thegiftofsightwords.pdf |
winter_wonder_land_math_centers_freebie.pdf |
i_spy_sight_words_free_blog_download_by_clever_classroom.pdf |
Here are some great centers. Check them out on these great TPT stores.
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Here is another great freebie. We are all about the Elf On the Shelf at our house and in my classroom. Krista Wallden has this awesome Elf/Candy clip art freebie. It won't be available for long so go over to her TPT store and download this great freebie. Like her on facebook too for more great products. I have looked for years for a great online site that offers reading comprehension and vocabulary practice for first grade students. I have finally found the perfect site. AdaptedMind offers math and reading practice for grades 1st-6th. The reading passages are perfect for low or advanced readers. They have sample passages and a free 30 day trial. The paid membership is only $9.99 a month for 5 children. I plan to become a member for my own children and to use it some in my classroom as well. Check out this wonderful site it'shttp://www.adaptedmind.com/index.html
I'm really enjoying having a large number of advanced readers in my first grade class this year. I'm so excited to have them try reader's theater. I found this awesome freebie from the Teeny Tiny Teacher's store on TPT. Go and download this freebie and like her on facebook to get more of her great products. http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Readers-Theater-Partner-Plays-for-Beginning-Readers-Winter-Edition-999333 Tumble Books is an amazing site with hundreds of interactive books for children and teens. The city of Lubbock, TX provides this wonderful site for free through their online library site. Here are the steps you need to follow to access Tumble Books for free for your students at school or at home.
1. Go to this site http://www.mylubbock.us/departmental-websites/departments/library/library-home. 2. Click on Kids Corner located on the right hand side of the screen. 3. A tab will appear on the left of your mouse, click on Kid's page. 4. Click on Tumble Books. The Tumble Books site will open up click on the red story books oval and start watching hundreds of books come alive. 5. Tumble Books also have comprehension quizzes and games with each story. Our classroom elf has been a huge hit. I wish I could post pictures of the joy in my students' eyes. We named him Juan (one of my students chose his own name and it's the one we drew from the hat). They have wanted to feed him tamales too. lol! Gotta love children from Texas. We are writing in our journals about our elf each day. I love seeing the magic of believing in Christmas come alive in their writing. I took some photos of their journal entries. I'm using the journal I listed in a previous blog that I downloaded from tpt. I saw a great game idea on First Grade Parade. I decided to make my own smart board version. You can download it for free with the link below. It's sight words with our elf's picture behind some of the word cards. Students read the word cards and touch the card to see if they get to find our elf hiding behind their word. This game has been so much fun and such a big hit I'm going to make more games like this with Santa and the Grinch this weekend. So much Christmas fun and so little time before Christmas break. What fun activities you are using in your classroom or home for the holidays? Please leave a comment with fun ideas. :)
Merry Christmas early!!! Teachery Tidbits on fb and other fabulous bloggers are having a fb frenzy give away. Don't miss this amazing opportunity to download 21 free centers. Go to Teachery Tidbits on facebook, like her page, click on fb frenzy button, download her freebie and then click the snowman to lead you to the next freebie. Oh, what fun it is to download freebies on a cold dark winter night. I've seen other women with the new trendy larger purses. I kept thinking to myself "I need to get one of those." My current purse was a little too small. I knew that when I purchased it, but made it work for a year. So I had my eye on a snazzy, red purse at my favorite store in the South Plains Mall "Hippie Chick". I love the color red it makes me smile so I surround myself with that color as much as I possibly can. So this red purse was calling my name. It was a little more than I usually spend, but I splurged and bought it. It was heavier than my old purse, but it had so many pockets and was so much bigger I felt it would work out just fine. I don't venture very far without my purse, never have and I've carried a purse since I was 5 years old. I would put my old purse beside me in the car. My new purse doesn't fit in that spot so I've had to put it on the console/armrest and take my son's arm space (he growled a little about that). My new purse often bumps into people as I pass by, but most smile after I apologize and smile at them. I've had to find a new spot to hide it at work it's too large to fit in the spot I've always used. It's very heavy now that I've added all my personal belongings. It could possibly be mistaken for a small suitcase if I tried to fly on an airplane. God spoke to my heart and used that purse to remind me of so many lessons I've learned in life. Sometimes what we desire is not His perfect plan for us. What we desire might be beautiful to the human eye, but God knows the weight that desire of our flesh will put on us. God knows that what the flesh sometimes desires will effect others like my son in the car or the strangers I bump into everywhere I go. It might even effect our jobs to some degree. The greatest burden of the desires of the flesh is the weight it will put on our freedom to be who God called us to be daily. What burdens have I allowed to be piled on me because my flesh desired something that God didn't intend for my life? If I were totally honest there are too many to list. God is so amazing. He can take our poor choices and desires of the flesh transform them into compassion and the ability to comfort others. He can only do that if we lay down those burdens down and take His hand as He leads us in this dance we call life. What will you do with your burdens? Will you continue to try to carry them alone? Will you allow those burdens to effect your job, family, friends, even strangers you meet? It's your choice today. You can either pray and leave them at the feet of Jesus or you can continue to try to carry the burden and weight alone. Today I choose to lay my burdens down and fully put my trust in Jesus. I pray He will use those burdens to soften my heart and give me compassion and love for others.
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1 You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me in gladness, that your glory may sing your praise and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever! Psalm 30:11-12 I found this adorable freebie on TPT by Miss-Galvin-Learns. It's an Elf's journal to use with your students so they can journal about the adventures of your classroom elf. I did Elfie with my son last year and it was magical. I can't wait to introduce my classroom Elfie to my students on Monday. Here is a website with some wonderful ideas. http://alittlemoore.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/elf-on-the-shelf-2013-calendar/ I've also embedded the Elf on the Shelf video on youtube to share with your class. Let the fun Christmas memories begin. I'll post pictures each week to share our adventures.
This has been a really emotional week. My adopted mom had a very serious asthma attack that caused cardiac arrest. She coded 3 times, but God allowed the doctors to bring her back. My oldest son had the flu as she was being flown in on an Aerocare helicopter. My youngest son started running fever yesterday at school. My adopted mom is doing so much better, but it is still in ICU. We are also having an ice storm which is very rare in Texas. My students were crazy with the weather change. I missed the weekly staff meeting due to all that was happening and was told I had to turn in my parent conference sign in sheets from the first few weeks of school. So I begin to search my important binders, folders for them and can't find them. I hadn't really cried during this whole week and our reading coach came in and I told her I couldn't find those sign in sheets and began to cry. She looked down and saw them right in front of me. lol! Why is it that we can hold ourselves together in the midst of turmoil, but later the tiniest thing can bring on a flood of emotional tears? I want to give God all the glory and honor for healing my adopted mom, for healing my oldest son and for giving me the peace and strength to get through this difficult week. I'm also thankful I got to eat lunch with my youngest son between hospital visits this week. I surprised him with Chick Fil A he was so happy. We took his brother a surprise lunch too. My boys are such an amazing blessing and the light of my life. My youngest is my cool nerd. He asked for 2-D shapes for Christmas. I told him I had some at school so I brought them home. He was so excited. He won this cool head band from the prize box at school for doing so well on his math facts. He' I know it's a little early, but as teachers we have to plan ahead so here is a freebie from Kindergarten Squared that is too cute! The students apply for a job to be an elf and write a persuasive letter saying why they should get the job. We are all about the elf on the shelf at our house and in my classroom so this is perfect. I have also shared 3 awesome Christmas books below that would go so well with this writing lesson. Here is an amazing place value bean bag toss game! Go to TPT and grab it for only $1.00. I plan to white out the hundreds place until we get to that place value. I also plan to use this with money this week counting nickels and dimes. Can learning place value get any more fun than this? http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Place-Value-Toss-Up-928343 _http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Giving-Thanks-A-Daily-Journal-of-Thankfulness-FREE-959679 We had our school Thanksgiving lunch today. It's always a very crazy day, but one the children love and remember. I love the Bloglovin updates. One teacher posted this wonderful Thanksgiving journal today. It's a free download on TPT. I can't wait to let my students start using them Monday morning. I pray my students will enjoy writing about all the blessings in their lives. _My students loved the "teddy bear day". I have to admit it wired them up more than wearing their costumes on Halloween did. Oh my they were so excited.
We are going to have "teddy bear" day on Monday to celebrate perfect attendance and good lunchroom behavior. I purchased this awesome unit from TPT. We will write to our teddy bears, measure them, guess how many gummy bears are in a container, graph teddy grahams, eat lunch in the classroom with our bears and watch Toy Story 3 and see what mischief our bears get into when we leave the classroom. I'll post pictures of our special day on Monday night. These are some of the bears I'm going to use to decorate my classroom. We have a lot of bears at our house. I'm so very excited.
These are the most amazing reader response cards. My students love writing in their reading journals using these prompts. I didn't create these, but the fabulous teacher who did forgot to put her name or blog on the cover page. I wish I could give her the credit she so deserves. My principal loved these so much she asked me to make several sets for each grade level at my school.
I'm so excited about the month of October. There are so many great books to share with my class and fun activities to use for comprehension and fluency. This is a book from the U.K. that is so awesome. It's from the same author as Gruffalo. The book is read aloud on you tube and this is an amazing literacy unit to go with it I bought on tpt. I found this adorable book at Barnes and Noble this weekend. It has great adjectives and rhymes. I've attached a comprehension and writing page literacy unit below to make it even more fun. I love the Little Old Lady books. This one is so fun. It's read online on you tube. Here is a fun comprehension unit to go with it that I bought on tpt.
_We have so many fun things planned for this next week. Math will be patterns. I have a fun Grinch game, bead bracelets, connecting cubes, counting bears and other fun counters to use for patterns. We will still have a 2-D shape center, doubles and a new subtracting 1 Halloween game. Reading will be short O sound. We will be finishing up our write to our Helper friend center, fix it with mixed up spelling/sight words, write the bags short O words, sort short O words and have fun on computer games and read from our reading boxes and start our new unit 2 Treasures text books. Science is living organisms. We will start studying worms. We will have a worm terrarium with live worms. How way fun is that going to be? Social Studies will be understanding country, state, city and neighborhoods. We will also learn about the leaders of our country, state and city. I have attached two free downloads to go with my worms unit. The Diary of worms sequencing is a free download I found on TPT. Please check out this great teacher's products. The other one I made it's a cute letter template for your worms to write to your students. So fun my students are going to love this unit.
I love the first grade parade blog. She's so awesome. She has encouraged me (so has my district) to do math tubs and not so much whole group math teaching. I do a whole group lesson with lots of youtube videos. There are so many wonderful math videos on youtube. There are 2 on doubles addition I just love. There are some great counting by 2, 5, and 10. I love the days of the week and months songs. I also love all the telling time and money songs. I do one of each of these daily. These are life skills my students need to practice daily. We get up and dance as we learn math skills. I also do my calendar time during math. Then I do a whole group lesson our our unit we are studying then we break up into small groups for math tubs. This past week was 2-D shapes. My students love the math tubs even more than the reading stations I have for them. This gives me time to pull students over for enrichment and intervention too. As I rang the chimes to clean up for recess this week my students literally moaned and said "no we want to keep doing math." That is music to my ears. Wow! Have I mentioned how much I am enjoying teaching this year? I'm loving it! Here is a photo of my reading area. I spent about 5 hours this summer sorting my 800 guided reading book library by level and placing a number label on each book and book baskets as well. I have 10 baskets and 800 books.I had no idea I had 800 guided reading books until I began labeling each one. Wow! That was a huge task. Remember Randy Anderson inspired me to get organized so I was determined to be organized or collapse trying. I have my students choose their 5 books for the Daily 5 each Friday. It was kind of wild at first, but we have routine now and it's so sweet to watch them choosing their books. They are so careful about what they choose I hear them saying "it's so hard to choose." How precious is that? My students are "LOVING READING." They beg me to sit and hear them read each day so I can hear how much they have improved. They are loving practicing their sight words in their book boxes too. I have a group of 17 students who in the first 6 weeks of school have stopped saying "I can't read" to "please sit and hear me read my words and books to you." I look up and see almost no behavior problems during stations because they love learning and they are having fun learning and reading. Wow! What a precious gift that is to a teacher. I love the Daily 5 and I'm also using the Whole Brain Teaching techniques too. If I forget to tell you at the end this year please know I've had a wonderful time teaching this class. (my fav. quote changed some from Pretty Woman). I love the new idea of read the room, but I have a few students this year as they read the room tend to disturb their friends who are at other stations. So I prayed and God gave me this wonderful fun solution. I went to Hobby Lobby and found a set of cute gift bags for only $5.00. I taped some laminated scrapbook cards onto each bag. I taped the read the room words onto these bags and I can better manage where my students participate in the read the room word station. I plan to add small gifts for each student to find during special holidays this year too. This next week we are going to use the bags to spell out a mystery classmates name. The bags are a great teaching resource with endless possibilities. Please leave me a comment if you have an idea for my gift bag word station. :) We had a speaker named Randy Anderson come to my school and speak 2 times. He's awesome. He's on facebook so like him on there if you get a chance. He teaches people to optimize their time. He and other teacher blogs inspired me to reorganize my classroom this year. I cleared off counter space for student folders. Used my number set 1-20 to give my students a number with their photo and name. I taped library pockets to the counter for breakfast cards and bathroom sticks. Then I hope you can see at the top on the window seal I have put their "drops in the bucket" cups with their name attached as well. This has saved me so much time passing out notes, graded papers, searching for who didn't turn in their folders ect... My students know their numbers, are learning to write their classmates names and most importantly are learning to be organized and responsible for their folders and personal items. I love this system and I'm amazed daily at how my precious first graders have rose to the challenge of being responsible and self reliant this year. These are the cute chairs I purchased for my classroom from Academy. They were inexpensive and my students have loved them. There are a few negative aspects. They are not as safe as I had expected on the tile floor. First graders are wiggly and tend to rock in them that's not a safe choice on carpet or on tile in a regular chair and these are less stable. So we've had to discuss that in great detail with many reminders. They are so light weight they are ideal for the Daily 5. My students (even my tiny ones) can pick up one of these chairs and move it to a spot where they can make good choices reading to self or with a buddy. Over all I feel they were a wise purchase and I hope they last so I can use them for many years to come. I am so loving my reading boxes. My church saved cereal boxes for me all summer and it took a lot of time to cover them and make them look so cute. It was so worth the time. My students love them and I love watching them choose their own daily 5 books each Friday. Most of all I love hearing them ask with big smiles "can I read from my reading box". Music to a teachers ears. Wow! They also have star sight word bags in their reading boxes. They are so excited about their boxes I've added some math practice cards in ziploc bags so I can tutor and access my students in math using their boxes too. This is a photo of my word wall. I made my smartboard word wall to match it. I'm loving the colors and how much it adds to my students having a color to connect with each sight word. We clap, spell, snap and dance out the words and colors each day. We have made color coded sight word dictionaries in our "writers workshop binders" that we have color. So colorful, so much learning and so much fun! I found this adorable line/hallway behavior unit on TPT. It's marshmallow toes by D. Conway. It's awesome. She has some other great behavior products too. My students loved making these marshmallow toes. I gave them some to eat, but it was the end of the day and they must have been very hungry because they were eating the glued marshmallows off their craft and poem. lol! Gotta love first graders. Here is the TPT lesson. It's only $4.00 and so worth the money. So fun and my students loved it. __I created a Voki to use in my classroom. It's a cute talking pumpkin. I can't wait to use it with my Whole Brain Teaching. The kids will love it. I hope the link works so you can see it. :)
http://www.voki.com/pickup.php?scid=8649468&height=267&width=20 |
AuthorThere is no greater gift than a wonderful book that becomes part of you as you read it. Archives
January 2014
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