Learning how to make inferences is a really tough skill to learn! Often, students want to look back in the text for answers. However, this is not the only aspect students need to do when making their own inferences. They need to use their prior knowledge, personal experience and incorporate it with the information provided. Additionally, in the primary grades, we know that students' listening comprehension far exceeds their reading comprehension since students in kindergarten and first grade are ... continue reading...
Search Results for: label/Common Core Standards
Opinion Writing
Students LOVE to share their thoughts about any topic! For instance, it may be about their favorite food or the best name for a fish. Honestly, listening to students as they share their thoughts is always enjoyable. One of my favorite ways to combine the love of sharing with academics includes opinion writing. Since writing can be challenging for students to learn, this makes the process fun and exciting. Thankfully, the Opinion Writing Workshop helps support and guides students as they become ... continue reading...
The Easter Bunny’s Assistant Read Aloud
As Easter nears, students are getting more excited to hunt for eggs and Easter baskets. Therefore, it may be a little harder to keep them focused in the classroom. However, creative planning helps avoid behavior issues and off-task work. One of the best ways to do this involves interactive read alouds. Thankfully, The Easter Bunny’s Assistant will keep students on the edge of their seats with each hilarious page! Best of all, amazing lessons in The Easter Bunny's Assistant Read Aloud are ready ... continue reading...
Valentine Inference Lesson for Grades K-2
Whenever a holiday approaches, students get extra excited. From Christmas to Valentine’s Day, students love being able to celebrate with classmates. Therefore, teachers put a lot of pressure on themselves to create the perfect celebration. However, there is not enough time in the school year to create day-long celebrations. Due to the number of standards to get through, teachers need to utilize every minute possible. However, there are ways to embed a holiday with a ... continue reading...
Halloween Activities for the Primary Classroom
Halloween Activities for the Primary Classroom October is a great time to add a little bit of kid-friendly spooky fun in the classroom. This Halloween unit is packed full of fun themes and the best part? They all match state standards! Spooky fun & learning, all in one! Halloween Glyph Glyphs are a fun way to teach your students how to create and analyze data. For this Frankie Friend Glyph, your students will build a Frankie craft based on their answers to ... continue reading...
9 Diverse Read Alouds with Lesson Plans and Activities for K-2
Diverse read alouds to share with your K-2 students. Reading comprehension lesson plans and daily activities, along with a craft for each book! Diverse Read Alouds Quality literature is shared with students in classrooms each and every day. At times, we read a book and follow up with a lesson. Whereas, other times we just enjoy sharing a fun story with our students. Sharing diverse literature with your students is equally important in their development and learning. We put ... continue reading...
Writing Lesson Plans for Kindergarten & First Grade
Writing lesson plans for the entire year! Complete writing units to help you teach writing in kindergarten and 1st grade. Writing Lesson Plans Teaching writing can feel quite overwhelming! Writing instruction should occur daily in the classroom. However, you may find yourself asking, "Well, what exactly do I teach for writing?" That is a question I often hear from kindergarten and first-grade teachers. Deedee Wills and I created the perfect solution for you! We spent countless hours ... continue reading...
Guided Math Workshop: 10 Questions Answered
Do you have questions about how we plan and structure our guided math workshop? We often get asked about this so I wanted to take a few minutes to see if I can answer the top 10 questions we get about the guided math workshop. 1. How do you organize the curriculum? We like to use binders...ALL the BINDERS! Each unit fits nicely in a small 1" binder. 2. What does a typical lesson look like? Each day: Fluency practice (5 mins) *more on ... continue reading...
Writer’s Workshop: Writing Through the Year FREEBIE
Sometimes it can be a challenge to organize your curriculum in a way that is easy to use. Deedee Wills and I have been working on reorganizing and updating our writing workshop units. I prefer to keep my units in these 2" binders. You can find the spine labels at the end of this post. I will walk you through a unit to show you how it's organized. Each unit starts with a unit overview. You can also easily see the standards that are addressed in the unit. A writing continuum ... continue reading...
Engaging Readers, Curriculum Maps and FREE five-day lesson plan
Curriculum Maps for Kindergarten and First Grade help to guide your classroom instruction through your whole year! Reading, Math, Writing and MORE! Plus a free file for you! We have a whole series of Engaging Readers units out. The units cover phonemic awareness, phonics, and Comprehension skills. Here are a few pictures that Stephanie Stewart shared with me from the April unit. Sequencing the picture cards for the story, Piggie Pie. Checking her notebook with the class chart to see ... continue reading...
Math Units with FREEBIES and Toolkit binder covers {REPOST}
Hi friends, as many of you are starting the countdown to summer you are already starting to think about next year! I don't think ANYONE works harder than a teacher. We never turn our teaching brain off! Deedee and I have received a lot of requests for more information about our Math units. So I thought I'd do a quick blog post to share how we structure the lessons and give you some free sample lessons so that you could check it out if you're interested. We are both ... continue reading...
Math Workshop Model with FREEBIES
Hi friends, as many of you are starting the countdown to summer you are already starting to think about next year! I don't think ANYONE works harder than a teacher. We never turn our teaching brain off! Deedee and I have received a lot of requests for more information about our Math units. So I thought I'd do a quick blog post to share how we structure the lessons and give you some free sample lessons so that you could check it out if you're interested. We are both big ... continue reading...
Math Workshop {handouts with FREEBIES}
Math Workshop for Kindergarten and First grade students. Hey friends, I hope that you are enjoying your weekend! This is a recap of the session that I did on Thursday at the SDE Kindergarten Conference here in Florida. In this session I explained how Deedee Wills and I structure the lessons in our math units so that the kids gain a deeper understanding of the math concepts that we are teaching. Our lessons follow a 5 step process as outlined ... continue reading...
Peek at my Week {a look at my day}
My sweet friend, Deedee Wills has been doing her Peek at my Week for three years and asking others to link up as well. I love how helpful this is for teachers. It gives us the ability to peer inside each other's classrooms and borrow little nuggets of inspiration here or there to help make our classroom instruction the best that it can be. I've made it a goal this year to link up every Sunday and share as well. Before I start sharing my weekly plans I wanted to first start with my daily ... continue reading...
Ideas for a Kindergarten Earth Day Lesson Plan
We know how much kindergarteners love holidays! We can almost feel the excitement in the room as the calendar inches closer to holidays like Halloween or Christmas. However, there are other holidays that our young kindergarten students likely haven’t heard of before. Earth Day is one of these important holidays! I’ve put together a list of ideas for a kindergarten Earth Day lesson plan to help you introduce this holiday to your class. What is Earth Day? Earth Day is celebrated every ... continue reading...