Summer Stock Up: Interacting with Short Vowels

I love all the fresh ideas that are buzzing around during the summer months!  All the books studies, extra time to read blogs, and reflect allows me to get ready for the upcoming year.

One of my goals this summer was to prepare some interactive presentations that were engaging and powerful.  A few years ago we tried using  Powerpoints to help our students with segmenting, blending, and visually seeing how the letters come together.  Our firsties need and benefit from this type of explicit, direct lesson in phonics.

The new and improved SHORT VOWEL presentations are here and ready to use!
Each file comes with an introduction Powerpoint that works on one specific vowel sound (such as short a below), an interactive making words Powerpoint, and corresponding printable sheets for the students to use.

Since they are Powepoint presentations, I was able to make them interactive.  The letters move on some of the screens to help students see how words are formed or change.  The video below shows an example of this:

The corresponding sheets help the students to be accountable for their learning.  It provides them with Elkonin boxes to touch and segment the sounds in the words.  But then the students can write the sounds for the word inside each box.

The sentences allow the students to see the word in context.  I think making that connection from word to sentence is really important.

I look forward to creating more of these Powerpoints this summer for VCE words and vowel teams.  But if you would like to win the short vowel collection, please enter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

If you would like to try out part of the short a Interactive Introduction--plus many other freebies--please click below!

Five for Friday

Happy Friday everyone! Time to do some linking up!

Number 1
I...am...going....to....the....

 WHAT!!! I can't believe it!  I am so excited.  Math has really been a focus of mine this year.  And I get to go and learn, learn, learn!  Even better....The Math Coach will be there.  I just can't wait.

Number 2
It is coming October 25th-October 27th.

We are so excited to be a part of this Blog Hop filled with free resources from Reading Specialists and Literacy Coaches.  Hope you can come and grab lots of great resources!

Number 3
Our bus theme for story problems ended last week.  This week we started the new theme..."fall creatures."

One of our classes did so well with this new theme that they are ready to create their own problems!!  Can't wait to share them.

Number 4
Maria and I love to do author studies to support writing instruction.  This year Maria read the "Ladybug Girl" to teach watermelon versus seed stories.  I have just fallen in love with these books.

Number 5
This week we worked on short i word families with our struggling readers.  I made two Powerpoints to help them out with understanding -ip and -ig families. If you need them too...just click on image!

Have a good weekend everyone!  Don't forget to stop by and link up with Wednesday WOW!

Wednesday WOW!

Wednesday WOW!!!  Hope you have something to share that has gone well for you (professionally or personally) this week!  Just link up below.  We all need a little positive :)

On Monday we had a day without our firsties.  What does this mean, exactly?  LUNCH...OUT!  So we headed out to "Sugar n' Spice."  It is a 70+ old breakfast/lunch restaurant that is bright pink on the outside, colorful and cozy diner on the inside. 
We came to EAT!

We ate EVERY BITE!!

I thought I would share one more success that happened.  I worked on some short i Powerpoints for too long this weekend.  With all that time and effort, you just hope those kiddos will be engaged and....they WERE!  I was so happy to see how well they blended the sounds and THEN unscrambled the sounds.

Hope you have a great rest of the week! Please link up below if you can share with us!

Five for Friday Story Problems

Happy Friday to one and all out there!

It was a fun week of problem solving in our little Curious Firstie world.  I know, I know....I have blogged about this problem solving book (Posing and Solving Problems with Story Boxes).  We hit the point this week that our kids had to create their own story problems.  What! It is the third week of September....beginning of the year....surely they can't do this.  UM!  YES!  They can :)

So I am linking up this Friday to share some of these experiences this week.  Thanks Doodle Bugs for hosting my favorite linky (well...I like my Wednesday WOW linky).

1. The creation of bus story problems (higher achieving students): They came up with their problems and wrote them.

 

2. More creation of story problems (struggling students): They came up with the problem and I wrote it for them.

3. Sharing of the problems:

 4. We discussed problem solving strategies this week.  We modeled, discussed, and produced some images together to help us remember them. Here is an example.

5. Last up---little bit of phonics for you.  I made a "Making Words" powerpoint for the -ap and -ack families.  Our struggling readers did a great job with it!  They actually followed along with the sheet below.  We practiced making these families and handwriting at the same time (much needed handwriting).  You can click on the image if you want to download a preview of the Powerpoint.

 

 Have a good weekend everyone!  Don't forget to link up on Wednesday with something great that is going on with you :)

Week One, Juggling Act, and Some Short o's

The first week is officially under my belt.  It was two days professional development/work day and three days with students.  It was a long week and I am still E...X..H..A..U..S..T..E..D.

It is weird.  Every year I seem to forget that I need to "relearn" the juggling act.  Daycare drop off, pick up, school, cooking, cleaning, homework, bath time, being a mom, wife, sister, daughter, friend......(you know I could go on).  This year I added another time sucker into the mix, exercising.  For a million years, I have procrastinated, put it off, not made time, made excuses, just flat out would not exercise.  But this summer I finally found something I like and I am not wanting to give it up. And so it becomes part of the "juggling act" this year.

I missed out on my favorite linky this Friday.  But I still had some randomness from my week to share.

First of all...after a long (but good) work day and a long (but good) Open House night, I came home to this:

That would be my Ruby's hair (4 year old).  Oh that girl!!  So after my first day of school--with kids.  We took a trip to get haircuts.

Our first couple of weeks we teach our firsties whole group.  Sound crazy?  I love it.  Since we are departmentalized...they will have all of the first grade teachers.  We take turns teaching and testing.  We pound out all of our "getting to know you" activities and beginning of the year assessments all together.
I was in charge of the "whole body listener" activity this week.  I read "Falling for Rapunzel."  This book cracks me up.  It is a good illustration of not listening and rhyming (it has some great vocabulary too).

Last year I went over a "whole body listener" poster that we found.  But this year I decided to have the students label my drawing (I read Smarter Charts this summer and I am trying to implement their ideas).

For phonics last year I did a lot of Powerpoints for my struggling readers to teach how sounds work and come together to make words.  When I looked back at some of my posts, the Powerpoints were all over.  My goal this year is to create sheets that correspond to the Powerpoints to get the engagement level up, up, UP!

 I can't wait to see how these sheets work out this year.  If you want it, you can click on the photos.  I will be happy to email it to the first three people to comment on this post.  Just leave your email.

Here goes week two!!! 

Letters, Words, and Sentences....Oh My!

Last year we found that our firsties really needed to practice the difference between a letter, word, and sentence.  Some of them just did not quite know the difference.  So I made up a Powerpoint to help them along and after a little bit of good (Maria) teaching, they had it!  I was looking back at that Powerpoint (almost a year later now) and realized...oh my!...it is ugly.  So I spruced it up and...voila!

So...of course...that led to more.  I decided a sort would go so well with this Powerpoint.  I created a letter, word, and sentence sort to correspond to this Powerpoint (or could be used alone).

 I am super excited about the way that both of these products look.  I can't wait to see them in action. If you would like them, just click on the images above.  BUT...I will give them to the first two people that comment on this post.

Oh!  And don't forget our 14 winner giveaway ends tomorrow night!!! Click below if you have not entered yet.