Students always love to celebrate holidays with their friends. Typically, this includes holidays like Valentine’s Day, Halloween, and Christmas. However, the fun doesn’t have to stop there! There are countless quirky, and even strange, holidays that most of us don’t even know exist. I love to use these national holidays to create extra excitement and engagement in the classroom. In this post, I’m going to share national holidays for August and September that are perfect for celebrating in the ... continue reading...
Search Results for: label/number sense
Back to School Ideas: Sentence Building | Literacy Center for K-1
Check out these engaging back to school ideas to teach your students about sentences and their parts. This color-coded resource is perfect for K-1 literacy centers. Sentence Building Activity Writing a complete sentence can be a tricky task in kindergarten and first grade! This build a sentence activity is a great resource to add to your literacy centers. It provides students with support in developing complete sentences, making this activity one of my essential back to school ... continue reading...
Guided Reading Lessons and Activities for your Favorite Traditional Tales
Guided reading lessons, books, and activities for reading levels AA-J. Digital and printable options for teaching guided reading to K-1 students. Guided Reading Lessons & Activities Guided reading lesson plans can make your daily guided reading instruction simple! With lesson plans, books, running records, and word work activities you will have all you need to organize and effectively teach during guided reading groups. Our traditional tales guided reading pack is full of ... continue reading...
Guiding Math: A Workshop Model for Teaching
I love student-centered, problem-based learning so when Deedee and I sat down to design our Guiding Kinders and Guiding Firstie Math units, I knew the activities would have to be hands-on! Guided Math Workshop Model Our lessons follow the workshop format. Each lesson has five components. 1. Fluency This part of the lesson is a warm-up that will help our students build their fluency in various math skills. It will usually involve flash cards and the focus is on speed and ... continue reading...
Making Read Alouds Come to Life: Creepy Carrots
Teacher read alouds are just as important as giving students time to read independently. Read alouds take the student's focus away from having to decode the words and gives students a chance to really hone in and focus on the meaning of the story. I love it when I read a story to children, and they love it so much that they beg me to READ IT AGAIN! It's so important to reread books to children and give them time to: Hear you thinking ... continue reading...
America Unit Part One
I love how cute the bald eagles turned out! This is a picture of our Chit-Chit message. These messages are how I teach and review phonics, reading and language skills. There is no better way to teach letter sounds and sound chunks than in the context of authentic reading and writing. We read a sentence just as it is written and then use our schema and other context clues to help us figure out what would make sense in the sentence. Once we think we have it figured ... continue reading...
Making Inferences
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...
Kindergarten Math Lessons and Activities for the First 20 Days!
Kindergarten math lesson plans for teaching numbers to 5, 2D shapes, and 3D shapes. This resource provides detailed instruction for your first 4 weeks of math! Kindergarten Math: The First 20 Days The first few weeks of school are a hectic time for kindergarten teachers! You are making sure to cover all procedures and routines, all while beginning to teach the kindergarten math curriculum. Many teachers get started with academics right away in order to stay on track for the expected ... continue reading...
Fairy Tale Stem Activities for Kindergarten-2nd Grade
Engaging STEM activities for kindergarten- 2nd Grade students. Students collect clues by completing STEM and math activities to break the spell on Cinderella. Come to any of our Get Your Teach On conferences and you will see the excitement and energy that comes from completing hands-on learning activities. The Fairy Tale STEM for Kindergarten-2nd Grade activities were first introduced at GYTO in 2017 and it was a hit! That resource is now available in a printable format so you can take it ... continue reading...
Digital Phonological Awareness Slides for Literacy Instruction
Digital phonological awareness slides to use in your PreK, K, or 1st grade classroom or through a video conferencing platform for distance learning. Digital Phonological Awareness Phonological Awareness is the foundation for reading and writing success. Students who have phonological awareness know that language is made up of words, rhymes, syllables, and sounds. Within this resource, students identify rhyming words, onset and rime, syllables, and phonemes. You can use these digital slides ... continue reading...
St. Patrick’s Day Math and Literacy Activities
Wouldn’t it be nice to find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow? While it is not actually possible, the excitement this would cause is coming alive in the classroom! However, many students are looking forward to building leprechaun catchers or pinching people not wearing green during St. Patrick's Day. No matter what the excitement is over, it will be essential for teachers to create engaging St. Patrick’s Day Math and Literacy Activities. By doing this, student excitement for St. ... 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...
Phonological Awareness Lesson Plans for Kindergarten & First Grade
Phonological awareness lesson plans and digital slides to make daily instruction simple! A systematic way to teach students to decode and spell words. Phonological Awareness Lesson Plans What if I told you that your students could develop into confident readers and writers who can decode and spell words, with just 10 minutes of phonological awareness instruction each day? Would you be running to get in line to find out how? As a teacher, I would be the first one there! Phonological ... 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...
Worksheets Don’t Grow Dendrites: Strategy 7
Hi Y'all! I'm back to talk with you about Strategy 7: Manipulatives, Experiments, Labs & Models. Even though this section of the book was only four pages long, I want to make sure that I cover everything so I've broken my blog post into two sections; Math & Science. I'm not sure if you've noticed but a lot of the math programs that our schools give us to use don't provide a lot of opportunities for the students to spend a great deal of time working at the concrete level by ... continue reading...