Black Friday Sale!

I hope everyone is having a great Thanksgiving full of lots of love and yummy food.  I'm dropping in real quick to tell you about an early bird sale happening tomorrow on Black Friday! I love a good sale, don't you?!  

In honor of Black Friday, I am joining a whole bunch of my blogging buddies, and putting my entire TPT store on sale on Friday, November 29!  I will be braving the Black Friday crowds myself to try and get a little bit of my shopping done.  Christmas is right around the corner:)  Plus my little guy turns 3 on the 9th of December.  I currently have zero presents purchased.  Wish me luck!

On Friday only, you can save 20% off of every single product!

If you choose to wait for Cyber Monday and Tuesday you'll receive an additional 10% off with the code CYBER, this is just an option for those of you who want to shop early so you can get it prepped for next week!

I am so thankful for all my bloggy friends!!  I hope everyone has a great holiday!!

Gobble........Gobble...A Thanksgiving Post

I enjoy teaching the kiddos about the Pilgrims and the 1st Thanksgiving.  I am a total sucker for themes.  One of my biggest frustrations as an intervention specialist is TIME!  I never have enough time get everything done that I would like to accomplish.  Unfortunately it seems to be a common problem for all teachers.

To begin:

Student's wrote their schema about the Pilgrims before we began our reading.  This chart is not that pretty but it works!! 

**Looks like we still need to take time to add our new learning to the chart:)  That is my favorite part.  I love it when students are pumped up about their learning!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many of you know that I am a firm believer in using visuals when teaching concepts.  I believe our school psych calls it visual and verbal pairing of information.  I created vocabulary cards with visuals and definitions to accompany them to enhance my students learning.  The kids love to match the definitions to the correct word.

I get frustrated when I want to teach about a concept and I can't find material that the students can READ!  This year I decided to create three different levels of Thanksgiving books to use with my various groups.  Then I realized that I needed a sight word reader for my kinders so I created a fourth book. This way I can still get my kiddos to learn some factual information and also work on decoding skills.

Below are examples from the 4 different versions.

 

 

As with anything we read, written responses are a critical piece.  The students and I do a ton of oral discussion while we are read but I also require them to put it in writing to prove to me that they can put their responses on paper.

 

This pack is available you still need a little something for next week!

It is half off until after Thanksgiving!!

Also if you didn't get my updated Thanksgiving word wall pack and visual writing cards click the picture below.

The first 5 people to comment can get my newest Thanksgiving pack for FREE!

Welcome Fall.......with a Facebook Freebie Hop!!

I am teaming up with my Firstie Friends today to share some fun freebies with ya'll!  We have put together a little hop.  All you have to do is hop along our Facebook pages and pick up freebies as you go:)  Click the picture to get started hopping along the fall freebie trail!!!

A Blog Post just in time for HALLOWEEN!

Hello my friends!!  Today was my day to post on Teaching Blog Round Up!  I will admit I almost forgot but luckily I remembered just in time!  I decided to share some ideas about how I teach sight words in small groups!  Of course I would not let ya'll down and I included some FREEBIES!

Click the button below to check my post and snag your goodies!

 

Happy Halloween Everyone!

Five for Friday .....ummm or Sunday.....Phonics Freebie Style

FIVE FOR FRIDAY!  PHONICS FREEBIE STYLE:) 

Since I have been a horrible blogger

 and it has been almost a month since my last post :(

I decided to share some of my newest creations with y'all!  Enjoy!

 I have begun to create letter sound sorts for the kindergarten teachers in my building.  I am eventually going to bundle them but until then I thought I would share with my followers.

A vowel sort FREEBIE to accompany the consonant sort above.

 I updated my Fundations alphabet chart FREEBIE. 
It now includes letter and sound matching cards.
(I also changed a couple of the images)

 At my school we were recently lucky enough to have the author Brian Cleary visit.  Mr. Cleary has written over 50 books.  One of his series of books are called Words are Categorical.  These books focus on teaching concepts such as nouns, adjectives, verbs, homophones etc.  I created this homophone activity to accompany his books about homonyms and homophones.

 Finally snag my newest game on TPT for FREE if you download it within the next two hours!

I hope you enjoy the freebies!  I would love for you to leave me some LOVE and let me know what you think of the goodies:)  

Until next time,

FEED ME! A CVC FLUENCY GAME

I have been an awful blogger recently.  I am really struggling to get into the swing of things again.  I have been doing a little creating though in my blog absence:)

This summer I discovered the game BUBBLE POP! created by Growing Kinders.

I love the game so much that I decided to create some higher level games for my older kiddos.  The first game that I completed focuses on short vowel CVC words.  I have some struggling firsties that need a boost and a fun & quick game is just the trick to get them blending CVC words in no time.

Snag it now!  It is FREE for the first 24 hours:) 

Comprehension Strategy: MAKING CONNECTIONS with a FREEBIE

Last week, I began reviewing the comprehension strategy: making connections (mainly text to self).  This strategy is essential to enhance student understanding while reading.  Since all of my students are "at risk" anything that I can do to engage the students is key.  Linking the text to events from my students lives is one way to increase their understanding.


To introduce the topic, I read the book The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant to the students.  Since I working in small groups that amount to around 20 minutes each it took several days to read the entire story and discuss student connections.

 

This is a great book to use when doing TEXT to SELF connections.  Most students have had interactions with family, or traveling (even if it is just a short trip).  With some students it is really hard to get them to vocalize their connections for many different reasons.  One of the major obstacles that I face is limited language.  There are times were I really have to stretch the text to link it to a student's life. 

I love to use music to reinforce concepts that I am teaching so I was so excited when I stumbled upon songs that teach reading comprehension strategies by One Extra Degree.  I really like that she used tunes that the kids already know so it is easy to sing not only for the kids but for me as well. (my picture was not cooperating tonight)

I decided to create a little book to assess my students understanding of the "connections" strategy.  I created two different versions for students.  One book requires students to write a response and the other book allows the student to draw a picture of the connection.  Click the picture below to grab your freebie!

My students have begun reader's notebooks so I made a little cheat sheet to insert in their notebooks to accompany the other work we do with connections.

I am linking up with Manic Monday at Classroom Freebies to share my new creation.

I hope you enjoy this freebie!!  Please leave a comment and share your thought and ideas on teaching text connections.  I love new tips and tricks:)  I hope everyone has a great week!

Until next time,