Just wanted to remind everyone that I am giving away Snapword cards to TWO winners!! The GIVEAWAY ends at midnight! Just click on the image below to enter. Good luck!!
GIVEAWAY Ends Tonight
Mar 31, 2014
Just wanted to remind everyone that I am giving away Snapword cards to TWO winners!! The GIVEAWAY ends at midnight! Just click on the image below to enter. Good luck!!
Snapword GIVEAWAY!
Mar 25, 2014
Are you ready for a GIVEAWAY!?!!
I have written a few times about my love for Snapwords from Child 1st.
My students were really struggling to remember some of our sight words. After searching for something different, I found these cards and have used them ever since. They are now part of my daily/weekly routine. And I get to give them away to TWO teachers!
First, things first....let me show you what they are. This image comes straight from their website. You can click on it to take you there.
WINNERS get to choose one list of cards that they would like for their classroom. They can also decide if they would prefer the "teaching cards" or the "pocket chart cards." It is a size difference. I use the teaching cards because I teach in a small group format. I don't need the pocket chart size. But every classroom is different, so we need choices! :)
You can check out the lists of words HERE by clicking on "List of our words."
Ok...Are you ready!?! Just enter below. I will pick two winners on April 1st!
a Rafflecopter giveaway Thanks for entering! Good luck!!
I have written a few times about my love for Snapwords from Child 1st.
My students were really struggling to remember some of our sight words. After searching for something different, I found these cards and have used them ever since. They are now part of my daily/weekly routine. And I get to give them away to TWO teachers!
First, things first....let me show you what they are. This image comes straight from their website. You can click on it to take you there.
WINNERS get to choose one list of cards that they would like for their classroom. They can also decide if they would prefer the "teaching cards" or the "pocket chart cards." It is a size difference. I use the teaching cards because I teach in a small group format. I don't need the pocket chart size. But every classroom is different, so we need choices! :)
You can check out the lists of words HERE by clicking on "List of our words."
Ok...Are you ready!?! Just enter below. I will pick two winners on April 1st!
a Rafflecopter giveaway Thanks for entering! Good luck!!
Celebrate Story Problems!!
Mar 23, 2014
It all started with the decorations. This included a Welcome banner, some gummy bears, dry erase markers, and these super (SUPER) cute centerpieces.
Once the firsties were seated and the families arrived, my teammate, Natalie, and I used a Powerpoint to introduce the story problem book and themes that we used throughout the year.
We showed them the actual book that we printed off and have used this year (about 600 pages!!).
Then we moved on to describe each of the themes and one upcoming theme!
We ended our quick explanation by showing our families the manipulatives that each student used.
Now...it is time to P.A.R.T.Y!! Each student had written a story about a teddy bear problem. Natalie had them laminated and Lowe's was nice enough to donate paint sticks.
Each kid walked around to the adults and asked them to solve their problem. Most people did it with a dry erase marker on the actual problem. Others solved the problem on the table.
This is our first math party that we have hosted. WOW! It was so much fun. How do you celebrate math in your school?
For the Powerpoint, I used image from The 3am Teacher, Ashley Hughes, This Little Piggy Reads, and The Wizard of Boz.
A Little Sunshine is Always Needed!
Mar 22, 2014
We are so excited to be nominated twice for the Sunshine Blogger Award.
The support and friendships that we have made through blogging has been so rewarding and we have grown as teachers. Thank you for all the support of our readers. Andrea from Reading Toward the Stars and Jennifer from Stories and Songs in Second nominated us.
Thank you ladies! We hope you can jump over and see all the amazing work that they do with their students everyday.
First up...11 random facts about us:
1. Maria has 3 girls and Em has 2.
2. We spend much of our summer riding roller coasters and eating blue ice cream at the local amusement park.
3. We have been teaching a combined total of 25 years!
4. Em has two scrambled eggs for breakfast every morning. Maria has poptarts every morning.
5. Maria loves loves LOVES to run. Em is more of a yoga girl.
6. Em loves loves LOVES chocolate. Maria hates it!
7. In our closets you would see black, black, and more black clothing. We like to wear black!!
8. Maria eats ketchup with ketchup but Em just likes ketchup.
9. We love a good cheeseburger by Em's Ben (mmmmm....).
10. Em is organized. Maria is messy-organized.
11. We are pretty opposite but work great together.
Next up...11 questions (some from Andrea and some from Jennifer)
1. Who is your favorite children's author?
Mo Willems, for sure!
2. What is one thing you miss about being a kid?
The carefree feeling. Rainbows and sunshine every day!
3. What is your favorite snack?
Goldfish
4. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Our 5 girls
5. Who has been your most important and influential mentor?
Hands-down...our teammate Karen. She is amazing.
6. How long have you been teaching?
Combined 25 years
7. What is your most guilty pleasure or indulgence?
Em--chocolate
Maria--marshmallow fluff
8. What is your favorite sport to play or watch?
Maria--loves to watch baseball, but play volleyball
Em--likes to watch football, but to play....no thank you!
9. What is the hardest part of your job as an educator?
The homelives of our students.
10. What is the best part of your job as an educator?
The kids.
11. If you could teach any one subject all day long, what would it be and why?
We already do what we love all day long! Maria teaches writing all day. Em is all about the intervention.
Our nominees: All of these wonderful bloggers have supported us, shared this journey with us, and put smiles on our faces! Thank you!
Luckeyfrog's Lilypad
Mrs. Beer's Language Arts Class
Comprehension Connection
Growing Firsties
Adventures with Firsties
Mrs. Beer's Language Arts Class
Comprehension Connection
Growing Firsties
Adventures with Firsties
Our Questions:
1. Do you like donuts? What is your favorite?
2. What keeps you awake?
3. Reading, writing, or math...what is your favorite?
4. What was your easiest subject in school? Most challenging?
5. What is your favorite grade to teach?
6. What do you do for summer fun?
7. SUV, mini-van, compact car?
8. Do you read for pleasure? If so, what are you reading?
9. What was your first job?
10. Are you a Mac or PC person?
11. What is your favorite color? Why?
We have daily rays of sunshine in our lives and appreciate all the bits that you send our way. Happy Spring everyone!
Multi-Syllabe Words FREEBIE
Mar 21, 2014
Happy Friday!! This week has been a little crazy. Not even quite sure why.
Last week I posted on Literacy Land about making nonsense words more "real" in your classroom. I have been using these sheets in my guided reading group:
Happy Friday!! Enjoy your day!
Mentor Texts to Teach Writing Standards
Mar 16, 2014
I am excited to be linking up with Carla (and Emily) from The Reading Tutor/OG. It is Mentor Monday.
This week it is all about mentor text to support writing. This is totally, completely, EXACTLY what Maria does (all...day...long) in her writing class. She really helps our firsties to analyze the writer's craft. She uses author studies to teach writing. And it is pretty amazing to watch. Here are some examples:
Author study of Mo Willems to teach narrative writing
Fancy Nancy book study to teach how-to writingInformational Texts--this year we used leveled readers to help our students analyze the types of questions/answers that writer's use. This was really effective. We created a chart to help them organize all this learning.
Currently, our firsties are doing research on individually chosen animals. They are using leveled readers, National Geographics, and PebbleGo to do their research. They are really engaged and interested in this writing. We look forward to sharing it with you!
Spring into a GIVEAWAY!!!
Mar 15, 2014
Come on spring!! You keep slowing creeping into my life and then backing away! What can I do to get you to come a little faster?!?
I....AM...SO....READY....FOR....SPRING.
I don't know why but this winter has sucked the motivation and energy right out of me. Anyone else feeling this way? I am trying to reclaim it. So I did some spring clothes shopping, took a walk in the park, and got some new spring clip art! Woot! Woot!
I used my clip art to make a SCOOT for r-controlled vowels.
The bird and the flower make me smile! It is part of the HUGE giveaway hosted by FlapJack Educational Resources. You can head over there to enter or just enter below! There are 80 different products in the GIVEAWAY!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
a Rafflecopter giveaway
a Rafflecopter giveaway
a Rafflecopter giveaway
a Rafflecopter giveaway
a Rafflecopter giveaway
a Rafflecopter giveaway
I....AM...SO....READY....FOR....SPRING.
I don't know why but this winter has sucked the motivation and energy right out of me. Anyone else feeling this way? I am trying to reclaim it. So I did some spring clothes shopping, took a walk in the park, and got some new spring clip art! Woot! Woot!
I used my clip art to make a SCOOT for r-controlled vowels.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
a Rafflecopter giveaway
a Rafflecopter giveaway
a Rafflecopter giveaway
a Rafflecopter giveaway
a Rafflecopter giveaway
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Last Wednesday WOW-Teddy Bear Style
Mar 12, 2014
I hope you can link up with a WOW moment (professional or personal) from your week. This will be my last Wednesday WOW for awhile.
Natalie and I have moved to the second part of our Teddy Bear Store story problems. We have been working so hard to get our students to visualize the story problems and solve them in a way that makes sense to them. It was now time for them to write their own.
First, we brainstormed all the types of Teddy Bear Store problems that we have encountered. It was a long list. But it included: subtraction, multiplication, division, addition, missing addend, and combinations.
Then, they started writing.
It was such a WOW moment to watch our firsties write these story problems. Actually the majority of the students that I work with wrote multiplication stories. These were the same students that struggled to think of an addition problem at the beginning of the year. Here are two examples:
"My mom had 8 kids. She gave 3 bears to each kid. How many bears does she need?"
"I walked into my bedroom and saw 16 bear ears under my bed. How many bears are under my bed?"
These problems, among 65 others, will be shared at our first grade story problem celebration. They are so excited and I look forward to sharing it with you :)
First, we brainstormed all the types of Teddy Bear Store problems that we have encountered. It was a long list. But it included: subtraction, multiplication, division, addition, missing addend, and combinations.
Then, they started writing.
It was such a WOW moment to watch our firsties write these story problems. Actually the majority of the students that I work with wrote multiplication stories. These were the same students that struggled to think of an addition problem at the beginning of the year. Here are two examples:
"My mom had 8 kids. She gave 3 bears to each kid. How many bears does she need?"
"I walked into my bedroom and saw 16 bear ears under my bed. How many bears are under my bed?"
These problems, among 65 others, will be shared at our first grade story problem celebration. They are so excited and I look forward to sharing it with you :)
Snapwords
Mar 11, 2014
Last year my building bought Snapword cards for all of our classrooms. As a building, we really thought the images that are embedded in the words would help our struggling readers. We also liked that on the back of the card is the word without the picture. We use the picture for a limited time and flip the card over. They look like this:
After posting about how I use these in my guided reading groups, Child 1st contacted me about trying some of their other products. Ummm....YES, of course!!!
Here's what we ordered: Sight Words in Sentences, The Reading Teacher's Encyclopedia, and Snapwords Mini-lessons.
Sight Word Sentence book
I introduced my Snapwords based on the sequence Child1st has set up. Because of this, the Snapword sentences are really handy for me. They reinforce the specific words that we are working on. I do only have one copy of the book but 6 kids in my group. So I wasn't sure how I was going to actually implement the resource. Then I remembered the ShowMe app that I had read about. I decided to try it out along with the book.
With this app, I took a picture of the page I wanted my students to read. They hit record on the iPad and read the sentences aloud. Now I can listen to how they did reading the sentences independently and determine what words they still need to work on.
Encyclopedia
Okay--this is chuck full of activities for each of the Snapword lists. Because I teach only guided reading groups and they are chuck full already, I felt overwhelmed with how much I had to choose from on this CD. But the more I pondered and played with ideas, it came to me!
I started with some sheets that have sentences to cut-up and put back together.
I have done a lot of this in my groups but with sentences from the leveled readers we read. By using these sentences, I was able to see how students read the high frequency words. But I was also able to see who could use the words to create a sentence that makes sense and who could not. We will be continuing this activity, for sure!
With two of my struggling readers, we decided to try a rhyming activity. They helped me to sort words by their rime. It worked out well because I really needed them to practice these high frequency words. Both students do well with rhyming, so I was hoping it would help them to remember these high frequency words. (This was half of the sort)
I am so glad that we decided to buy Snapwords because my first grade team has witnessed a lot of success with them this year. As my students experience more challenges with high frequency words, I know these new resources will be very helpful to provide them with extra practice. And in August when the new year starts, more of the resources can be incorporated into my daily guided reading routine.
Do you use any activities like this to work with high frequency words?
Here's what we ordered: Sight Words in Sentences, The Reading Teacher's Encyclopedia, and Snapwords Mini-lessons.
Sight Word Sentence book
I introduced my Snapwords based on the sequence Child1st has set up. Because of this, the Snapword sentences are really handy for me. They reinforce the specific words that we are working on. I do only have one copy of the book but 6 kids in my group. So I wasn't sure how I was going to actually implement the resource. Then I remembered the ShowMe app that I had read about. I decided to try it out along with the book.
With this app, I took a picture of the page I wanted my students to read. They hit record on the iPad and read the sentences aloud. Now I can listen to how they did reading the sentences independently and determine what words they still need to work on.
Okay--this is chuck full of activities for each of the Snapword lists. Because I teach only guided reading groups and they are chuck full already, I felt overwhelmed with how much I had to choose from on this CD. But the more I pondered and played with ideas, it came to me!
I started with some sheets that have sentences to cut-up and put back together.
I have done a lot of this in my groups but with sentences from the leveled readers we read. By using these sentences, I was able to see how students read the high frequency words. But I was also able to see who could use the words to create a sentence that makes sense and who could not. We will be continuing this activity, for sure!
With two of my struggling readers, we decided to try a rhyming activity. They helped me to sort words by their rime. It worked out well because I really needed them to practice these high frequency words. Both students do well with rhyming, so I was hoping it would help them to remember these high frequency words. (This was half of the sort)
I am so glad that we decided to buy Snapwords because my first grade team has witnessed a lot of success with them this year. As my students experience more challenges with high frequency words, I know these new resources will be very helpful to provide them with extra practice. And in August when the new year starts, more of the resources can be incorporated into my daily guided reading routine.
Do you use any activities like this to work with high frequency words?
Bright Ideas-Motivating Math Manipulatives
Mar 9, 2014
This is the first year I have heard these words from my students about story problems. (Actually, it is the first time I have felt this way about story problems) What is the difference?
I wish I would have used this Bright Idea years ago!
All year long I have been posting about our individual themes for problem solving (under problem solving with story boxes) but today I want to focus on our math manipulatives for story problems and how motivating they have been for our students. For each theme, my teammate (Natalie) and I created manipulatives to match. We really feel that this has helped our students to visualize and connect to the problems. This visualization helps them to determine if it is an addition, subtraction, multiplication, or missing addend problem.
So jumping right in....Bus Theme
Fall theme:
The pumpkins and ghosts are just buttons that we found at Joann Fabrics. Then we used spider rings but cut off the ring part. These were small and could be moved around quickly!
Giving theme:
These "gift boxes" were made using the cube blocks. We had our students paint all the blocks with sparkly red and gold paint. Then we glued ribbons on some of the "gifts."
This theme included some problems with groups of tens and ones. So we wrapped up some of the rectangular prism blocks. Our students knew that each of these large packages contained 10 small gifts.
Teddy Bear Store Theme:
We introduced this theme by asking the students to be the teddy bears. They each held up these sticks with the bears attached.
For individual practice they used little bear manipulatives.
Giving theme:
This theme included some problems with groups of tens and ones. So we wrapped up some of the rectangular prism blocks. Our students knew that each of these large packages contained 10 small gifts.
We introduced this theme by asking the students to be the teddy bears. They each held up these sticks with the bears attached.
All of these materials have helped to bring our instruction to life this year. What kind of materials do you use to help your students visualize story problems? We would love to add more ideas to our collection!
Thanks for joining me for the Bright Ideas Blog Hop!
Next stop...my fellow Ohio blogger, Kate, from EduKate and Inspire! She will describe a very engaging writing and art project with shaving cream snowmen! Just click on her image below to head on over there.
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