Shake, shake, shake..

I stumbled upon this adorable blog through a post on Pinterest and I knew I had to borrow the synonym shaker idea! I am going to make one with the upper and lower-case letters of the alphabet and also one with sight words in it! I am excited to work on this (along with other projects I previously posted about and haven't quite had time for) this weekend! Thanks "Sunny Days in Second Grade"!

Guided reading-comprehension!

I found these adorable stars and I decided I wanted to create my own, but following the same format. You can sign up for a membership and download the exact ones here, but I hate signing up for things because it ends up being just one more password I won't remember. I am going to make my own prompts for before, during and after reading and have each kiddo in my guided reading group answer a question! I am so excited to get started and I will post a pic of the finished product tomorrow! :) Thanks topteacher!

                                     

I'm lovin' Fry & fries!!

I stumbled upon this bulletin board website and they had such a cute idea for a board based on (in my opinion) the best fast food place in town :) I am planning on adapting their idea slightly, where instead of discussing over-used words, I am going to focus on Fry's word lists. I will have a different fry container for each of the word lists and pull from there when I want to test the kiddos. I am thinking it would be awesome to treat the kids to a small order of fries once they have mastered the lists! I will post my bulletin board once I find the time to make it :)

Door decorating!

In December my mom and I were browsing through some door decorating ideas on Pinterest and stumbled upon this website. She adapted their "reindeer stable" door for her classroom! How adorable for Christmas time :)

Word endings..help!

My kiddos were asking when to add 's' at the end of a word and when to add 'es' and I think these posters will work great in my room! Also, check out the adorable blog I found them on-I'm a big fan!

Reading with expression :)

I was doing a mini-lesson today with the kiddos on reading with expression. Some of my higher-level readers have almost mastered all of their sight words and can stretch out words fairly easily, but they skip punctuation all together, even when they are reading dialogue in a story. I am going to make these for my wall to remind the kiddos what the different punctuation marks' jobs are :) I found the idea on Pinterest..not sure who the original author is but thanks!

Pumpkin Decorating

Every year the school my mom works at holds a pumpkin decorating contest and the pumpkins are raffled off to raise money for the school. The classroom teacher my mom works with came up with the idea of "The Rainbow Fish" based off of the popular children's book and my mom designed this pumpkin! Believe it or not, a ton of the work on this pumpkin was actually done by 1st & 2nd graders!! I loved this pumpkin and just had to share/brag about how my mom is one of the most creative people I know! :)

Classroom Management

Kiddos who turn in their homework should be rewarded! I found this cute blog and saw this idea, and I am forever grateful because I intend to make a "Rock N' Roll"version of this for my classroom :)

Science & Social Studies

Oh my goodness! The following idea made me actually giddy with excitement! How about a twist on the traditional Guess-Who game, using famous people instead of those silly pretend ones?? Love love love this! Thank you to whoever came up with this originally-it fits so perfectly into my American Revolution unit (of course my game would feature different folks then the ones pictured below :) )

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My fourth graders absolutely loved this video-they had it memorized after only a couple days and could sing it without the lyrics!

I have attached the lyrics here so that you can make individual hand-outs for the kids. They loved having their own copy to take home and sing the song, especially those who did not have access to the internet at home!

Math

Are your kiddos having trouble remembering the properties of 3D shapes? Here is the solution! Thank you Lil' Country Kindergarten, for not only this cute resource, but also for having quite possibly the cutest blog name ever! :)

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I stumbled upon this chart and I love it because you can tell the kiddos to use their math strategies BEFORE they ask you for help on a problem. With my fourth graders especially they would tend to say "I don't know what to do" before attempting a new strategy, so I am going to make this as a reference for my future classroom.

*I found this chart on Pinterest and it is only linked to a photo, so if you are the original author let me know so I can give you credit for this awesome idea!

Literacy :)

Using Fry's First 100 Words with your kiddos? Here is an awesome resource, including the list, a checklist for recording student responses, and all 100 words written individually on flash cards! Thanks "Unique Teaching Resources"! :)
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At school we use the Fountas & Pinnell Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) kits. Sometimes I need to skip around and/or use a book from another level. I found this link that lists all the books in the LLI kits, and although it is intended to price the books, it is helpful as it shows the level, lesson number and title of each book.



*On a side note, I am so thankful that we have these kits! Man are they expensive, but well worth it! :)
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I focus on different skills with every reading group that I see. While one group is focusing on letters and letter sounds, another may be working on beginning blends or other reading strategies. I stumbled upon these two charts and I cannot wait to print them off soon to use with my groups!

The first is a blends and digraphs chart available here.

The other is an alphabet chart given away as a freebie on this adorable blog! Thank you "Kindertastic"!! :)

Here is the link to the chart-I can't wait to show it to my kiddos!

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This week we have been talking about stretching out words while reading and looking for parts of  words that we know with some of my reading groups. This spun off into a mini-lesson about word endings and when I found this cute anchor chart on Pinterest I knew I would have to make one. There goes my Sunday.. :)

(Note: I would like to give credit to the original author of this but the Pinterest link doesn't lead to anything for me, so if you are the original author, then thanks! Send me a link to the original posting and I will credit you for your awesome idea on my page!)

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For those days when kids don't feel like practicing sight words, these cards are a really good alternative. I found them as a freebie on a really cute blog, which you can check out by clicking here.

The link to the free printable is here.

Thanks "I Love 2 Teach" :)