It was a great way to keep the kids engaged and writing our word family words!! We did this activity during two different mini lessons this week so that every student got a turn to toss the pattern block.

INTERACTIVE NOTEBOOKS:

Okay, I am still on an interactive notebook kick! My students absolutely love doing interactive notebook pages and they are perfect for our long vowel practice.

This week, I had my kiddos sorting long i words by word family. First, I had my students read the words "down the columns." Then, for a fluency challenge, I had my students read "across the rows." It is more challenging and requires more quick thinking to switch between word families as they read the words!

Here is a FREEBIE of my Long I Word Sort notebook page if you'd like to try it out! If you are interested in more long vowel interactive notebook pages, click this link or the photo of my product!

WRITING AND PHONICS PRINTABLES:

At the beginning of the year, I identified several students (11 out of 20) who were reading below grade level for the beginning of first grade. Needless to say, that number was concerning to me because I only have eight hours a day with these kiddos! How was I going to help 11 students "catch up" to where they needed to be?? I started sending home weekly interventions with these kiddos and their parents have been pretty good about doing some extra reading and phonics practice at home. I am happy to say that as we approached February, 5 out of those 11 intervention students are now "at grade level." I was doing my happy dance and so were their parents. However, it was a long process and a lot of work to get the kids there. I am lucky to have so much parent support. Therefore, I wanted to create some simple printables that the kids could take home weekly to work on their writing skills and some phonics (review) skills. I created these weekly activities that my students started taking home. They are earning stickers for each page that they complete, which they LOVE and they are LOVING the extra writing practice as well. There is enough variety in the pages that they don't get bored of them and the pages are simple enough that the parents can get them started and the students zip along!

Here are some examples of the pages I created for March... this is my first week of printables, which I uploaded to TPT for free! Click this link for a free sample!

  I know,,, weird to start with the letter, v, but I plan to mix the earlier letters into months Sept-Feb when I start on those!! Had to do some backwards planning here!!

 There is also a full page of handwriting lines to print on the back of this half page.

Getting in some fluency practice while identifying punctuation and counting the number of sentences. My students also LOVE "fixing my mistakes."

Some simple phonics practice!

If you like these free pages, please consider buying the whole set for March by clicking this link or the picture below! I have an April set of printables in the works right now and I plan to do a May set for sure! By the end of this coming summer, I hope to have sets for every month of the school year! Stay tuned!

Okay, so that was a very random peek at some of my new literacy practices over the last few weeks! I always feel the need to spice things up to keep the kiddos motivated and engaged. I am also more excited to go to school when I know I have a fun new game or activity to introduce that day! I hope that you can use many of these fun, easy ideas! Enjoy!

My Love/Hate Relationship with Long Vowels

Okay, for my topic of the day... a huge focus in my first grade classroom right now is LONG VOWELS.... oh the bane of my existence. We spend the first half of the year learning about the short vowel sounds and by Christmas, I'm always very pleased with my students' progress. I feel like they "get it"... even my intervention students are on the right track with short vowels. Then we start to throw long vowels into the mix and it is what I like to call "intellectual chaos." Ahhhh! This year, I am definitely more prepared to teach these long vowels than I have in the past and I've made some great, interactive activities to get my kiddos up to speed with these tricky vowel patterns!! Right now, we are focusing on Long A, but all of these activities have materials for ALL of the long vowels! My favorite thing about these activities is that they are NOT seasonal. I can pull these out at any time of the year for students to use! Take a look at my favorite long vowel teaching tools! LOTS of FREEBIES here!

Also, in the process of writing this blog post, I realized how MANY long vowel resources I have! If you want to take a peek at all of them in one place, use the my TPT store custom category "Long Vowel Resources." The freebies are available in that category as well!

To help students make a more concrete connection with "magic e," I like to begin the study of each long vowel by taking a look at how Magic E changes the way that we say many of our favorite short vowel words. I make a "Magic E" wand. As a whole group, students read short vowel words on a poster. Then, we add Magic E and see how the word changes! Students LOVE this activity and it is soooo simple to prep! I revisit this poster with my lower guided reading groups. My proficient and advanced kiddos seem to "get it" after the first exposure!

I also have sets of cards that I print back to back with a short vowel word on one side and a long vowel word on the back!

Grab a set of the cards here, Magic E Flash Cards and Fluency Phrases!

This Long Vowel Interactive Phonics Resource Bundle has made the BIGGEST difference in my long vowel instruction. These activities are easy to prep and effective for my little learners! I like to have a balance between paper/pencil tasks and interactive resources. This fits my needs exactly!

Let's begin with some of the paper/pencil activities! We begin our day in the classroom by completing a whole group phonics lesson, followed by a paper/pencil phonics practice page! While students are working on the phonics skill that we focused on in the mini lesson, I take the opportunity to pull a reading group! Here is a peek at some of the paper/pencil activities that my students complete for each long vowel!

Following our seat work round, students complete a round of word work within the structure of Daily 5. During this time, my students practice word family words as well as sight words. These interactive practice activities are perfect for centers or Daily 5 word work!

LONG VOWEL PUZZLES: 

LONG VOWEL CONNECT FOUR:

LONG VOWEL MEMORY:

Grab LONG A MEMORY GAME for FREE by clicking this link!

LONG VOWEL WORD SORT CARDS:

I use these cards in my big pocket chart for whole group practice. I also use them in my guided reading groups as a warm up for my kiddos! They are the perfect size and I've found sooooo many ways to use them in my instruction! (These are also sold separate from the Long Vowel Resource Bundle.... in my Long Vowel Word Sort Cards for Pocket Charts & More!)

My newest addition to my long vowel word work is Long Vowel File Folder Games and Activities! This photo features two of my favorite activities for long a, but my bundle includes 30 different file folder games and activities!

One of my favorites is a long/short vowel sort for each vowel sound! It is simple and interactive!

My other favorite is a sentence building activity! Students use word cards to complete sentences!

The other file folder activities include a Board Game, ABC ordering practice, Spin a Word (real/nonsense word practice), and a Bingo Game! Grab a FREE copy of my Long A Board Game here!

Grab the entire set of Long Vowel File Folder Games and Activities by clicking this link or the photo below!

These have been a huge hit with my firsties and add some variety to the word work that we do each week!

This is my FAVORITE new word work center as part of my Daily 5 rounds!! Students build long vowel words on these simple mats using magnetic letters!

I printed them on thick, colorful cardstock for some more visual interest!

Each long vowel set in my freebie has 6 building mats for different word families!

For word work, I simply put the laminated mats and magnetic letters in a gallon Ziploc. I keep my sets in a small bin! Students can just grab and go!

Students record their long vowel words on a small recording sheet. I love this part because it holds them accountable at their center and it gives them great practice in writing their words!

This little firstie rocked her word building word work!! What a darling!

If you are interested in downloading these FOR FREE from my TpT store, click this link or the photo below! Please help me out by leaving some feedback in my store if you do choose to download this fun freebie!

If you have read some of my other recent posts, you know about my new LOVE of interactive notebooks. I downloaded some FABULOUS interactive notebooks pages from The Sassy School Teacher to practice short vowels, blends, and digraphs. I've branched out and started making my own long vowel practice pages!

Here's the page that some of my students completed this week! Long A Words Brainstorming! Students glued three long a word family headings at the top of their pages. They brainstormed as many words and they could under those headings. It is a great challenge for them! We talked about using our alphabet on the wall to see if we could add those letters to the beginning of the word families. We had great discussions about real and nonsense words! My teacher heart was happy as I saw their excitement in each word that they thought of!

Now, the above brainstorming activity was a perfect challenge for my students that are "at grade level." Next week, I'm going to do a similar activity with my intervention firsties! Instead of them brainstorming the words themselves, they are going to sort existing words under each heading. See my example below!

This is an idea that I took partially from our Title 1 Reading teacher. She has students sort word family words and then read the words down the columns. After practicing reading DOWN each column, she has her students read ACROSS the notebook page. Then, the students are switching between word families as they read and it is a lot more challenging! Perfect for helping to build that fluency and automaticity!!!

Two other forms of practice that we are going to use are...

Word/Picture Matching! (for my intervention students)

Fluency strips! (for all of my students)

Poor color choice on this paper... I was running out at home for my examples! Oops!

If you are interested in using these Interactive Notebook Pages for Long Vowels, please click the link to my TpT store or click the photo below!

My students LOVE anything that can be referred to as a PUZZLE! There is something so naturally engaging about puzzles! I use these for my early finishers! So fun!! Click this link to grab puzzles for each long vowel!

My final long vowel teaching tool that I have been using is my Long Vowel Word Sorts!! I use this as a small group activity in my reading groups and I also put it in my word work centers for Daily 5!

Students sort word family words under headings and then record them on a simple recording sheet!

You can grab these in my TpT store as well: Long Vowel Word Sorts!

I hope that you find this little post helpful in your teaching of long vowels!! Like I said... these activities have helped to cure my hate for long vowels... and I'm NOT saying that I LOVE them now, but I do feel more prepared to teach them!