Fall themed close reading passages to teach your primary students how to annotate a text. Your students will love this color-coded method using DOTS! Close Reading Passages Close reading is all about reading to uncover the text to deepen comprehension. Students engage with the text and focus on the information the text provides. With these close reading passages, students will dive into the text and learn about some fun Fall topics. Read about how you can use this resource in your ... continue reading...
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Duck for President | President’s Day Reading Lesson Ideas
Duck for President reading lessons for kindergarten and 1st grade! This is a great book for President's Day. Reading comprehension, responding to literature, and a fun craft! Duck for President | President's Day Reading Lesson Ideas I love reading this book in February for President's Day. Duck is quite a funny character as he works his way into becoming President. Here are some fun writing response and activity ideas that go along with this book! Problem/Solution In this story, Duck and ... continue reading...
Reading Rubrics for the Primary Grades
These reading rubrics for primary grades are great for kindergarten and first-grade reading! These assessments and scoring guides are great for guiding your lessons in reading comprehension. If you've used our Engaging Readers units then you probably already use the Rubrics that come with each unit, but questions about assessments are one of our most commonly asked questions so we will talk about that in this blog post. Reading Rubrics for Primary Grades: Reading ... continue reading...
Fun on the Farm!
We had so much fun learning about farm animals. We made a chart to compare and contrast sheep and pigs. We learned a lot about cows. As a culmination to our farm animal unit we made our own ice cream in a bag! The kids were able to see firsthand how matter can change from a liquid to a solid. MOOOO-velous! We read some of our favorite stories, Mrs. Wishy Washy by Joy Cowley, and Who's in the Shed? by Brenda Parkes are great stories for Shared Reading. Who's in ... continue reading...
Fun with Owls!
The kids had so much fun learning about owls this week. Their excitement was so contagious that when I was observed this week (we don't know ahead of time when our administrators are coming they just pop in and do our formal observations unnanounced) my assistant principal didn't want to leave! The kids were teaching him lots of cool facts about owls! Here are two of our charts that we made this week. They say... Owls have.... and Owls are.... we also made one that said Owls can... We ... continue reading...
RAWR! Dinosaurs and Paleontologists!
Oh, my gosh Y'all! We have had so much fun learning about Dinosaurs! The week before our unit started my dog found (wink, wink) this egg in my backyard. We made inferences about what we thought was inside it based on its appearance. The kids noticed that, "it looked really old" and that it was "Huge". We charted their guesses on the chart below. I told them that I had peeked inside the egg and that I already knew what was inside it. I gave them one clue at a time and we made the ... continue reading...
More zoo unit pictures
Here you'll find more zoo unit pictures. We made alligator pie and then used Interactive writing to create our How To chart. Our fun poem. This was written by a Canadian poet by the name of Dennis Lee. I'm told there are a few more verses to the poem...but this was just enough for us.. we love it! YUMMY! Alligator pie The kids wrote their own How To during Writer's Workshop Our alligators and nonfiction alligator writing. A close up of ... continue reading...
Ocean Unit of Fun!
We have been learning a lot about ocean animals. We learned all about different types of sharks and we decided that we thought the Great white Shark was the most interesting. We labeled the parts of a shark. This is our schema chart based on an idea from Debbie Miller. We made sharks and orca whales and then sorted the information we learned by using a venn diagram. A close up of some of our shark and whale ... continue reading...
Insects Unit and a FREEBIE!
I will admit that I was kind of sad for my spring break to end. I LOVE being able to sleep in just a little bit and it is so much nicer to wake up without having an alarm clock buzzing in your ear. But today we started one of my favorite units so that made going back to school a little easier, Insects Unit. This Insects Unit can be used with an Insect Animals theme or as stand-alone Reading and Writing lessons and activities. Here is how I plan out my Insects ... continue reading...
Fun and Family! Happy New Year Linky
Happy New Year! I love this time of year. A brand new year. Time to reflect and make goals and brand new memories. I'm linking up with Blog Hoppin' this week and today's topic is Fun and Family. I LOVE talking about my family because I am so blessed to have such a sweet, loving husband and amazing kids! We've been married since we were babies and I can honestly say he is my very best friend. The best thing is he does laundry and cleans!!! YES!!!! We love spending time just ... continue reading...
Batty Over Bats!
Happy Monday Y'all! This is a throwback post about another unit that I LOVE to teach during the month of October. BATS!! Oh, my word! I absolutely love bats. Okay. I'll admit that I wouldn't really want to meet one up close and personal but they are fascinating and little ones love learning all about them. If you already have my bat unit you'll want to head on over to TPT and download the updates that I just added to the unit. The link is at the end of this post. We always start ... continue reading...
The Mitten | Reading Comprehension Lesson Plans – FREEBIE
The Mitten lesson plans for teaching reading comprehension skills. Responding to literature through writing, studying vocabulary, and a STEM activity. The Mitten Reading Lesson Plans The Mitten by Jan Brett is a fun winter read aloud. In this story, animals squeeze in a mitten to keep warm from the winter cold. Our Engaging Readers units are full of resources for a week-long book study. Students engage in developing reading strategies and have wonderful conversations along the ... continue reading...
The Best Digital Sentence Building Activities for Kindergarten
Digital sentence building activities that are preloaded to Seesaw for distance learning, or use of technology within your kindergarten classroom. Sentence Building A few months ago, I posted about a sentence building activity that makes a wonderful literacy center. With the changing times, I teamed up with Deedee Wills to convert the activity into a digital format. You can check out the previous blog post showing the printable version here: Sentence Building Activity OR, keep ... continue reading...
Read-Aloud Activities for Tops & Bottoms
No matter the career path students select to follow, they will spend a lot of time reading. Whether this is textbooks or manuals, building comprehension at a young age is essential. Since comprehension includes many aspects, it takes time, practice, and patience. However, students also need to enjoy reading to see the true importance of the words on the page. Thus, teachers work hard to select engaging read-alouds and high-quality lessons to show students how excellent books are. Luckily, the ... continue reading...