Hyperlexia

I'm currently taking my third graduate class towards my masters (what a nightmare) and I recently finished a powerpoint project about hyperlexia and reading comprehension strategies.

This year I have two students who show signs of hyperlexia. Basically, they can read anything they come across, but they really struggle with reading comprehension. I was having a lot of difficulty figuring out what I could do to improve their reading comprehension. Then I mentioned it to my grad professor and she explained hyperlexia to me. I decided to do my class project on hyperlexia so that I could try to find some strategies.

I want to share my powerpoint in case anyone else has similar problems! Hopefully it can give you some ideas!

I also created this file folder activity to help my students with hyperlexia as well as the rest of my class with reading comprehension strategies. They love using it and it really is helping them a lot!

Reading Comprehension: Reading is Thinking!

Hello! I have a problem. And that problem is that I procrastinate like crazy. Right now I have a pile of homework to do for my graduate school class, but instead I am putting up files on TPT. But that's okay, because I am wicked excited about this last thing I made this weekend!

I have been having a big problem in my kindergarten class this year with students who are not thinking while they read. Specifically, I have two students with hyperlexia who can read anything, but they comprehend very little. This is the product that I have come up with to try to help my students think more while they read. If they aren't thinking, they aren't really reading!

There are a bunch of different ways to use this packet. Check it out and then modify it in a way that works for you! 

One way to use this packet is to make it into a file folder activity that students can use during buddy (partner) reading. After reading the book, students can move the comprehension picture pieces from the top thought bubble to the bottom as they discuss each story element. I used velcro on the pieces and laminated them so that they are easy to manipulate. I was so happy with the way it turned out! I love it!

You could also put the pictures of the story elements on popsicle sticks that students could pull out and talk about.

This packet also contains a bunch of different comprehension writing prompts that can be used. Each writing prompt has two options, one with smaller lines and one with larger lines. You can choose which prompts best fit your students' needs!

Stop by my teacherspayteachers store and check it out!! :)

Roll and Write

Another new TPT product!

GO HERE to check out my Sight Words Roll and Write activity for kindergarten Reading Street! It also has recording sheets for lowercase letters a-z!!

Medial Vowel Picture Sort

I just uploaded a medial vowel picture sort product onto TPT!

Go check it out!! :)

Snow Day Productivity!

We were supposed to be back to school today after winter vacation, but we are off today and tomorrow because of snow! It seems like the perfect opportunity to get some tpt work done! I've been working on a project for a long time and have finally uploaded it today! 

I just uploaded a Sight Word Unifix Blocks Mega Pack! This packet contains forty pages of sight word outlines. Students build the sight words with unifix cubes on top of the outlines as a literacy center! Students love this hands on sight word practice! You can also have students use this as a math activity, counting how many blocks they needed to build the words.

This packed is aligned with the kindergarten reading street program, but could be used with other programs and grades! It contains the following sight words: I, am, the, little, to, a, have, is, we, my, like, he, for, me, with, she, see, look, they, you, of, are, that, do, one, two, three, four, five, here, go, from, yellow, blue, green, what, said, was, where, come.

Please go take a look at my tpt store! While your there, check out my other products too!! 

CVC Words File Folder Game

Check out my new product on TPT! It is a CVC file folder game in which students choose two consonants and a vowel, and blend the sounds together to read the word. It is great for literacy centers or for students who finish their work early.
Enjoy!
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/CVC-Word-File-Folder-Game-Aligned-with-Reading-Street-985923

Owl Chalkboard Clip Chart

I have so many things I want to post on here, but I keep running out of time!
I have been teaching summer school for students going into second grade this summer, and I am absolutely loving it! I have a lot of ideas and materials I will hopefully be posting soon. Hopefully...
My big news is that I was offered a job teaching kindergarten!!! I am so insanely excited. So hopefully I will start posting things I am doing to get ready. Of course I always say this and never actually do it. But I'll try!

Last night I stayed up until 3 am working on a new behavior clip chart. Oops! I just couldn't stop once I started. I saw an idea on TPT and thought about downloading it, but there were things I wanted to change, and it was not an editable file, so I decided to just make my own! (Thank you Primary Buzz for the idea!! You're great!) So this summer I have been using this behavior chart which I love, but I really want a black background/bright colors/owl theme in my class next year, so pirates didn't quite fit. This is what the pirate chart looks like in my summer school classroom.

This new owl chart will work the same way. Students start the day by moving their clips from "home" to "ready to learn." If I notice them doing something good, I ask them to move their clip up. If their behavior is a strugle, I ask them to move their clips down. Here is the link! It is free on scribd!

Sound/Letter Chart and Matching Game

Hello!

In my school district, every classroom has the same cards with a letter and a picture that corresponds with that sound. Students do a chant every day with these cards (example: apple, /a/, a. bear, /b/, b). I noticed that my lowest students could recite the entire chant, but when I asked them to name a letter or figure out what letter matches a sound, they were unable to do so. So I made a one page chart with all the letters and pictures on it. I figured they could keep these charts at their tables during writing time, and it would help them figure out what letters they are trying to write. I also made a matching game with the letters and pictures.

I put this up on my teacherspayteachers page! Check it out here!

Early Childhood Writing Prompt Packet

I've been testing out a new way to make printables, so I made a year-long writing prompt packet to use in early childhood classrooms! I put it up on my teachers-pay-teachers page here. I would love it if you checked it out! It has 42 writing prompts that range in difficulty from fill-in-the-blank responses to open ended responses. 

The themes represented in this packet are as follows:

1. First Day of School
2. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
3. Apples
4. Bugs
5. Fall
6. Pumpkins
7. Spiders
8. Scarecrows
9. Thanksgiving
10. Snow
11. Snow Day
12. Gingerbread Man
13. Snowmen at Night
14. Vacation Plans
15. New Year
16. Penguins
17. Hibernating Bears
18. 100th Day of School
19. Valentines Day
20. What does Love Mean?
21. Groundhog Day
22. Presidents
23. Dr. Seuss
24. St. Patrick's Day
25. Leprechauns
26. Spring
27. The Very Hungry Caterpillar
28. April Showers
29. Earth Day
30. Birds
31. End of the School Year
32. Summer
33. Weekend Plans
34. Past Weekend
35. Friends
36. Favorite Animal
37. I am special
38. Favorite Part of a Book
39. Beginning/Middle/End
40-42. Blank writing papers with borders

The packet is $3.00 on teacherspayteachers, but I will send it to the first three people who comment on this blog for free!

Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks

I've found the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks to be very difficult to quickly navigate. It has always frustrated me that I have to download each framework individually, and often the frameworks are broken up in the document by subject rather than grade level.

So I put all of the Massachusetts Kindergarten Curriculum Frameworks into one easy-to-use document! It is easier to print out, make notes on, and keep track of which frameworks you have hit and which you have not. You can even put check marks next to the ones that you think your class has mastered.

It put it on teacherspayteachers for free. Here it is!

(Preview Page)

Simon Says Math Game

I have to do some assessments before report cards, so I decided to make a fun way to figure some things out!

Setting Up

Hello there :)
I was thinking to myself the other day, "when I get my own classroom, I am going to be so overwhelmed trying to set it up that I will probably forget so many things." I am notorious for keeping tons of lists and sticky notes everywhere to remind myself to do things, so I decided I would get a jump start thinking about this. I wrote a little check list of at least some of the things I will need to do just to prep a new classroom, and sharing is caring, right? So here ya go!
Click here! :)

Happy Halloween!

In the spirit of Halloween, I made a little ABC activity students could do during workboard centers. Students will match spiders with lowercase letters on their backs to their webs with uppercase letters.
I included all of the letters, but I would only put a few out at a time.

You can download the pdf here to print and cut!

Enjoy!

Morning Meeting Greetings Giveaway!

I am so sorry that I update this blog so infrequently! I now have two jobs (one as a kindergarten paraprofessional and one in retail) and it is a bit overwhelming!

However, today I spent my afternoon putting together a bunch of morning meeting greetings for you!
Personally, my plan is to print them out, laminate them, and then put them on a ring so it is easy to flip through and find a greeting idea in the mornings. And it's free!
You can download it here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/108930522/Morning-Meeting-Greetings-Styled

:)

Silent E

Hello there :)

This is my last week of student teaching (WHAT?!), and I know I very rarely post, but hopefully I will have some time to put things up.

I've been wanting to post this idea for like 3 weeks. My first graders were learning about long vowel sounds, and my teacher taught them the rule that if there is a silent e, it makes the vowel say its name. I thought her idea to do this was really clever, so I wanted to share it!

She put a bunch of cvc words in the pocket chart, and then she had students come up, read the word, put a star with an e on it at the end of the word, and then read the new word with the silent e ending.

Then she had student make magic e wands! They were really cute, and they loved doing it. Then they got a worksheet just like the pocket chart and practiced reading words with and without the e ending.

Inequalities

I've started teaching all the math lessons in my first grade, and last week I needed to introduce inequalities. Yikes! I remember being very confused when I learned about inequalities when I was younger, and my teacher I work with is still confused to this day! So I wanted to make sure I presented the information in a very clear way.

We use the enVision math program, and in the program it only spent one day on inequalities and it jumped right into using two-digit numbers. So I put in an extra day in order to introduce the concepts in a more in-depth way.

I started by telling my first graders that we would be talking about something called "inequalities," and I asked them what the words "greater than" and "less than" meant. Then, I showed them this inequality alligator I made. It moves so that I can make it show greater than, less than, or equal to. Plus I laminated it so that I can write the numbers on each side with a dry-erase marker. I had a group of 5 students and a group of 2 students come up and stand on either side of the alligator mouth. Then we talked about which way the sign should go. We talked about how we always have to read our number sentence left to right, just like how we read a book. We did a bunch of examples together as a class.

After, I had more examples on the smart board that we worked on together. Finally, my students filled out this worksheet on their own.

I have several students who are significantly behind in math, and even my students who really struggle got all or almost all the answers correct! It was one of the best math lessons we've had in a while, and I could tell my students were really proud of themselves for understanding it so well.

Management

It's been like a month since I've posted. Oops! I have a lot of things to post and no time to do it.

But I wanted to post two things I've been doing in my first grade classroom. This class has a lot of behavior  issues. It is nearly impossible to get through anything without constant interruptions and children talking, moving around, and generally being crazy. So to try to give them some motivation to work on blurting out, I implemented a "marble system." Every time I feel like they are working without a lot of talking or inappropriate behavior, I give them a marble. They need to get 50 marbles, and then they will have a special day. We haven't even decided on what the special day is, but it doesn't matter to them. They are just excited by the idea of something special. It really has been working well for this class, although there is still MANY times when they are very loud.
I have a clear tupperware box with all the marbles they still need to earn, and a lady bug for all the marbles they have. They love looking at them and counting how many they have and how many they have left.

Another thing I've been doing is for one child who has a lot of anger management issues. He often gets frustrated with his work and ends up getting very angry. He breaks things, rips up his papers, and yells at others. So I decided to give him a cup to put in his desk. On one side of the cup it says "I need help" and on the other side it says "I need a break." When he is getting frustrated, he puts the cup on the desk to indicate if he needs help from the teacher or if he needs to take a break in the book area. This has been helping him by allowing him an option other than anger. The picture is kind of hard to see, but here it is!

Hopefully I will be able to post more things soon! I just taught my class a math lesson about inequalities that I want to post about!

Counting by 10s!

Today was my last day student teaching in kindergarten. I was so lucky to have such an amazing cooperating practitioner as a model of good teaching. I'm really going to miss that class :(
Off to first grade next week!


Last week I taught a lesson about counting by tens that my students really enjoyed.
We started by listening to this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn691ALuywg&feature=related I cut it though so that it only played the chorus twice and it didn't say "multiples of ten." After singing it once, we stood up and did hand motions. We started with our hands by our feet and slowly moved up with every number until our hands were all the way up for 100. They loved it and wanted to sing it over and over. 


Then I had my students pair up and play a game where they lined up the numbers 10-100 (multipes of 10 only) in order. Then one would close their eyes and the other student would flip a card over. Then their partner had to guess which was missing!


To end, we played "Pop!" We all stood in a circle and counted by 10s. Whoever got "100" had to jump up, yell "pop," and sit down. Whoever was the last person standing won!


Here's a link to the full lesson plan: http://www.scribd.com/doc/85689502

Seuss-tastic!

It is Dr. Seuss week! Everything has been going really well, and I wanted to share some pictures of the things we are doing!

Pocket Chart: Finding word wall words

Making -at words

Fish Venn Diagram

Real and Nonsense words

Princess Pat -at lesson (lesson plan posted in a previous post!)

Monday Morning Message

Tuesday Morning Message

I crocheted a lorax!

School has already announced that we will have a half day due to impending snow storms. That's great and everything, but I just want it to be spring!!

Princess Pat Lesson Plan

Writing lesson plans is so tedious. They are completely impractical. But we have to write formal plans for all the lessons we teach during student teaching. I have tons to write this break, and I have barely started. (How is it already Wednesday?)
But I just finished my Princess Pat -at word family/rhyming lesson plan, and I thought I'd share it. I already explained it a little in a previous post, but I figured someone might want to see the actual plan!
Here it is! Princess Pat