Picture Clues Help Students Read

How Do You Go To School? Is a fun easy reader for your students to do the first week of school.

It’s a great way to reinforce the end of the day routine and who should line up where, because of how they will get home.

Graphing how everyone does that, will help children get to know the different means of transportation available, plus get to know their new friends better.

Children read the simple sentences using picture clues, trace and write the mode of transportation word, and then cut and glue the matching numbered picture to the page.

When everyone has completed their booklet, read it together as a whole group activity to reinforce concepts of print.

This will also enable students to share it with their families at home.

Click on the link to view/download the How Do You Go To School? easy reader.

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I hope you can stop by tomorrow, for another back to school idea.

“Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.” -E.M. Forster

Common Core State Standard Letter Perfect Activity Poster

Here is a simple, easy, and relatively quick activity that you can plug in, to nail quite a few Common Core State Standards with one fell swoop!

Laminate this poster and use it during your calendar or reading block time.

Take a letter each day and fill in the appropriate boxes.

Using a dry erase marker demonstrate to your students how you write an uppercase and lowercase letter.

Students can practice on a dry erase board, or you can make a copy of the Letter Perfect sheets for them.

You can keep these as individual sheets or run off a set of 26 and collate them into an alphabet booklet for each child that they will take out and use during Daily 5 for the writing portion or word work.

If you don’t do Daily 5 this can be an independent writing center, or as in the example above, you can do these as whole group skill sheets.

Have students listen to the sound the letter makes as you say it.

Have students repeat the sound.

Ask them if they can think of any words that make that sound.

By demonstrating basic knowledge of letter-sound correspondence by producing the primary or most frequent sound for each consonant, they are working on Common Core State Standard: RF:K.3a

If the letter is a vowel, have students tell you what other letters are vowels.

I have my students sing the vowel song to the tune of B-I-N-G-O

There was a class who learned their vowels

And this is what they sang Oh

A-E-I-O-U

A-E-I-O-U

A-E-I-O-U

They were so very smart! Oh!

Differentiate between long and short vowels and fill in the appropriate boxes on the chart with words that they can think of.

By associating the long and short sounds with the common spellings for these 5 major vowel sounds, students are working on Common Core State Standard: RF: K. 3b.

By distinguishing long from short vowel sounds in any spoken single syllable words they come up with, they are working on Common Core State Standard: RF.1. 2a.

Have them become ABCDe-tectives and look around the room for words on their Word Wall or Read The Room signs that begin with that letter and then as they say them aloud, ask them to what box/category they should put the word in.

If the letter is a consonant decide if it is a hard or soft consonant and do the same thing as above.

Ask the children if there are any students who have a first or last name that begins with the letter of the day and have them come up and write it on the chart.

Finally, choose a quiet child to find and circle the letter of the day in the alphabet.

You can end by giving someone a pointer (I turned out the lights and used a laser light) to point to each letter of the alphabet on our border and we sang the ABC song.

By consistently reviewing all of the letters, you are helping students to recognize and name all of the upper and lowercase letters of the alphabet which is Common Core State Standard: RF:K.1d and L.1.1a

If you are also going to do these as a skill sheet for your students, they can record at the same time as you do, or after the group modeling, can return to their seats and fill in their own paper.

In order to cover the Common Core State Standard RF: K. 1b make sure that you:

Explain to children each day that “Spoken words are represented in written language by specific sequences of letters.”

As you can see, quite a few standards are covered in one simple and fun poster activity, which can also double as a skill sheet for your students!

Click on the link to view/download Common Core State Standard Letter Activity Poster

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“The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.” –Benjamin Franklin

Nailing Common Core State Standards With Fun Vocabulary Building Word Books!

Dictionaries are a great way to practice the skill of alphabetizing. 

They help students become aware of new words, and by writing them down, defining and categorizing them, students are building their vocabularies.

At the end of the year students have a great keepsake and are truly amazed at all the words they have learned and can now read, spell and use!

Choose one dictionary for your students to work on, or pick several; there are 8 to choose from, including several generic ones. 

The cute cover designs are the artwork of Laura Strickland and Phil Martin.

Use the common ABC page template for all of the dictionaries.

Students write their name on the cover and then jot down the word on the appropriate letter page, and define it.

It would also be a good idea to have students trace the upper and lowercase letters for extra alphabet practice.

Run off more pages if students find more words that begin with a certain letter, such as T, S, M etc.

Run off and collate these booklets at the beginning of the year.

Students can keep them in a folder, file, portfolio or their cubby for easy access.

So that my students are empowered and can find their booklets quickly, each child has a number at the beginning of the year.

This is far easier than alphabetizing things.  I quickly collect booklets etc. and put them in numerical order.

The dictionaries make a perfect addition to your “Word Work” for Daily 5.

If you don’t do Daily 5 they are terrific as independent work for your writing center.

If you do a sight word or the Dolch word dictionary you will be helping to fulfill the Common Core State Standard: RF:K.3c

I've also included a tip sheet of how to guide 1st graders so that you can also incorporate Common Core State Reading Standards: L.1.4a,  L.1.5b, L.1.5c

Click on the link to view/download Student-Made Dictionaries.

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"Anyone can be cool, but awesome takes practice!" - Unknown

A Fun Way To Get To Know Your Students On The First Day, Or During The First Week Of School!

What’s On Your Mind? Is an easy and interesting way to get to know your students and a fun icebreaker.

You can do these in class, if you’re looking for a filler, or send them home to be done as a home-school connection, if you are pressed for time.

If you’d like to have an instant bulletin board, and activity for the first day of school, include the directions and a template in your “Welcome to school” summer letter packet or tuck it in your Open House packet if you have that before school starts like we do.

Be sure and make one for yourself, to post as an example.  This is my sample that took about 15-minutes, using clip art + adding a photo of my husband and poodle pup Chloe.

I think you’ll enjoy doing it as will your students, no matter what the age group; everyone seems to like sharing a little bit about themselves in an entertaining way.

You could follow this up with students typing in words to their thoughts and making a word-art picture in tagxedo as well!

I did a sample for me and one for my husband so there would be a boy one. I filled in the caricature templates (pix above left), so they don't look as much like a silhouette as I would have liked.

If you want to use my boy and girl "head templates" click on the link.  You'll need to change them to jpegs to use them in Tagxedo, otherwise find a sideview of some other clip art to import.

Click on the link to view/download the What’s On Your Mind activity packet.

Thanks for visiting today.  I hope you can drop in tomorrow for another back to school idea.

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“Nothing is so strong as gentleness,

and nothing so great as real strength.” –St. Francis De Sales

 Let's Get Organized!

I LOVE using graphic organizers for a variety of things no matter what grade I teach.

I think once you start using them you’ll enjoy them too.  In this particular packet I’ve designed an easy-to-use 3 and 4-column graphic organizer.

There are some for every month, season and a huge variety of themes.

Click on the link to view/download the Themed Graphic Organizer Packet.

I also made up another 44- page packet with a variety of DIFFERENT kinds of graphic organizers; from stars and a question mark to a fish bone and butterfly; I’m sure you’ll find something here that will fit your needs.

Many of these will help you with a variety of Common Core State Standards for Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grades.

As I've stated in a previous article, I work a little each day adding CCSS codes to the items in my shopping cart, to help you find lessons that specifically correlate to them.

If you are downloading, or have downloaded an item that fits a CCSS, would you please drop me an e-mail to help expedite this big process.  Thanks!

With that in mind, I included 2 student dictionary's that they can make, that will help with a Language Vocabulary Acquisition Common Core State Standard.

Click on the link to view/download the general General Graphic Organizer Packet.

Graphic Organizers are visual displays that are used to depict the relationships between facts, terms and/or ideas in a learning task.

They are also called mind maps, concept maps, story maps, concept diagrams & entity relationship charts.

They are a pictorial way of constructing knowledge that help organize information.

They help students compress a lot of information into an easy-to-understand graphic display.

The visual display conveys complex information in an easy-to-read manner.

A calendar is actually a graphic organizer, perhaps the original “series of events” organizer.

Graphic organizers can be used for a variety of things, including problem solving, studying, brainstorming, and decision-making, writing projects, and planning research.

Colors and pictures help increase the utility and readability of your visual display.

There are many types of graphic organizers. The task you need to perform, determines the type of graphic organizer you should use.

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I hope you can drop in tomorrow for more back to school ideas.

“When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this—you haven’t.” –Thomas Edison

Dots of Glue Pictures and Pinch and Pokes Help Fine Motor Skills

Use these seasonal dotted clips to help your students learn to use glue bottles and use just a dot of glue with the cute rhyme-song that goes to the tune of “If You’re Happy And You Know It!”

I’ve seen it all over the Internet with no credit given to who is the originator, so if you’re that creative person, let me know and I’ll acknowledge you + link up.

Simply run off the art work and have students color it if you want, for that extra fine motor practice and then placing it on a sheet of scrap paper to avoid the “oops spills” give students a small glue bottle and have them practice plopping a small dot (not a lot) on each little spot on the picture.

Remind them to sing the little ditty while they plop and dot.

If your kiddo’s are like mine, they will enjoy this activity.  It will strengthen their finger muscles as well as their aim, (hand-eye coordination) and in no time you won’t dread passing out liquid glue, because there won’t be lakes of it running all over the place.

You can also use these as mini-Pinch & Pokes.

Students LOVE doing these, and they help increase the same finger muscles as the above activity.

Plus they strengthen the upper body, because students lie on their tummies on the carpet.  The paper needs to be on a carpet square or the carpet, so the “poker” can go through the paper.

My Y5’s had no problems being trusted with a fat tack as long as I explained the rules: No poking themselves, another child or anything but the dots on the paper.  Any infractions and they had a time out and could no longer do Pinch & Pokes, period.

Since this was an activity as fun as Play-Doh, they behaved.  If you still cringe at the “sharp object” idea, a golf tee works well, but makes a bigger hole and is a bit harder to poke into paper and sometimes tears things rather than gives a nice circular hole.

Since this is seasonal and themed clip art, with 4 to 5 on a page, I’m sure you can dream up cubby tags and a variety of other “stuff” to use them for. Enjoy!

Click on the link to view/download Just a Dot Not A Lot Pinch and Poke Picture Packet

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"I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

More Chicka Boom Stuff!

Yesterday’s Chicka Boom Activity Packet was a huge hit, so I wanted to share the Picka Chicka packet.

I LOVE using file folders with children because they are relatively inexpensive and I have 4 pages I can fill up with “cool stuff”.

Because they are made of heavy-duty cardstock, they can also handle the abuse of 4-year-olds or the soggy “oops” of too much glue as well.

My kiddo’s also enjoyed them because they were something different and something  “older”  people used, so they felt extra special.

After reading Chicka Boom have your students put together their “lap files”.  Choose whatever things you are going to study with them.

This 67-page packet includes:

• Directions, pictures and patterns to make a student "Lap-Office" Picka Chicka File Folder
• 4-"I Spy" skill sheets
• Coconut Colors booklet
• Chicka Boom name tags
• Coconut facts and a list of interesting websites
• 4 graphing extensions
• A Venn diagram activity +
• A certificate of praise

Chicka chicha boom boom, I hope you enjoy all of the new kids in your classroom!

Click on the link to view/download the Picka Chicka Chicka Boom Activity File Folder Packet

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"Losers are people who are afraid of losing.” –Robert Kiyosaki

Name Cards As Inexpensive Teaching Tools!

 I loved name cards when I taught Y5’s. They were perfect for a variety of things. 

I laminated them so that they lasted longer, and because they were double, I had extra sets because I didn't stand them up as a tent card.

Being able to recognize their name was a report card standard and surprisingly many little ones came to me not knowing how to identify their name.

Besides placing them on the tables in the morning, so students knew where they sat for that day, and scattering them on the floor so they could “find themselves” as a fun identification game, I also rubber banded a set and put them in my library book crate.

When students brought their book back, they looked for their name card and stuck it in their book.

My 4-year-olds, often forgot which book they brought back by the time the end of the week rolled around and it was our turn to go to the library.

The long cards would stick out, so I simply flipped the book open to see who I needed to hand it to.

It was also another chance for them to reinforce identifying their name.

Because notebooks are offered as loss leaders in most major Office Supply Stores during the summer, I can pick up a “writing notebook” for my students to practice writing their name in for as little as 10 cents!  I also tucked a name card in this notebook as well.

When The Dollar Store started carrying name cards, you can imagine my joy!  I kept a pack by my rocking chair and used them as flashcards. 

I'd flash a name for only a few seconds.  If it was your name on the card you had so many seconds to raise your hand and claim it.  I also used that pack as a fair way to choose students as my reading helpers.  I'd fan them out face down and have students select cards and read who would get to do whatever.

I’ve seen the “informational” name cards that I revamped in the photo above, produced by a variety of companies, and thought I’d whip up my own version.

I made two lines so you can write your students’ names, but I also included another line, so you can use the cards for name writing practice.

That way, the cards will make a quick & easy way for you to whole-group assess writing standards (How students hold a writing utensil, if they make their letters top down, if students are right-handed etc.) without using paper.  Simply have students use a dry erase marker, which my kiddo’s LOVED using!

I’ve also printed the cards, so that you can make copies, so you can fold them and use them as a tent with names on both sides, or with skip counting and 3-D shape information on the other side.

If you’re like me, and lay the cards flat, I’ve made an extra double-page set of the skip counting card, so you can use that as a practice tool if you want too.

You can also have students play “I Spy” the shape, letter or number and have students point to the various thing that you want to practice,  as a quick and easy game or fill in, when you have a few minutes of time to kill.

I've also printed the vowels in green, so students can easily differentiate them from the consonants, for another teachable moment.

Click on the link to view/download Informational Name Cards

 I hope you and yours, enjoy these as they brighten your day!

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“Success is the sum of small efforts-repeated day in and day out.” –Robert Collier

A popular saying with students is, “That rocks.” Not sure where it came from, but if you tell a child that they rock, it will definitely build their self-esteem, and letting them know that the new grade that they are now entering rocks too, will hopefully get them excited to be there.

I went a bit slap happy downloading a bunch of fonts one day, thinking of all the “way cool” things I could do with them.  “JF Rock” was one of them I just  “had to have!”

I designed a “rockin’’” trace and write alphabet as well as a counting numbers 0-10 booklet, with praise certificates, to reward your students with.

As a fun back to school treat, run off the  “You Rock” bookmarks, include your students’ name at the end and lay them atop a package of Pop Rocks.

They sell them 3 packs for a buck at The Dollar Store, in 3 yummy flavors.  You could also dump them in a basket and offer students a choice, as an incentive when they complete their first day of morning activities.

I’ve also made _________________ grade rocks, bookmarks as well.  These can be colored with neon markers or crayons, for a quick and quiet activity, while you’re involved with whatever, on that busy first day.

Make these a bit more special and wrap them around a pencil with a fat eraser.  All of the Office Supply Stores offer a kajillion super deals on packages of pencils and erasers in August.

Anyway….I hope your new bunch of kids really rocks your world, in a positive way, and that this is your best year yet!

Have fun with these things and thanks for visiting today.  Feel free to PIN anything from my sight you feel others might find worthwhile.

Click on the link to view/download the School Rocks Packet

"Education sows not seeds in you, but makes your seeds grow!"- Kahlil Gibran