If you teach kindergarten through 2nd grade, you know that guided reading is an essential component of literacy instruction. The way I’ve conducted guided reading has changed over the years and some people aren’t fond of the term guided reading, but small-group reading instruction is essential in order to differentiate and meet your students’ needs in reading. Planning for guided reading used to be very time-consuming. I found myself trying to find resources from different places in order to fill the gaps my students had. And sometimes I'd plan a lesson, then notice something else my kids needed while reading, so I'd want to teach that skill but didn't have a resource on hand to help. So I created guided reading warm-ups to help get my kids’ brains ready for reading, remind them of important phonics skills and reading strategies, and have everything I needed for any necessary skills that popped up during small-group ... read more
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Stretching Words Out: Emergent Writing Strategy
It can be daunting for emergent writers to stretch out words, especially long words. Many of my kindergarten students are very artistic and can add details to their pictures, but when I ask them to add words, they sometimes hesitate or tell me they don't know how to, even if they do have some letter-sound knowledge. Writing Warm-Ups To get kids to see that they are able to write some words, I started doing writing "warm-ups" at the beginning of our independent writing sessions, and it has already helped many of my students become more risk-takers with spelling. First, kids need to understand what saying a word slowly is. If you tell a student to stretch out a word, they may not understand what you mean. However, if you remind them of Dory in Finding Nemo and show them a clip of her "speaking whale," they'll be sure to quickly learn how to say a word slowly (and they'll likely not want to stop)! Here's an adorable clip: Dory ... read more
How to Make an Easy Yearlong Writing Portfolio
The beginning of the year is so crazy busy and exciting, that we often don't have time to plan ahead, let alone think about memory books! Then, when we start to make memory books at the end of the year, it can get a little difficult. . . Students are asked to remember things that happened throughout the year and it can be like pulling teeth to get them to write about their memories. I mean, I have a hard time remembering what I went to Target for! There's no way I would remember what happened months ago in detail. So, what happens? Students just write a sentence or two to get the pages done and it's not their best writing at all. You know what I'm talking about. We've all seen this kind of writing: It was field day. I had fun. It is so frustrating when you know a student can write so much better! Everything you taught them about writing, thrown out the window. Ugh! Anyway, I have a better solution. Make a yearlong ... read more
Scaffold Writing with Wordless Books to Help Beginning Writers
Too many times, I've had students who have a really hard time coming up with a story idea, or writing a cohesive story with a beginning, middle, and end. Using wordless books for writing is a great scaffold for students who have these struggles! My teaching assistant and I started meeting in small groups to make little booklets that already had pictures in them and kids wrote the text. This really helped so many kids, who were struggling with writing or spending way too much time on their pictures. We started with pattern books to make it simple for kids to write repetitive sentences. These are books that have the same words at the beginning of each page: "I see----", "I like----", "It is ---". Having a few words they could write helped build their confidence and they took more risks with spelling the missing words. (There is a blank version for them to write the entire sentence in addition to the pictured one below). After ... read more
Invented Spelling: Good or Bad?
One of my favorite things about teaching kindergarten and first grade is reading students' writing. Sometimes it takes pretty good detective work to decipher it, but you can get so much insight from their invented spelling. Plus, it's super cute! Obviously, when children are first learning to write, they won't spell every word correctly. So, they need encouragement to try their best and room for inventive spelling. At what point does it cause concern? Some people say invented spelling should never be allowed or modeled (WHAT?). I highly disagree with this opinion, but I do think there are times when kids should be corrected and guided to use accurate spelling. What is invented spelling? First, to clarify, conventional spelling is the correct spelling of a word. All of the words in this sentence are spelled conventionally. Invented spelling (or inventive spelling- tomato, tomahto) is phonetic spelling, based on what ... read more
Phonological Awareness Activities and Games to Engage Your Students
"C-a-t. . . . MAP!" Ever have students who do that? Even when students know letter sounds, they may still have trouble reading because they don't blend the sounds correctly. The likely cause is a lack of phonological or phonemic awareness. Phonological, Phonemic: What's the Difference? First things first, phonological awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate sounds in spoken words. While phonological awareness can include syllables or parts of words (ex: onset and rime), phonemic awareness deals with individual phonemes, or sounds. For example, blending or segmenting the sounds in the word CAT is a phonemic awareness activity. Identifying the number of syllables in the word CAT is not. They are both phonological awareness activities, but phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness that deals with phonemes, or individual sounds. So, in a nutshell: phonological = individual ... read more
GUIDED READING WARM-UPS: FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Last week, I sent a survey out about my Guided Reading Warm-ups and am so thankful for all of your responses! There was a LOT of positive feedback (thank you!), as well as suggestions, and a whole lot of questions. I wanted to answer as many questions as I can, as well as let you know the exciting updates I have planned for this resource over the summer! I had too many questions to include here, but I condensed the most frequently asked ones below. If you still have a question, please feel free to ask in the comments or email me at [email protected] and I'll be glad to chat! First of All, What is It? If you're new to these, this is a comprehensive kit of resources to help you with your small reading groups. It's designed to quickly review important skills before students read their books (or as stand-alone skills practice in whole-group or small-group settings), and includes resources for you to use during and after ... read more
Don’t Leave the Classroom Before Doing these things!
Looking forward to the last day of school? Do I hear a “heck yeah!” Teachers and students alike can’t wait for summer break! Before you run out, though, here are some important things to do before leaving the classroom for the summer. The last thing we want at the end of the year is more work. I know, you’re exhausted. However, a little extra work now can save you so much stress at the beginning of the year! Believe me, there are few worse things than coming into your classroom at the start of the new year to find a hot mess and not knowing where to start. It doesn’t have to be that way! Here are my best tips for sailing into summer and cruising into fall. Some things are obvious, like finding a home for your class pet and remembering to take home your chocolate stash so you don't walk into a melted mess in the fall! Other things aren't as easy to remember, so get out a pad and make yourself a to-do list. Feel free to comment ... read more
Fun Ways to End the School Year with a Bang
Between organizing, packing, cleaning, summer vacation excitement, and class management, the end of the year can be a little overwhelming. But despite everything you have to do, you still want to enjoy your students and make it memorable! I'm sharing some fun ways to end the school year and make great memories with your students! Balloon Pop On the last day of school, we had "Memory Day" and I filled a bunch of balloons (one for each student plus a few extras) with slips of paper. The slips had questions about the year, for example, What was your favorite book/ field trip/ event this year? I also had some fun ones, like Sing your favorite song, Do a silly dance, and Tell us a joke. When kids came in on the last day, it made them so excited to see the colorful balloons taped to our wall and they couldn't wait to pop them! I saved one balloon in a corner and popped it last. What did its slip say? GROUP HUG! Memory ... read more
Tips for Making a Unique End-of-Year Memory Book
There's not much I remember from my first-grade class and end-of-year memory books weren't really a thing back then, but I SO wish I did have one to look through now that I'm older! Nowadays, there are all kinds of wonderful end-of-year memory books and most teachers I know have their students complete one each year. If there is ever a year to appreciate and celebrate getting through, this is it! Whether you create your own or use a pre-made paper or digital one, here are some ideas to make a unique end-of-year memory book your kids and their families will cherish! 4 Ideas for Unique End-of-Year Memory Books 1. Include a Mix of Pictures Most memory books allow space for kids to draw themselves, which is great because their pictures are just so adorable. I also love to add some real photos taken of them in school since parents likely don't have any of them in the classroom. In my end-of-year memory book, I have a ... read more
Phonics-Based Sight Word Activities
For years, kids have been taught to memorize high-frequency sight words because they don't follow phonics rules. I'm guilty of having done this, but changed my practices and learned how to really make sight words stick, using phonics. Now that we know that kids need to learn words by orthographically mapping them out (learn the sound/letter relationships to store them into memory), incorporating phonics-based sight word activities will boost your students' sight word knowledge! Here are my favorite phonics-based sight word activities that make sight word practice fun for your kids! 5 Phonics-Based Sight Word Activities to Make Them Stick "Grapheme" it Out! Write words on graph paper, placing one sound in each box. Model first tapping out the word to hear one sound at a time, then writing the letter/s (grapheme) that make that sound. Word Sort Sort words that have similarities. This is a great activity to ... read more
How to Teach Making Inferences: Comprehension Strategy
There are few lessons I love to introduce more than making inferences! Kids love to be detectives so when I come out from behind my desk in my trench coat and detective hat, holding my oversized magnifying lens, and hum the Mission Impossible song as I furtively sneak up to the board, it's always a big hit! It's ok that my hat is really a plastic safari hat. And that my "trench coat" is really just a rain jacket. It works, and they get so excited to become inference detectives! Making inferences is a skill we use constantly and it's so important for reading comprehension! This is why we need to teach making inferences in an explicit way, giving opportunities for lots of practice, breaking it down into easy steps, and gradually becoming more complex. Here are my best tips for how to teach making inferences to students in kindergarten, first, and second grade. How to Teach Making Inferences Kids need to learn that ... read more