Do You Know It By Sight?

This year, my group is all over the place, from a 6th grade reader to readiness level to an ESL/ELL student (I have no idea what the proper term is nowadays).  Teaching third and fourth for 10 years, I feel I have a handle on the "challenging" the higher students.  However, I have never been as low as readiness and my "preprimer" experience has usually been a student who is on the cusp of moving up to Primer level!

So, I find myself creating a lot of sight word activities this year, geared towards my 5 lowest students, trying to make things interesting and challenging.  

Recently, I published on TpT (and soon on Teacher's Notebook and Resources 4 Teaching as soon as I can get the Internet to cooperate!) several activities that were probably some of the quickest I've ever created.  It's amazing what you can do when you have the need! :)

The first I'd like to share is an Uno-style game called "Vowel Sound-O Card Game".  It's something that at first, I created for my lower readers, then realized I could use it up to at least my third grade readers and those on Within Word for their Word Study Level.  Players are dealt 7 cards and the rest are put in a stack face down on the table.  The players then try to match vowel sounds (short a to short a, long o to long o) of the card face up on the stack.  There are also WILD cards in the mix to change color and vowel sound!

Next, I wanted ALL my students to benefit, from the lowest to the highest, and thought out Word Building.  My highest groups have "Independent time" during our Guided Reading Rotation (the lower groups have Reading Lab or Title I for 30 min each in addition to the 30 min with the teacher for group; we also have an intervention program this year called "Read Well") and this will be great for their Literacy Center time (I also plan on using the Vowel Sound-O card game as well).

So, students will play "Deal A Word Card Game" (notice a theme with the card games?  I began to create one and kept getting ideas for more!).

This is a great game you can differentiate.  It's got vowels, consonants, digraphs, blends - I tried to throw a little of everything in there to make it a valued resource in my classroom!

The last creation I wanted to share isn't quite along the reading WORDS line, but in preparation for our next unit in Math Investigations for Place Value.  I hate the fact that Investigations for 2nd grade doesn't go above tens and ones, but our standards go to "999"...soooo....lots of games and instructional material are used to supplement the curriculum.  I also decided to give it a Fall flair!

I hope you can find something useful for your classroom as well!  Be sure to tune in on Friday for our October Friday Fall Freebie hop!  I'll have another sight word activity I just finished tonight to share!  Click on any of the pics to take you to them!