Last Friday Freebie of October!

 

This has been a fun linky/freebie/hop to be part of!  So, here we are, at the end of October (yikes! Where did the time go???).

So, this week, I'm putting up for a freebie a Scarecrow Study I just completed Tuesday night!  It's for sale at my TpT store, but for this weekend, it's FREE!  Be sure to grab it and please - leave feedback! :)

I have several students who do not celebrate Halloween.  So, I've been very careful to avoid faces on pumpkins and other things that could be construed Halloweenish.....I've done it before, no biggie.  You just go seasonal. :)  As in, we're going to be having some week-long studies of bats, spiders, pumpkins, and of course, scarecrows!  

Between teaching grammar and writing skills, it's hard for me to find time to just let my kids WRITE and respond to a prompt!  I mean, my poor seed notebooks I created this summer are just sitting there :(  I keep telling myself - seeds, as in second semester (once we have the sentence structure, etc. down).  So, my solution was to make it "Fun Fridays" in writing and do a craftivity/activity each Friday that the kids respond to in writing.  Hence, the themes.  So far, we've done fall trees, clouds (review for weather), apples, and a few others I just can't think of right now (past my bedtime as I'm writing this!).  Oh yes - Otis - how can I forget "Read for the Record" and our cute tractors???  

Anywho, I found this GREAT book about Scarecrows that is actually NONFICTION.  (We're in our nonfiction stage of study right now with our 2nd nine weeks).  How perfect is that?

 

Soooo.....with a few old (and I mean, have that brownish tinge to them) mailbox pages from days gone by, a craftivity from "All Students Can Shine", and this packet, we're gonna learn about scarecrows!

So, pick it up now, leave me some love feedback, and enjoy!  Be sure to hop on to the next blogger!

 

October Friday Fall Freebie Round 3

It's Friday again! :)

This week, I'm adding on to my earlier post this week about sight words. 

I created a sight word Bingo to use with my PrePrimer and Primer reading groups using Dolch words.  There are six different boards, as well as a blank board to program your own words.  Hope you can use it!  It'll only be free until next Friday in my store!  Click on the pic below to access the freebie! :)

Be sure to hop on along to Teaching With Hope the next stop on the hop!  
 

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!

Friday Fall Freebies (Second Week!)

It's another week of Friday freebies! :)  I'm hopping along with several bloggy friends to bring you some much needed freebies at the end of a looong week (and I know it will just get worse until we hit the 31st!).

 

My freebie this week is something I created for my struggling readers.  I have a small group of Readiness and PrePrimers (6 of them), and one of them JUST moved to our country from Puerto Rico this summer!  I realized as we were doing our first Fall writing, he had no clue about what Fall looked like!  (Of course, after all this rain, he now does!  It changed our leaves and they have definitely "fallen").

So, my freebie to you is this book I wrote for my low readers on Fall.  It's a printable book and has repeated text.  My kiddos loved it, especially the fact that they got to take it home and practice it after we read it in class!  (We keep our books at school and text copies go in their binders...also at school).  I hope you'll enjoy it as well!

Click on the picture to take you to the freebie.

Don't forget to keep hopping along with our next blogger! 

      I'm also linking up with Freebie Fridays!  Check them out!  

Friday Fall Freebie Blog Hop! Jump On In!

 

I am so excited to be part of another blog hop - this time, it's for "freebies" every Friday!  They may not necessarily be fall ones, but I am excited to share some of my new things I've created for the classroom and get your feedback!  My class this year goes from low to high, so I've been trying to find that happy medium, so to speak.

This Friday's freebie is a writing prompt/craftivity about Fall. 

I was inspired by a Pinterest picture (of course) using "q-tip" painting of Fall trees.  I am not the biggest fan of paint and the mess it makes, but thought the q-tips might change my mind (and it did!).  I only had one student who seemed to get it all over him, but as for the rest, the desks, clothes, etc. stayed clean!  Woo hoo! :)

 

 Well, I paired up the activity with a writing prompt (with a 4 square type plan), so here is our version!  (I had the kiddos plan and write BEFORE we painted to help keep them motivated!)

 

 I feel that sometimes, we just don't get enough time to just enjoy creating and writing (we tend to get bogged down in grammar lessons, etc), so I have now planned every Friday a "Fun Friday" for Writing, where we'll do a craft and writing activity.

So, what does your freebie include?
*notes on "q-tip" painting and how we did it
*4-square planner
*faint tree outline so students can "organize" their tree

Click on the picture below to download your freebie!  Be sure to visit the next stop on the hop at